ReadingAnimals

..to something like etho-ethnography.

My academic training includes both anthropology and ethology. The hybridization of these two fields might actually give us some useful and important ways for thinking about animal cultures and subjectivity.

I am certainly not the first person to make such a suggestion. Two women from the field of anthropology - one a cultural anthropologist and the other a fellow primatologist - have influenced my thinking on this subject. Although I did not encounter Barbara Noske’s work until after I’d wrestled with this idea on my own, her work in Beyond Boundaries certainly helped to bring my thinking into sharper focus.

If the science of anthropology would shed its a priori notion of animals as beings unworthy of an anthropological approach, and would share its insights with critical ethologists, it might grow into an integrated science of humans and animals alike under the name of anthropo-zoology or zoo-anthropology

Likewise, primatologist Barbara Smuts’ writing on animal subjectivity - specifically on how subjectivity and relationship influence methodology - has also been important to me. (See her commentary in The Lives of Animals by JM Coetzee and elsewhere)

This post will be the first in a series exploring the interdisciplinary approaches to studying animal subjectivity. Please watch for more and share your thoughts in comments.