This article explores human-animal relationships in the North by calling for a fresh examination of the infrastructures and architectures which inscribe them. We draw attention to the self-limiting quality of Arctic architectures which are designed to emphasize mutual autonomy. This approach challenges models that would create a crisp, clear separation between domestication as constituting a form of domination or a type of mutualism. By describing several key infrastructures of domestication -of tethers, enclosures, and traps -we hope to draw attention to the silencing of these domestic inventories. Revisiting the metaphor of the domus, we focus on the lands where these relationships are elaborated, re-linking Arctic architectures to places of encounter. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork mainly from Northern North America and various sites in Northern Eurasia, we present an ethnographically informed account that stresses the nuanced way in which strategies of control are blended with those of care and comfort, creating unbounded homes that are good to live in.This article explores human-animal relationships by examining the architectures inscribing them. Challenging stark dichotomies wherein domestication is seen as necessarily dominating, or at heart mutualistic, we propose an ethnographically informed account focusing on strategies of control, but also on those of care and comfort, which are delineated by evocative objects and structures. By paying attention to the material architectures of domestication -of tethers, enclosures, and traps -we highlight the silencing of domestic inventories. Rather than assuming that a single bridle dug from a Neolithic excavation, or a fenced enclosure in the taiga, 'stand for' the dreary domination of human over animal, we are asking readers to take a second look to imagine these artefacts as pointing to an architecture of relationships.Our examples come almost exclusively from the North -Northern North America and Northern Eurasia -and this is for several reasons. Within the regions of the world where domestication has been interrogated, there has been a surprising overemphasis on places such as the Near East, China, or the temperate zones of the Americas as so-called 'centres of domestication' . The dominant narrative has been that domestication -as if it were a standard recipe -was achieved once in a particular place, and then spread to other parts of the world. This fairy tale of how physically distinct dogs, maize, or horses colonized the rest of the planet has been shown to be
This article explores human-animal relationships in the North by calling for a fresh examination of the infrastructures and architectures which inscribe them. We draw attention to the self-limiting quality of Arctic architectures which are designed to emphasize mutual autonomy. This approach challenges models that would create a crisp, clear separation between domestication as constituting a form of domination or a type of mutualism. By describing several key infrastructures of domestication -of tethers, enclosures, and traps -we hope to draw attention to the silencing of these domestic inventories. Revisiting the metaphor of the domus, we focus on the lands where these relationships are elaborated, re-linking Arctic architectures to places of encounter. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork mainly from Northern North America and various sites in Northern Eurasia, we present an ethnographically informed account that stresses the nuanced way in which strategies of control are blended with those of care and comfort, creating unbounded homes that are good to live in.This article explores human-animal relationships by examining the architectures inscribing them. Challenging stark dichotomies wherein domestication is seen as necessarily dominating, or at heart mutualistic, we propose an ethnographically informed account focusing on strategies of control, but also on those of care and comfort, which are delineated by evocative objects and structures. By paying attention to the material architectures of domestication -of tethers, enclosures, and traps -we highlight the silencing of domestic inventories. Rather than assuming that a single bridle dug from a Neolithic excavation, or a fenced enclosure in the taiga, 'stand for' the dreary domination of human over animal, we are asking readers to take a second look to imagine these artefacts as pointing to an architecture of relationships.Our examples come almost exclusively from the North -Northern North America and Northern Eurasia -and this is for several reasons. Within the regions of the world where domestication has been interrogated, there has been a surprising overemphasis on places such as the Near East, China, or the temperate zones of the Americas as so-called 'centres of domestication' . The dominant narrative has been that domestication -as if it were a standard recipe -was achieved once in a particular place, and then spread to other parts of the world. This fairy tale of how physically distinct dogs, maize, or horses colonized the rest of the planet has been shown to be
In this perspectives essay, I propose some ways in which current thinking in anthropology might inform the emergent cross-disciplinary field of coexistence studies. I do so following recent calls from within the conservation science community (including this special issue), acknowledging that understanding human-wildlife coexistence in the fractured landscapes of the Anthropocene1 requires being open to alternative approaches beyond conventional frameworks of conservation science and management (see for instance; Carter and Linnell, 2016; Pooley, 2016; Chapron and López-Bao, 2019; Pooley et al., 2020). The essay suggests that relational (non-dualist) ways of thinking2 in anthropology, often building on Indigenous philosophy and expertise, may help ground coexistence studies beyond Euro-Western modernist conceptual frameworks—frameworks that perpetuate exploitative and colonial logics that many scholars from across academia view as being at the heart of our current ecological crisis (e.g., Lestel, 2013; van Dooren, 2014; Tsing, 2015; Todd, 2016; Bluwstein et al., 2021; Schroer et al., 2021). By proposing “relations” rather than objectified “Nature” or “wildlife” as the more adequate subject of understanding and facilitating coexistence in shared landscapes, I understand coexistence and its study first and foremost as an ethical and political endeavor. Rather than offering any conclusive ideas, the essay's intention is to contribute some questions and thoughts to the developing conversations of coexistence studies scholars and practitioners. It does so by inviting conservation scientists to collaborate with anthropologists and take on board some of the current thinking in the discipline. Amongst other things, I suggest that this will help overcome a somewhat dated notion of cultural relativism—understood as many particular, cultural views on one true objective Nature (only known by Science), a perspective that explicitly and implicitly seems to inform some conservation science approaches to issues of culture or the “human dimensions” of conservation issues. Ultimately, the paper seeks to make a conceptual contribution by imagining coexistence as a dynamic bundle of relations in which the biological, ecological, historical, cultural, and social dimensions cannot be thought apart and have to be studied together.
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