Fuzzy Bounds

Doing Ethnography at the Limits of the Network and Animal Metaphor

Author(s)

  • Paul Hansen Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9529

Abstract

Working on topics where the object of study routinely transgresses what are assumed to be the normative physical and affective boundaries of non-human and human, the concept of “network” and the marker “animal” have proven to be both essential and problematic.  They are especially problematic when one conducts research that is largely rooted in anthropological ethnography; a mode of inquiry dependent not only upon the observation of lives, but on long-term participation in and with those lives. In short, to do anthropological ethnography is it is to live it and to focus on the micro level of interaction first and foremost. This paper argues for the utility of conceptualizing the historical and particular over the timeless and bracketed; re-thinking networks as Ingoldian “meshworks” and not referring to agents or “actants” by abstract categories but through accounting for their specific, historically situated and developed capacities, embodiments and potentials.

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Author Biography

  • Paul Hansen

    Paul Hansen is a Specially Appointed Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Hokkaido University, Japan. He completed a PhD in anthropology at the University of London’s SOAS, Post–doctoral research based at Hokkaido University and The Japanese Museum of Ethnology, and has lectured in anthropology at the University of Calgary and Tsukuba University. His research focuses on animal-human-technology relationships and the embodied, ethical, and affective permutations of such interrelations in Japan and Jamaica. Recent publications include Escaping Japan: Reflections on Estrangement and Exile in the Twenty-First Century, a 2018 co-edited book with Blai Guarné (London: Routledge), “Linking Cosmopolitan and Multispecies Touch in Contemporary Japan,” an article forthcoming in the journal Japan Forum, and a co-edited and ongoing blog with Gergely Mohacsi and Émile St.Pierre entitled More-Than-Human Worlds hosted by the Journal NatureCulture.

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Published

2021-05-26

How to Cite

“Fuzzy Bounds: Doing Ethnography at the Limits of the Network and Animal Metaphor”. 2021. Humanimalia 10 (1): 183-212. https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9529.