Animating the Wild Pig: Bows and Arrows in European Ecopolitics

Research Project: Bewildering Boar

Contact: anibal.arregui@cefres.cz

His thematic focus is on Amazonian ethnology and the bodily responses to environmental, technological and economic transformations. Anibal has since 2006 conducted fieldwork in the lower Amazon region in ribeirinho and quilombola communities. In the frame of the “Bewildering Boar” project, he is currently opening a second field in Spain, where he follows the ongoing reconfigurations of “urban” wild boars- humans relationality.

Project “Editorial Boar: Animal Amendments on Barcelona Peri-Urban Relationality”

In this project I first follow, on an institutional and media level, the unfolding ecopolitical controversies  around urban wild boars proliferation in the periphery Barcelona (with clear resonances in other big European cities). In parallel, I conduct an ethnography of human- wild boars direct interactions, looking at how nonhumans not only share environments with humans but also smartly use human-made infrastructures (water reservoirs, trash cans, parks, etc.). While the macro level is revealing the ethical and ecopolitical complexities of ‘controling’ this recalcitrant part of ‘nature’, the  ethnographic perspective is showing that wild boars themselves, as editors with their own and inevitable prospects, suggest some ‘amendements’ to usual forms of relating in and to the peri-urban environment. The question remains of whether urban wild-boars ‘editorial remarks’ could help to likewise rephrase urban relationality, in general, by highlighting the need of a different management of Barcelona limited urban space and natural resources.

CV

Education

2013: PhD in Social Anthropology (University of Barcelona)
2008: Master of Advanced Studies in Anthropology (UB)
2006: Degree in Anthropology (UB)
2005: Degree in Psychology (UB)

Fieldwork

06-07/ 2016: Quilombola communities, Erepecurú river (Pará, Brazil)
01-08/ 2009: Quilombola communities in Erpecurú and Trombetas rivers (Pará, Brazil) and ribeirinho communities in the Zé Açú lake (Amazonas, Brazil)
09/2006- 02/2007: Quilombola communities in the Erepecurú river (Pará, Brazil) and Itaparica island (Bahía, Brazil).

Third party funded projects

2013-2015: University of Rostock Agentive Environments: from Amazonian to High-Tech Societies (DFG- funded research project)
2008-2011: University of Barcelona La Selva Tecnológica: Sistemas Sociotécnicos y Antropología Simétrica en Comunidades Ribereñas del Bajo Amazonas (FI-AGAUR-Generalitat de Catalunya predoctoral contract for research and teaching)
2006-2007: University of Barcelona and Roca Sanitario S.A. La Tecnología en el Cuerpo: Biomecánica de los Quilombolas en dos Selvas Brasileñas (Sponsor, in cooperation with U Barcelona: Roca Sanitario S.A)

Publications

Books

• In preparation : Corporeal Amazonia. Essays on socio-climatic futurism
• 2018 (ed.) Decolonial Heritage: Natures, Cultures and the Asymmetries of Memory. Münster: Waxmann. (with Gesa Mackenthun and Stephanie Wodianka)
• 2013 La Selva Tecnológica: Sistemas Sociotécnicos y Antropología Simétrica en Comunidades Ribereñas del Bajo Amazonas. Barcelona: Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa (TDX)

Peer reviewed chapters and papers

• This Mess is a ‘World’! Environmental Diplomats in the Mud of Anthropology, in : The End of the World? Creating and Amerindian Cosmopolitics of  Climate Change. Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability. Rosalyn Bold (Ed). London: Palgrave Macmillan. (to appear in 2019)
• 2018) Ribeirinho Hunting Techno-Animism. On the Inexact Lines of Amazonian Modernity. In: South-American Indigenous Modernities. Ernst Halbmayer. (ed.) pp: 164-183. Herefordshire: Sean Kingston Publishing. (to appear in 2018)
• 2015  Amazonian Quilombolas and the Technopolitics of Aluminum. Journal of Material Culture. 20(3):149-172 https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183515578937
• 2014 ‘Teoría’, ‘Inteligencia’ y ‘Ciencia’ como Índices Bajo Amazónicos del Conocimiento Incorporado. Amazônica – Revista de Antropologia.6 (1): 90-108
• 2011 Too ‘High’ Tech: Metonymical Fallacies and Fetishism in the Perception of Technology”. Journal of Contemporary Anthropology2(1): 46-62
• 2008 La Tecnología en el Cuerpo: Biomecánica de los Quilombolas en dos Selvas Brasileñas . (Con)textos: Revista d’Antropologia i Investigació Social 1: 23-40

Not peer-reviewed publications

• 2018 Displaced Bodies, Imprinted worlds”. Video-essay (10 min) for Displacements. The 2018 Biennial Conference of the Society of Cultural Anthropology, 19-21 April 2018. Available at:
  https://displacements.jhu.edu/tradition-and-performance-displacements-of-the-present-in-latin-america/
• 2018 Introduction. In: Decolonial Heritage: Natures, Cultures and the Asymmetries of Memory.pp: 7-28. Münster: Waxmann. (with Gesa Mackenthun and Stephanie Wodianka)
• 2018 Cultivating the Sky. In: Decolonial Heritage: Natures, Cultures and the Asymmetries of Memory. pp: 257-273. Münster: Waxmann.
• 2012 Paz implícita y violencia imaginada en comunidades quilombolas del río Erepecurú. In: La paz dede abajo. Perspectivas antropológicas sobre la paz en contextos indígenas y afroamericanos. Canals, R; Celigueta, G; & Orobitg, G. (ed.). Pp. 39-43. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona
• 2014 Digging into the Smartness: A Short Technopolitical History of Vienna’s Urban Lakeside. Proceedings of the 19^th International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development in the Information Society. 21-23 May, Vienna, Austria. http://www.corp.at
• 2012 Book review: MARTÍNEZ MAURI, Mònica; LARREA KILLIGER, Cristina (2011) Antropología social, desarrollo y cooperación internacional. Introducción a los fundamentos básicos y debates actuales”. AIBR Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 7 (2), p. 248-253
• 2011 La Selva Parcelada: Reforma Agraria y Fragmentación Social en el Bajo Amazonas”. In: Horizontes do Brazil- Escenarios, Intercambios y Diversidad, Barcelona: Ediciones APEC, p. 389-403