Naturecultures? Science, Affect and the Non-human

TLDR

The authors highlight the constructed discontinuity between humans and non‑humans and the knowledge and socialities it sustains, such as nature‑culture and subject‑object polarities. The collection seeks to shift focus from measurable outcomes to the affective dimension of human/non‑human relations, presenting perspectives that view these relations as mutually affective rather than merely divided or asymmetrical. The collection examines human/non‑human relations across domains such as history, animal welfare science, environmental impacts, and everyday science practices involving animals like horses, meerkats, mice, and wolves. The collection contributes new epistemologies and ontologies that undercut conventional dichotomies in science, and its focus on affect drives a radical shift in the epistemology and philosophy of science.

Abstract

Rather than focus on effects, the isolatable and measureable outcomes of events and interventions, the papers assembled here offer different perspectives on the affective dimension of the meaning and politics of human/non-human relations. The authors begin by drawing attention to the constructed discontinuity between humans and non-humans, and to the kinds of knowledge and socialities that this discontinuity sustains, including those underpinned by nature-culture, subject-object, body-mind, individual-society polarities. The articles presented track human/non-human relations through different domains, including: humans/non-humans in history and animal welfare science (Fudge and Buller); the relationship between the way we live, the effects on our natural environment and contested knowledges about ‘nature’ (Whatmore); choreographies of everyday life and everyday science practices with non-human animals such as horses, meerkats, mice, and wolves (Latimer, Candea, Davies, Despret). Each paper also goes on to offer different perspectives on the human/non-human not just as division, or even as an asymmetrical relation, but as relations that are mutually affective, however invisible and inexpressible in the domain of science. Thus the collection contributes to new epistemologies/ontologies that undercut the usual ordering of relations and their dichotomies, particularly in that dominant domain of contemporary culture that we call science. Indeed, in their impetus to capture ‘affect’, the collection goes beyond the usual turn towards a more inclusive ontology, and contributes to the radical shift in the epistemology and philosophy of science’s terms of engagement.