Animals and Science: From Colonial Encounters to the Biotech Industry

What exactly does a focus on animals bring to anthropological studies of science? This is a question that the various contributors to this edited collection set out to answer. This range of studies explores the intersections between animals and science across different ethnographic settings and in different historical periods. The contributions to this volume look at what it means to be human, the place of human beings vis à vis other species on this planet, our ideas of what nature and culture are, the limits to our ideas of kinship, the ethical debates that surround science, together with their interpretation by both scientific communities and the lay public, and the moral comportment of scientists. Through focusing on science, our contributors not only demonstrate that people elsewhere have different relationships with, and knowledge of, beasts (and that different possibilities of relating to animals exist within our own Western worldview), but further suggest that our Western knowledge about animals and their positions in society, arrived at through Western science and the social sciences, is itself in need of rethinking—to incorporate other ways of knowing. This volume contends that accounts in which animals meet science provide important theoretical insights for anthropologists and can set new agendas for theory in anthropology and science studies.

Maggie Bolton came to anthropology after having studied physics and worked as an engineer. Her interests include the Andean region, science, colonialism and animal-human relations. She is based at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and has published in journals such as the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and The Sociological Review. Her current research includes a project on adult education and citizenship in Bolivia, and she is also working on a monograph on llama herding and agricultural development. Cathrine Degnen is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Newcastle University, UK. One of her primary research interests is how people grapple with social change in their everyday lives. This has led her to work on topics such as ageing and the self, memory and place, and food and genetic technologies. She is currently writing a monograph, Years in the Making: Ageing Selves and Everyday Life in the North of England for Manchester University Press, and also has a number of other publications, including articles in The Sociological Review and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.