CASCAIUAES2017 roundtable: More-than-human Moves: Of Everyday Entanglements and the Academy

CASCA May, 2017 Roundtable

Title:

More-than-human Moves: Of Everyday Entanglements and the Academy


Organizer:

Paul Hansen, Hokkaido University (hansenanthro@gmail.com)


Abstract:

Within the humanities and social sciences a nonhuman or
more-than-human approach to writing and research has become a
prominent genre. This is an epistemological move that underscores
humans are ever-entangled with nonhuman animals, technologies, the
environment and spiritual entities. Anthropologists, perhaps due to
the centrality of anthropos in the discipline, were slow to respond to
broader moves to decentre the human subject. However, the publication
of the special issue The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography in the
journal Cultural Anthropology in 2010 prompted a growing number of
anthropologists to focus on more-than-human conceptualizations as
valuable in understanding and describing everyday interactions.
Nevertheless, movement towards such an approach in anthropology is
often resisted by the power structures of universities where more
quantitative and rigid regimes of classification—nature/culture or
human/animal for example—remain. This round table discussion focuses
on how the nonhuman turn informs the work of participants and how they
maneuver within the academy. Put concretely, why and how is the
nonhuman turn prominent in your work and what are the implications of
more-than-human research for methods and practices?


We would welcome other interested panelists.