Displaying 1 - 1 of 1
Multispecies ethnography is a rubric for a morethanhuman approach to ethnographic research and writing rapidly gaining discursive traction in anthropology and cognate fields.The term is deployed for work that acknowledges the interconnectedness and inseparability of humans and other life forms, and thus seeks to extend ethnography beyond the solely
human realm. Multispecies investigations of social and cultural phenomena are attentive to the agency of otherthanhuman species, whether they are plants, animals, fungi, bacteria,
or even viruses, which confound the species concept. This entails a challenge to the humanist epistemology upon which conventional ethnography is predicated, specifically its
ontological distinctions between nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object. Multispecies ethnography must thus be seen as a part of a larger quest in the social
sciences and humanities to replace dualist ontologies by relational perspectives, to overcome anthropocentrism by pointing to the meaningful agency of nonhuman others, and to
highlight the intersections between ecological relations, political economy, and cultural representations. Multispecies ethnography however, not only acknowledges that humans
dwell in a world necessarily comprising other life forms but also contends that their entanglements with human lives, landscapes, and technologies must be theoretically integrated
into any account of existence. The authors of this article wish to thank Eben Kirksey, Thom van Dooren, and two anonymous reviewers.