Multi-species anthropologies and interspecific relations

Teacher(s)

Laugrand Frédéric;

Language

French

Content

Nowadays, as environments and their human and non-human inhabitants transform, as each being is understood as a holobiont (an assemblage of species living together, according to A. Tsing’s definition), and as new relationships emerge between these components, the social sciences are developing new concepts. These assemblages and recompositions call for both empirical and reflective work. The abandonment of notions such as “societies” in favor of “collectives,” for example, opens up novel and fruitful readings. How, then, can we grasp what non-humans do to humans? This course addresses these fundamental questions.
Human relationships with animals and plants have been examined successively through the lenses of symbolic systems, ethnozoology/ethnobotany, ecology, and more recently inter- and intraspecific relations (competition within the same species). Influenced by biology, the notion of interspecific relations includes predation, competition, parasitism, commensalism, mutualism, and symbiosis. These concepts are adopted by so-called multispecies approaches, which explore the entanglements between human life and the living world as a whole (animals, microorganisms, etc.): see, for example, Multispecies Ethnography.
Through ethnographic studies and various authors, the course critically examines these perspectives and some key concepts they employ. Part of the course will focus on the Inuit, whose society is based on hunting, where predation and compensation are inseparable. The course will also open onto an anthropology of the vegetal and mineral worlds.
The course will be taught in a seminar format and is structured around five complementary themes:

1. What is an animal? What is a plant? What is a species? What is the relevance of ethno-ethology, and what is anthropocentrism?
   
2. How does humanization of animals and plants occur, and how does the animalization of humans happen? How do the categories of wild and domestic function, and what are the roles of monsters and hybrids?
   
3. The problem of killing animals, hunting, and cannibalism; the question of distance or edibility of meat; the role of affects and interspecific conflicts in the Anthropocene.
   
4. Examining animals and plants as signs, their capacity to anticipate, and their political and ritual uses in contemporary societies. The goal is to understand what plants and animals contribute to an anthropology that reunites nature and culture.
   
5. The contributions and limitations of multispecies ethnography.
   

The course requires a substantial amount of reading (including texts in English) and the completion of an empirical project, which will be briefly presented in class. The first session will introduce the course content and assignments. Subsequent sessions will combine lectures by the professor and discussions based on the assigned readings. The final sessions of the course will be devoted to student presentations and debates. The course will also feature external guest speakers.

Teaching methods

Lectures, student oral presentations, and collective discussion of case studies. A seminar format will be prioritized.

Evaluation methods

A presentation (oral presentation in class). The topic will focus on an animal, plant, or mineral “biography” or an interspecific interaction. It will be based on one or two interviews, the transcripts of which must be submitted on the day of the presentation (file). This assignment will be presented orally using PowerPoint. The electronic version of the PowerPoint presentation (5 slides) must be submitted to the instructor by December 23 at the latest (or August 20, 2027, for the second session). Only the oral presentation (5 to 10 minutes, depending on group size) delivered in class will be graded. This assignment will account for 100% of the final grade. For the oral presentation, the evaluation criteria are: the ability to synthesize information, the organization and clarity of ideas, the richness of the corpus under study, critical analysis of sources, the quality of writing, and time management. Working in pairs is permitted except for the make-up session in August. Students are expected to participate in class; any absence must be justified or will result in a penalty. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for research is permitted provided that its role is specified very precisely; failure to do so will result in a penalty.

Bibliography

• Moodle

Sera distribuée en classe

Teaching materials

• Moodle

Faculty or entity

> PSAD