18.1.2 Multispecies Ethnography

In his essay “Why Look at Animals?,” English art critic and poet John Berger writes, “To suppose that animals first entered the human imagination as meat or leather or horn is to project a 19th century attitude backwards across the millennia. Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises” ([1980] 1991, 4). Recent trends in anthropological scholarship attempt to interact with these messengers and understand the relationship that humans and animals share. The term polyspecific refers to the interactions of multiple species. The relationships shared between humans and other species began with our ancestors millions of years ago.

The specialty of human-animal studies within anthropology suggests new forms of scholarship that deliberately move away from anthropocentrism, which focuses on humans as if they are the only species that matters. Human-animal studies opens a window into different ways of thinking about what it means to be human. One approach within the specialty, called multispecies ethnography, pays careful attention to the interactions of humans and other species within their shared environment—whether those other species be plant, animal, fungal, or microbial. Multispecies ethnographies are especially focused on the study of symbiosis, which is a mutually beneficial relationship between species.

Researchers conducting multispecies ethnographies utilize a broad, holistic approach that takes into account questions such as where and how interactions between humans and animals occur. This approach is more complex than traditional ethnography because it requires that the researcher acknowledge both the perspectives of nonhuman actors and their roles in how we see and understand ourselves.

Cultural anthropologists and ecologists Kirill Istomin and Mark James Dwyer (2010) conducted multispecies ethnographies between two different herding populations in Russia: the Izhma Komi, who live in northeast European Russia, and the Nenets in western Siberia. The two groups live in environments that are comparable in terms of geography, average temperatures, and precipitation, and they herd the same subspecies of reindeer year-round. Yet their herding styles are completely different. The Izhma Komi divide their reindeer into two large groups: a family group consisting of non-castrated males, females, and calves, called a kör, and a group of castrated males used for transportation and hauling, called a byk. Herders accompany the two groups to two separate grazing grounds during the day and direct them back to camp at night. While foraging for food, the reindeer stay within their particular groups and do not wander away. In contrast, the Nenets allow their reindeer to freely disperse and wander during the day, only occasionally observing their general whereabouts and well-being. Unlike the Izhma Komi herds, which stay in their two large groups, the Nenets animals forage in smaller groups and reunite at night as a single herd when they return on their own to camp for protection. Unlike wild reindeer, who do not routinely live in and around human encampments, these groups have a symbiotic relationship with their herders. The humans get meat, some limited milk, and leather for clothing, shoes, and trade products from the reindeer, and the reindeer get protection and supplemental foods at the campsite from the herders.

Istomin and Dwyer’s research notes behaviors that the reindeer have learned from their human herders, but it also addresses social learning within the herds. In their interviews with the researchers, both Izhma Komi and Nenets herders told stories about the difficulties they faced when introducing new, so-called unmanageable animals into the herds. These new animals had not yet learned the herding routines of the group they were joining. Some wandered off and were lost before they could adapt to the particular herd culture. Istomin and Dwyer conclude that the animals themselves pass along behavioral knowledge to each other across generations as offspring follow and learn from their mothers and other adult reindeer. This conclusion challenges the notion that animal behavior is solely genetic and instinctual. Expanding ethnographies to include an understanding of what animals are doing and thinking is a primary objective of multispecies ethnography.

Despite its recent emergence in anthropology as a separate specialty, the multispecies perspective has a long history. Nineteenth-century amateur anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s research on the North American beaver (1868), which includes material on beavers’ adaptation to and interaction with humans, remains one of the most insightful and perceptive works on the species. And the research conducted in the 1930s by British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard on the relationship between the Nuer people of Africa and their cattle resulted in an ethnographic account of their interdependence, both socially and economically.

More recently, cultural anthropologist Darrell Posey used a multispecies ethnographic approach in his work “Wasps, Warriors, and Fearless Men” (1981). In this case, the relationships of interest are between humans and insects. Posey’s work utilizes a lens of ethnoentomology, exploring the relationships that the Kayapó people of central Brazil have with local insects and how these relationships shape their perception of themselves as human. Posey documents how Kayapó warriors deliberately provoke a local species of wasp to sting them, using the “secret” of the venom to become more powerful:

The warriors dance at the foot of the scaffolding and sing of the secret strength they received from the wasps to defeat the giant beetle. The women wail ceremonially in high-pitched, emotional gasps as the warriors, two-by-two, ascend the platform to strike with their bare hands the massive hive. Over and over again they strike the hive to receive the stings of the wasps until they are semi-conscious from the venomous pain.

This ceremony is one of the most important to the Kayapo: it is a re-affirmation of their humanity, a statement of their place in the universe, and a communion with the past. (172)