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    Elephants as Persons, Affective Apprenticeship, and Fieldwork with Nonhuman Informants in Nepal (2017)

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    Type of Content
    Journal Article
    UC Permalink
    http://hdl.handle.net/10092/13810
    
    Publisher's DOI/URI
    https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.024
    
    ISSN
    2049-1115
    Language
    English
    Collections
    • Arts: Journal Articles [310]
    Authors
    Locke PEG
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    Abstract

    In this account of interspecies intimacy in the enclaved institution of the Nepali elephant stable, I explore not-just-human figurations of personhood and argue for the methodological inclusion of nonhuman informants as subjective actors and contributing participants in ethnographic research. I explain how my experience forming a trusting, working relationship with a female elephant in a hybrid community of humans and elephants revealed the conceptual limitations of a human-focused tradition of ethnography ill-equipped for the generative sociality of interspecies encounters. I discuss questions of nonhuman personhood and I consider developments in the animal behavioral sciences, while also investigating the cultural logic by which Nepali mahouts attribute personhood to their elephants. This exploration of apprenticeship, personhood, and affective encounter is situated in a distinctly interspecies strand of multispecies studies, and is a contribution to ethnoelephantology as an interdisciplinary approach to the social, historical, and ecological relations between humans and elephants.

    Citation
    Locke PEG (2017). Elephants as Persons, Affective Apprenticeship, and Fieldwork with Nonhuman Informants in Nepal. HAU : Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 7(1). 353-376.
    This citation is automatically generated and may be unreliable. Use as a guide only.
    Keywords
    apprenticeship learning; human-elephant relations; nonhuman personhood; multispecies studies; ethnoelephantology; mahouts; Nepal
    ANZSRC Fields of Research
    44 - Human society::4410 - Sociology::441002 - Environmental sociology
    50 - Philosophy and religious studies::5001 - Applied ethics::500101 - Bioethics
    Rights
    This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Piers Locke. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.024

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