Living Beings: Perspectives on Interspecies Engagements

Description

Living Beings examines the vital characteristics of social interactions between living beings, including humans, other animals and trees.Many discussions of such relationships highlight the exceptional qualities of the human members of the category, insisting for instance on their religious beliefs or creativity. In contrast, the international case studies in this volume dissect views based on hierarchical oppositions between human and other living beings. Although human practices may sometimes appear to exist in a realm beyond nature, they are nevertheless subject to the pull of natural forces. These forces may be brought into prominence through a consideration of the interactions between human beings and other inhabitants of the natural world.The interplay in this book between social anthropologists, philosophers and artists cuts across species divisions to examine the experiential dimensions of interspecies engagements. In ethnographically and/or historically contextualized chapters, contributors examine the juxtaposition of human and other living beings in the light of themes such as wildlife safaris, violence, difference, mimicry, simulation, spiritual renewal, dress and language.

Penelope Dransart is Reader in Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK.

[Living Beings] provides a stimulating new collection of ethnographic and historical perspectives on the ways in which other living beings are 'good to think', and are of vital material and metaphorical importance in human spirituality and creativity. * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute * Living Beings offers a lot to think about ... it indicates a serious and growing emphasis on the subject, and it shows that anthropology as well as other disciplines still have contributions to make. * Anthropology Review Database * [This book] represent[s] a significant milestone for the multispecies turn and offer[s] some useful theoretical and methodological foundations ... Seasoned fieldworkers will find a refreshing new angle with which to analyse old fieldnotes and new projects. * Australian Journal of Anthropology * Living Beings provides a multitude of interesting and innovative ways to rethink the relationship between humans and other-than-human beings. By pushing methodological and theoretical boundaries, the ideas presented in this volume will be especially inspiring to readers who are interested in interdisciplinary research projects with art and philosophy. * Anthropological Notebooks * The essays in this volume powerfully and productively engage two recent turns in the literature on human-nonhuman relationships: the multispecies turn and the ontological turn. * American Ethnologist *