Research group: Domestication

12.2.1 Introduction

The scientific goals of the Domestication research group are to explore the intersections between humans, animals and the material world with the aim of rethinking conventional narratives about domestication in light of recent ethnographic, archaeological and biological/genetic research, and to explore alternative models and narratives of relational practices that can sustain life in the Anthropocene.

12.2.2 Establishment and development

The topic of domestication was formally established as an ‘Anthropos and the Material’ research group in 2013. The research group has a dynamic leader, a senior figure, who has put together a productive group of researchers, including five members of the academic staff at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, four additional members from Aarhus University (Denmark) and the Department of Ethnography at the Cultural History Museum at the University of Oslo, and one emeritus professor from the Open University, UK (a grant was obtained from the Norwegian Centre of Advanced Studies for a one-year research visit).

12.2.3 Task and organisation

The Domestication research group is firmly situated in Anthropology, but it also works with historians, science studies scholars, biologists, archaeologists and artists.

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There is a good research environment with a compelling agenda. Standard descriptions of domestication emphasise utility, symbolic significance or control. (Such idioms are a corollary to the ideology of dominant forms of domestication, such as agriculture and industrial farming.) The group argues that these fail to capture relational practices that exceed these modes. Alternative models may provide a better understanding of interrelations between humans and other beings.

12.2.4 Organisation, leadership and strategy

There are five permanent members of the Domestication research group, four male and one female, who spend 20% to 50% of their time on the group.

The intensive international collaboration and clear focus of the programme have proven to be successful strategies, leading to high-quality research, as well as substantial external funding. This is a talented team, that is well qualified to conduct its studies. The team has developed innovative ways of presenting its perspectives and insights, including exhibitions and interactive debates.

12.2.5 Research personnel

The personnel are of high standing and are supplemented by two high-profile collaborators from the UK (male) and USA (female). One postdoc (female) and PhD candidates have been recruited through external funding.

The senior professors have excellent CVs, reflecting both high impact and productivity; their colleagues, both mid-career and early-career scholars, are also very good researchers.

The senior researchers have mentored the younger scholars well, through the intensive collaboration on the research programme, resulting in the latter’s career mobility. One researcher, for example, came from the University of California Santa Cruz, worked as a postdoc in the Oslo Domestication programme and then moved on to Aarhus University where she has been appointed as an assistant professor, in which capacity she still participates in the research programme.

12.2.6 Research production and scientific quality

Research has been produced in three main areas: 1. ‘Domestication, conservation and the nature-culture divide’; 2. ‘STS, interdisciplinary interfaces and science research stations as sites of knowing’;

3. ‘Indigenous practices, (post)—colonial landscapes and the Anthropocene’.

The most important group output is an edited book (from a workshop funded by ‘Anthropos and the Material’ in November 2014) entitled DeCentreing Domestication; Stories from the Margins, which is now being considered by Duke UP.

In addition, Traces of the Future combined archival research and art photography with scientific reflections in a new way to challenge notions of historicity and temporality, and to rethink Colonial African research stations.

Moreover, an interdisciplinary conference on salmon, ‘Can we live together?’ (Kan vi leve sammen?), brought together salmon biologists and bureaucrats across the ‘wild salmon’/’farmed salmon’ divide and created a neutral arena for dialogue (on how salmon might be seen to ‘speak’ through the material and conceptual tools through which they are humanly represented).

Two project proposals will be resubmitted in 2017, to SAMKUL RCN and to TOPPFORSK RCN.

In short, the scientific quality of this programme is excellent, and the productivity impressive. The team has published in high-impact anthropological presses and journals, as well as in specialised interdisciplinary journals, reflecting the success of the programme.

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12.2.7 Networking

Strong links have been established with the University of Santa Cruz, California (Centre for Advanced Study). Research funds flow from this, as well as a relatively small grant from SAI and external funding from the RCN. In addition, the group has collaborated with UC Davis, the Open University, and the University of Aarhus. Networking is clearly a beneficial strategy. One senior member of the group spent a sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for example. There, she collaborated with another senior figure in the discipline – now also with a position at Aarhus University – thus extending internationally the dialectic of ideas feeding into the theme of domestication and the group’s research programme.

12.2.8 Interplay between research and education

The insights from this research programme are integrated in two specialised master’s courses at SAI on the group’s research themes, one on ‘ANT and Anthropology interfaces’ and another on

‘Materiality’. The team has also supervised two PhD students.

12.2.9 Societal relevance and impact

The case study presented is SALMONTALK, about how Norwegian rivers and waterways can host (threatened) wild salmon and a thriving aquaculture industry at the same time. This remains a key challenge relating to salmon that policymakers and practitioners face in Norway today. However, scientists studying conservation and aquaculture, respectively, are attuned to different perspectives on salmon and they rarely engage with each other’s facts. The challenge calls for collaboration and therefore engagement across interdisciplinary as well as intra-disciplinary divides. The group therefore brought together key scholars in biology from both sides of the divide: a salmon farmer, and several representatives from NGOs (Greenpeace, WWF, Bellona), in addition to staff from the various government institutions. The argument of the case study is that salmon are ‘multiple’ and span any simple distinction between nature/culture. The meeting facilitated dialogue and overcame, to some extent, feelings of mistrust.

In short, this research programme has helped to mediate controversies around salmon production: a remarkable feat, given that anthropologists and STS scholars tend to comment from the sidelines on policy debates on environmental concerns. The reframing of the issues at stake has been productive in that several participants at the conference commented that the team had managed to create

‘neutral’ ground for debate.

In addition, the exhibit ‘Ny-Arktis’, a temporary exhibition at the Museum of Cultural History in spring 2016, explicitly sought to challenge the conventional understanding of the Arctic as barren and remote, and to encourage reflection on colonial aspects of Arctic heritage, as well as curiosity about Arctic ways of knowing and engaging with landscapes and animals.

12.2.10 Overall assessment

The Domestication research group has been at the forefront of the turn in Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies towards ethnographical studies and theorising on ‘other than human’

relational practices, rethinking nature-culture binaries.

Overall, this is a very balanced and viable research programme, and successful research group. The group demonstrates clear purpose and results. Especially commendable is the collaboration that has been successfully achieved between professionals and students, and across institutional and national boundaries.

Assessment of research group: 5 – excellent

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12.2.11 Feedback

• The impact case study and the exhibition might be further followed up and explored: can Anthropology really impact upon a ‘national consciousness’? This is a prospect worth exploring in more detail.

• The way that the research group combines academic excellence with societal impact might be shared with other groups in Norway as best practice: societal impact that goes beyond mere dissemination.

• Undergraduate teaching in this area might also be profitably undertaken.