CRASSH, University of Cambridge27-28 September 2016
Summary
The trap is… both a model of its creator, the hunter, and a model of its
victim, the prey animal… traps communicate the idea of a nexus of
intentionalities between hunters and prey animals, via material forms and
mechanisms.
Alfred Gell 1999: 202-3
In this conference participants from all science, arts and humanities
backgrounds are invited to expand their usual horizons of analysis to
consider hunting traps alongside non-lethal devices used in conservation
and zoological science, animal husbandry, sport and cinematography among
other, as yet unimagined, contexts.
Call for Papers
The aim of the conference is to unite scholars from diverse disciplinary
backgrounds who have conceptual or practical experience with traps or
allied technologies that mediate between humans and animals. Case studies
may be from historical, ethnographic, literary, experimental science or
policy contexts. Scholars from all disciplines are invited to contribute.
The convener is looking to generate a cross-disciplinary engagement by
juxtaposing papers from humanistic and scientific perspectives.
Please send a brief biography and an abstract of no more than 500 words to
Chloe Nahum-Claudel ([log in to unmask]) by *22 July 2016*.
Further Information
Entrapment is a privileged way into a nexus between human-animal relations
and technology. There are many contexts in which an efficacious
relationship between human and animal depends on a fusion of knowledge of
animal behavior and technological innovation or skill. Conservation
practitioners have to locate, lure or trap an animal in order to collar,
manipulate, measure and sample it. At sites of human-animal conflict,
species relations are being urgently reconfigured through the deployment of
novel technologies like bugs, radio collars and camera-traps.
Hunting technologies have long been avidly documented in anthropology,
archaeology and material culture studies. The best works are holistic and
treat entrapment as a simultaneously cosmological, technological and
sociological phenomena. A number of themes recur in these works: the
concretisation of human-animal relations in a trap’s form; conceptions of
efficacy and risk at the scene of capture; the potent fertilizing capacity
of entrapment; and the practices of mimicry and concealment which
propitiate the trap, including masking, linguistic constraints, and
affective and moral imperatives.
Building on this small but rich vein of anthropological scholarship, the
conference seeks to foster an experimental cross-disciplinary conversation
about the ways traps and allied technologies serve as the medium for
humans’ conceptual and practical engagement with other species.
For more information regarding the conference please contact Chloe
Nahum-Claudel.
Sponsors
Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences (CRASSH), Pembroke College, and the Cambridge University Division
of Social Anthropology.
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