Humans and Other Species

Abstract

Studies of more-than-human sociality in general, and multispecies ethnography in particular, are becoming an increasingly popular trend in global (social, human, and transdisciplinary) scholarship. In the current forum, researchers from various disciplines discuss the advantages, limitations, and challenges of this trend. They also share their thoughts on why multispecies research has (or has not) an appeal in Russian academia and what the future may hold for it. The discussion addresses the key issues of the origin of this trend and its distinctive vocabulary; the subject and object problem; the search for an appropriate methodology and elaborating a scholarly narrative; interdisciplinarity and the relationship between political activism and research.

The original Russian publication also included contributions from Varvara Baholdina, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Ian Helfant, Colgate University; Stepan Kalinin, International Slavic Institute, Moscow, Russia; Frédéric Keck, Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, CNRS / Collège de France / École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, France; Olga Korovkina, independent researcher, Moscow, Russia; Vladimir Korshunkov, Vyatka State University, Kirov, Russia; Olga Kosheleva, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Ekaterina (Katya) Krylova, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; Irina Podgorny, CONICET / Archivo Historico del Museo de La Plata UNLP, La Plata, Argentina; Denis Sivkov, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russia, and The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka), Moscow, Russia; Sergei Sokolovskiy, Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Anna Varfolomeeva, Independent researcher, Oulu, Finland; Grigorij Vinokurov, European University at St Petersburg, St Petersburg, Russia, and Higher School of Economics University, St Petersburg, Russia.