Methods for Multispecies Anthropology: Thinking with Salmon Otoliths and Scales

Swanson, Heather Anne

doi:10.3167/sa.2017.610206

Cited by 57 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…(Herdt 1981: 128) The biggest challenge facing multispecies ethnography (Kirksey & Helmreich 2010), as we see it, is a methodological one. The conventional methods of social anthropology are not sufficient for investigating the complex and elusive relationships that transpire across species boundaries (Tsing 2015;Swanson 2017). As Eduardo Kohn (2013) has argued, interspecies relations are inherently semiotic, involving sign flows across species boundaries.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia

Daly¹,

Shepard

2019

Anthropology Today

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Recent scientific findings on plant intelligence are forcing anthropologists to reconsider indigenous theories of plant vitality. In this article, the authors compare original ethnographic and ethnobotanical research among two different peoples from opposite extremes of lowland South America – the Makushi of Guyana and the Matsigenka of southern Peru – and explore how somatic experiences and the chemosensory properties of plants permeate indigenous understandings of the aetiology of illness and medical efficacy in both the cosmological and microbiological domains. The authors synthesize emerging theory in ecosemiotics, embodiment, plant personhood and plant intelligence with the concept of ‘sensory ecology’ to recast multispecies ethnography as a phytochemical as well as a philosophical endeavour.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia

Daly¹,

Shepard

2019

Anthropology Today

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“…The ethnography of environmental conservation could keep its critical and relativist instincts, yet benefit from engaging more with the insights which natural sciences offer into the world-makings of animals, plants, and many othersand into the existential crises that these worlds now face. In this vain, Swanson (2017) suggests social anthropologists approach life sciences as we already approach history archivesaware of their power relations and non-neutrality, but nonetheless often using their data pragmatically as 'good enough'. Moreover, Mathews (2011, 25-28) suggests that we can use natural science research to actually transcend 'a naïve positivism'.…”

Section: Encountering Non-humans That Make Worldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild-ing the Ethnography of Conservation: Writing Nature’s Value and Agency In

Kiik

2018

Anthropological Forum

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When reading ethnographic literature on nature conservation, one may wonder: where has nature gone? Social anthropologists have written nuanced ethnographies of how the environmental projects of governments and transnational NGOs encounter, dispossess, clash culturally with, and try to govern native people across the world. Yet, these diverse ethnographies often say little about what motivates those encounters firstly: local and global nature, especially wildlife, plants, and the planet's ecological crisis. Thus, this paper seeks ways how ethnographic writing on conservation practice could better reflect that the planet's many self-willed, struggling, and valued non-humans, too, enter conservation's encounters. To find paths toward such a 'wild-ing' of ethnography, the paper locates and reviews disparate materials from across the social-anthropological literature on biodiversity conservation. The review is structured through three questions: How does and could the ethnography of conservation represent nature's value? How can it show that animals, plants, and other nature make and meet worlds? How can it incorporate natural science data about non-human worlds and ecological crisis? Altogether, we understand nature conservation clearer through the interdisciplinary and more-than-human ethnography of worldmaking encounters. Such wilder ethnography may also better connect people's suffering and nature's vanishingas problems both for anthropology and conservation science.

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“…In this vain, Swanson (2017) suggests social anthropologists approach life sciences as we already approach history archives -aware of their power relations and non-neutrality, but nonetheless often using their data pragmatically as 'good enough'. Moreover, Mathews (2011, 25-28) suggests that we can use natural science research to actually transcend 'a naïve positivism'.…”

Section: Weaving Natural Sciences Into Ethnographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild-ing the Ethnography of Conservation: Writing Nature's Value and Agency In

Kiik¹

2018

Preprint

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When reading ethnographic literature on nature conservation, one may wonder: where has nature gone? Social anthropologists have written nuanced ethnographies of how the environmental projects of governments and transnational NGOs encounter, dispossess, clash culturally with, and try to govern native people across the world. Yet, these diverse ethnographies often say little about what motivates those encounters firstly: local and global nature, especially wildlife, plants, and the planet's ecological crisis. Thus, this paper seeks ways how ethnographic writing on conservation practice could better reflect that the planet's many self-willed, struggling, and valued non-humans, too, enter conservation's encounters. To find paths toward such a 'wild-ing' of ethnography, the paper locates and reviews disparate materials from across the social-anthropological literature on biodiversity conservation. The review is structured through three questions: How does and could the ethnography of conservation represent nature's value? How can it show that animals, plants, and other nature make and meet worlds? How can it incorporate natural science data about non-human worlds and ecological crisis? Altogether, we understand nature conservation clearer through the interdisciplinary and more-than-human ethnography of worldmaking encounters. Such wilder ethnography may also better connect people's suffering and nature's vanishing -as problems both for anthropology and conservation science. KEYWORDSValue of nature; non-human agency; political ecology; interdisciplinary ethnography; ethics of anthropology

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Methods for Multispecies Anthropology: Thinking with Salmon Otoliths and Scales

Cited by 57 publications

References 24 publications

Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia

Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia

Wild-ing the Ethnography of Conservation: Writing Nature’s Value and Agency In

Wild-ing the Ethnography of Conservation: Writing Nature's Value and Agency In

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