On Interspecies War and African Technologies

Thanks to colleague Clapperton Mavhunga for briefly addressing the challenges to us in even conceptualizing what he terms an 'interspecies war' between humanity and other life forms, playing out at this time on African terrains.

Journalist Kate Brooks does not mince words about why "war" is the right word to use.
see a rough cut of footage from kenya here.

What are the stakes involved in using such words? The question reminds me of a project from several years back, a book on Elephants and Ethics, edited by Wemmer and Christen. It seems prescient, given the current levels of elephant poaching in remaining wild populations:  Barnes and Noble has a nice writeup here

What does interspecies conflict studies look like? Melissa Remis and I visited anthropologist Cat Bolton a few months ago at Notre Dame to present an early version of our efforts at accounting for the ecological costs of current conflict in Central African Republic. While there, she spoke to us of her growing interest in chimp sanctuaries in west Africa. The animal turn in anthropology is moving beyond those interested in emergent phenomena, cognitive and cultural ecology approaches, or science studies. We are starting to see streams of historical, ethnographic and political economic work interspecies interaction. Bravo!

Of course, work on conflict between animals and humans must unfold alongside that chronicling their relationships of intimacy or companionship. When I visited Jamie Lorimer a couple of years ago at King's College in London (he is now at Oxford), he shared a fantastic piece he had writtenon elephants as companion species (you can read the abstract here). For the Elephants and Ethics article, I recall arguing that solidarity among those who share substantial time and energy with these animals would be required to save them; this would connect handlers, hunters, ecologists and others in communities that see high value in remaining populations of these animals outside private hands (material from that chapter can be seen here).

Alas, too much of my time is still spent trying to build better bridges across the divides between academic circles and field conservationists, between social and veterinary or ecological expertise...these battles are far from won. Meanwhile, the more important ones proceed, transforming the world we live in, while we try to get better at working together.

Clapperton's campus, MIT, is hosting a huge Africa Innovate conference in April, looking at technology and entrepreneurship on that continent. Their keynote speakers have successful mining portfolios, e-book companies, and supermarket chains. It is sponsored by Chevron and Coca Cola, among others. I hope that among the tech talk, guns are not forgotten as a technology around which Africa's wealthiest and most innovative minds must do some good work, and fast.