Environments by design in the circumpolar North

1. 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.

2. A story about a muskrat hat

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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)

6. 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

7. Environmental Design in the North • The anthropology of the Gift

8. 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

9. Muskox translocations during the Cold War

10. Woolly Mammoth Restoration

11. Woolly Mammoth Restoration:Pleistocene Park Sergei AfanasevichZimov

12. Environmental Design and a Techno- biological Imaginary • The machine-organism analogy and what is “lost in translation”

13. Environmental Design and a Techno- biological Imaginary • The machine-organism analogy and what is “lost in translation” • Designer environments • Expert policed ecological balances • Niches – full and empty • Forage and appetites

14. Environmental Design and a Techno- biological 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

15. 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

16. 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”

17. 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

18. 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

19. Conclusion: Environments of Design in the North«beyond resistance» Teaching a 4 year bull to know the saddle - Amudisy

20. Conclusion: Environments of Design in the North«back to the gift» arcticdomus.org