The emergence of multispecies ethnography
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Helmreich_The emergence.pdf
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Author(s)
Kirksey, S. Eben
Helmreich, Stefan
Date Issued
November 2010
Journal
Cultural Anthropology
Publisher
American Anthropological Association
Citation
KIRKSEY, S. Eben, and Stefan HELMREICH. “The Emergence Of Multispecies Ethnography.” Cultural Anthropology 25.4 (2010) : 545-576. © 2010 by the American Anthropological Association.
Version
Final published version
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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01069.x
