Pigs, Fish, and Birds: Toward Multispecies Ethnography in Melanesia

Abstract

Th is article reviews two strengths of Melanesian anthropology that could make a signifi cant contribution to anthropological research on human-animal relations, specifi cally to multispecies ethnography. Th e fi rst strength is an analytical approach to comparative research on gender developed in response to challenges from feminist theory in the 1980s; the second is a wealth of ethnographic detail on human-animal relations, much of it contained in texts not explicitly concerned with them and thus largely inaccessible to nonspecialist readers. Th e article sets up an analogy between the challenges faced by feminist anthropologists and those currently faced by multispecies ethnographers. It demonstrates how pursuing the analogy allows multispecies ethnographers to draw together analytically, and to reinvestigate a broad range of ethnographic resources containing details on human-animal relations, whose convergence so far remains hidden by divergent theoretical interests.

Common sensing: Human-black bear cohabitation practices in Colorado

“…These conceptions have in common that they touch upon the entanglement of human and animal lifeworlds (Hinchliffe and Whatmore, 2006;Latimer and Miele, 2013;Locke, 2013) and the places where humans and animals ''belong" (Schneider, 2013). In this article, we use the concept of cohabitation (Barua, 2014b;Bear and Eden, 2008;Hinchliffe et al, 2005;Lulka, 2004Lulka, , 2009) to highlight the spatial interactions between humans and wild animals as well as the spaces (landscape in its broadest sense, including human-modified and naturally occurring spaces) that shape and are shaped by these interactions (Hinchliffe and Whatmore, 2006).…”

From manstream measuring to multispecies sustainability? A gendered reading of bee‐ing sustainable

“…Specifically, the multispecies ethnographic approach encourages the exploration of possibilities for decentring the anthropocentrism — and we would argue androcentrism — that proliferates organizational assumptions and organizing logics, particularly through ‘rethinking our analytical categories as they pertain to all beings’ (Schneider, , p. 27). Just as multispecies ethnographies seek to counter studies of animals that are ‘riddled with gendered, racialised and speciesist assumptions’ (Wilkie, , p. 329), we suggest they also provide the opportunity to make visible and subsequently disrupt assumptions about the gendered business‐as‐usual practices and processes that govern the lives of humans in organizational and institutional settings.…”

Songs, Settings, Sociality: Human and Ecological Well-Being in Western Mongolia

“…The growing body of research that addresses well-being in connection to environmental change, social-ecological resilience, and adaptive capacity contributes to transdisciplinary studies combining theories and methods from both the natural and social sciences (Fernández-Giménez et al 2015; Hopping et al 2016; Kofinas and Chapin 2009). The multispecies turn that engages with more-than-human approaches in ethnographic study (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Locke and Muenster 2015; Schneider 2013) also encourages transdisciplinary research in this area. Chao (2018:623) proposes we move away from focus on the agency of humans to consider “the phenomenological lifeworld of their other-than-human counterparts.” Tsing (2010:201) expresses this as “building democratic science and publicly inclusive well-being.”…”