The Anthropology Of Humans and Others: Symbiosis and Living Together

Description

This book looks at the concept of symbiosis as a means of understanding how humans and other life forms live together. Working from the starting point that being alive is necessarily being-in-relation to others, The Anthropology of Humans With Others investigates the anthropological implications for society and the academy in investigating our relations with other life forms. Divided into three parts, the book begins with the biome, and an investigation into the way human life and health depend on the symbioses of organisms from microbes to fungi. The second part turns to the hybrid communities formed in relations between human beings and other animals. The third part looks to the human community itself to focus on the collaborative creation of architectures and spaces for living together with difference. Across these investigations the central idea of symbiosis is interrogated and developed: first as a way of differentiating life types; second as a way of delineating community types; and finally in its role in scholarship, with a consideration of the ethical implications of studying with others, rather than making studies of them. This last raises questions that extend beyond the current collection to address the academy, such as: how can scholarship be a practice of care, and how might a truly symbiotic scholarship go beyond current efforts to work across disciplines? Bringing together a stellar range of junior and senior scholars to engage in this dialogue, and curated by world renowned anthropologist Tim Ingold, with Julien Dugnoille, the text offers a new insight into work on humans with animals and other life forms and will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, zoology, human-animal studies, philosophy, sociology, geography and design.

Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Julien Dugnoille is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Exeter, UK.