Introduction. The Interweaving of Vital and Technical Processes in Oceania

Abstract

Among the diversity of theoretical options applied to study life from an anthropological standpoint, we suggest that it is relevant to use the concepts and methods of the anthropology of technique. In addition to the issue of the relation between living beings – that works on animism or multispecies ethnography aptly tackle – we suggest investigating life as a process of production and the many kinds of interweaving of vital and technical processes. The aim of this dossier is, then, to propose some examples of the insights that this global framework – dealing with life as animation and as fabrication – can bring for the analysis of Pacific ethnographical materials.