The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography

Abstract

Anthropologists have been committed, at least since Franz Boas, to investigating relationships between nature and culture. At the dawn of the 21st century, this enduring interest was inflected with some new twists. An emergent cohort of “multispecies ethnographers” began to place a fresh emphasis on the subjectivity and agency of organisms whose lives are entangled with humans. Multispecies ethnography emerged at the intersection of three interdisciplinary strands of inquiry: environmental studies, science and technology studies (STS), and animal studies. Departing from classically ethnobiological subjects, useful plants and charismatic animals, multispecies ethnographers also brought understudied organisms—such as insects, fungi, and microbes—into anthropological conversations. Anthropologists gathered together at the Multispecies Salon, an art exhibit, where the boundaries of an emerging interdiscipline were probed amidst a collection of living organisms, artifacts from the biological sciences, and surprising biopolitical interventions.

O Aedes aegypti e o digital

“…Outra inspiração vem da "etnografi a multiespécie". Essa é uma ideia provocativa que tem feito com que criaturas marginais, como "animais, plantas, fungos e micróbios que costumavam ser confi nados em um inventário antropológico da 'vida nua', comecem a aparecer junto dos humanos na esfera da bios, com biografi as legíveis e vida política" (Kirksey;Helmreich, 2010, p. 545-546, tradução minha, grifo meu;ver também, Haraway, 2008;Kohn, 2016;Tsing, 2015). Há anos, discuto com Theophilos Rifi otis as diferentes faces das políticas etnográfi cas no campo da cibercultura.…”

Clothes make the rider? Equestrian competition dress and sporting identity

“…As part of an eight-year (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) multispecies ethnography (Kirksey & Helmreigh, 2010) the first author observed many occasions during which horse riders paid attention to their dress, in terms of preparing for competition, psyching themselves up for the sport and adapting garments to suit them better. As a participant observer in the social world surrounding equestrian competition, and a long-time rider and competitor herself, she had engaged in these practices countless times and conversed with numerous people about the specificities and peculiarities of equestrian dress.…”

Knowing Insects: Hosts, Vectors and Companions of Science

“…1 For a further elaboration for the ways in which animals have and have not 'been good to think with', see Haraway (1989), Mullin (1999) and Kirksey and Helmreich (2010). 2 Hooke offers the microscope as a way to correct the fallibility of human memory and reasoning: 'He Indeavours of Skilful men have been most conversant about the assistance of the Eye, and many noble Productions have followed upon it; and from hence we may conclude, that there it a way open'd for advancing the operations, not only of all the other Senses, but even of the Eye it self; that which has been already done ought not to content us, but rather to incourage us to proceed further, and to attempt greater things in the same, and different ways' (Hooke 2005(Hooke [1664, preface).…”