Interspecies Intersections: Ethnoprimatology and Ethnoelephantology

Animals play an integral role in the story of human civilization, and there is a long history in Anthropology of thinking about intersections between humans and other animals, particularly as objects that are good to eat, good to use, and good to think with. However, approaches are now emerging which acknowledge the subjective agency of other animals, and which reconsider the ways in which our social, historical, and ecological relations are bound up with theirs. Here I introduce two related subfields that explore how the lives and landscapes of humans and other social mammals are entangled; ethnoprimatology and ethnoelephantology. I discuss each subfield as integrated research programmes that challenge the dualist ontologies of modernist thought through posthumanist philosophy and biocultural research, and which combine methodological perspectives from the social and natural sciences. I also indicate the significance of these approaches to interspecies intersections for issues of welfare, conservation, conflict, and coexistence