Transcript Anderson_IUEAS_Manchesterx

ENVIRONMENTS BY DESIGN IN THE
CIRCUMPOLAR NORTH
David G. Anderson
University of Aberdeen
IUAES Manchester 8 Aug 2013
Querying Domestication: The ethnography of human/animal
entanglements.
A story about a muskrat hat
Environmental Design in the North
• Going beyond the noted North/South divide within
two of the most prominent theoretical groupings
• STS Science and Technology Studies
• Political Ecology
Environmental Design in the North
• Going beyond the noted North/South divide within
two of the most prominent theoretical groupings
• STS Science and Technology Studies
• Political Ecology
• “Technobiological Imaginaries” (Joan Fukimura,
Sheila Jasanoff)
Environmental Design in the North
• Going beyond the noted North/South divide within
two of the most prominent theoretical groupings
• STS Science and Technology Studies
• Political Ecology
• “Technobiological Imaginaries” (Joan Fukimura,
Sheila Jasanoff)
• Critique of the “psychological minimalism” within
theories of agency – esp. ANT (Peter Taylor)
Environmental Design in the North
• Going beyond the noted North/South divide within
two of the most prominent theoretical groupings
• STS Science and Technology Studies
• Political Ecology
• “Technobiological Imaginaries” (Joan Fukimura,
Sheila Jasanoff)
• Critique of the “psychological minimalism” within
theories of agency – esp. ANT (Peter Taylor)
• An ethnographic account of “acclimatization” /
“translocation” / “restoration” of exotic species
Environmental Design in the North
• The anthropology of the Gift
Muskrat acclimatization in Stalin’s Russia
We are not able to wait for gifts from nature: our
goal is to take them – I.V. Michurin
Muskox translocations during the Cold War
Woolly Mammoth Restoration
Woolly Mammoth Restoration:
Pleistocene Park
Sergei Afanasevich Zimov
Environmental Design and a Technobiological Imaginary
• The machine-organism analogy and what is
“lost in translation”
Environmental Design and a Technobiological Imaginary
• The machine-organism analogy and what is
“lost in translation”
• Designer environments
• Expert policed ecological balances
• Niches – full and empty
• Forage and appetites
Environmental Design and a Technobiological Imaginary
• The machine-organism analogy and what is
“lost in translation”
• Designer environments
• Expert policed ecological balances
• Niches – full and empty
• Forage and appetites
• Little interest in the desires of the animals
themselves let alone other Northern communities
• “playing” with animals
Agencies, human or otherwise
• Peter Taylor’s critique of “psychological
minimalism” and “egocentric calculation” in the
ANT school – esp. the founding myth of scallops
in St. Brieuc Bay
Agencies, human or otherwise
• Peter Taylor’s critique of “psychological
minimalism” and “egocentric calculation” in the
ANT school – esp. the founding myth of scallops
in St. Brieuc Bay
• All agency reduced to “resistance” or “enrollment”
– more complex reflections or sentience “lost in
translation”
Agencies, human or otherwise
• Peter Taylor’s critique of “psychological
minimalism” and “egocentric calculation” in the
ANT school – esp. the founding myth of scallops
in St. Brieuc Bay
• All agency reduced to “resistance” or “enrollment”
– more complex reflections or sentience “lost in
translation”
• An anecdote: translating the word agency into
Russian
Agencies, human or otherwise
• Peter Taylor’s critique of “psychological
minimalism” and “egocentric calculation” in the
ANT school – esp. the founding myth of scallops
in St. Brieuc Bay
• All agency reduced to “resistance” or “enrollment”
– more complex reflections or sentience “lost in
translation”
• An anecdote: translating the word agency into
Russian
• Ethnographic examples of agency in the
circumpolar North
Conclusion:
Environments of Design in the North
«beyond resistance»
Teaching a 4 year bull to
know the saddle Amudisy
Conclusion:
Environments of Design in the North
«back to the gift»
arcticdomus.org