Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds

Socio-environmental crises are currently transforming the conditions for life on this planet, from climate change, to resource depletion, biodiversity loss and long-term pollutants. The vast scale of these changes, affecting land, sea and air have prompted calls for the ‘ecologicalisation’ of knowledge. This book adopts a much needed ‘more-than-human’ framework to grasp these complexities and challenges. It contains multidisciplinary insights and diverse methodological approaches to question how to revise, reshape and invent methods in order to work with non-humans in participatory ways. The book offers a framework for thinking critically about the promises and potentialities of participation from within a more-than-human paradigm, and opens up trajectories for its future development. It will be of interest to those working in the environmental humanities, animal studies, science and technology studies, ecology, and anthropology.

Introduction: More-than-human participatory research: contexts, challenges, possibilities Michelle Bastian, Owain Jones, Niamh Moore, Emma Roe Part 1: Experiments in more-than-human participatory research 1.Towards a more-than-human participatory research Michelle Bastian 2. Marginalised voices: zoömusicology through a participatory lens Hollis Taylor 3. ‘Animal-computer interaction: a manifesto’ (2011) and sections from ‘Towards an animal-centred ethics for Animal–Computer Interaction’ (2016) Clara Mancini 4. Transformations of time on ecological pilgrimage Peter Reason Part 2: Building (tentative) affinities 5. How we nose Timothy Hodgetts and Hester 6. An apprenticeship in plant thinking Hannah Pitt 7. Imagination and empathy – Eden3: Plein Air Reiko Goto Collins and Timothy Martin Collins 8. Empowerment as skill: the role of affect in building new subjectivities Anna Krzywoszynska 9. Shadows, undercurrents and the Aliveness Machines Jon Pigott and Antony Lyons Part 3: Cautions 10. Laboratory beagles and affective co-productions of knowledge Eva Giraud and Gregory Hollin 11. Rethinking ethnobotany? a methodological reflection on human-plant research Jennifer Atchison and Lesley Head 12. Con-versing: listening, speaking, turning Deirdre Heddon

Michelle Bastian is a Chancellor’s Fellow in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Owain Jones is Professor of Environmental Humanities, School of Humanities and Cultural Industries, University of Bath Spa, UK. Niamh Moore is a Chancellor’s Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Emma Roe is Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Southampton, UK.