Knowing humans, knowing bears – towards multispecies methodologies in researching human-wildlife interactions

Abstract (English)

Multispecies ethnography or the post-human turn have aimed to promote more-than-human perspectives and attribute equal importance to all forms of (animate) life. However, to be able to include non-human animals within a multispecies framework, we also face the challenges of symmetrically researching and representing human-non-human relations (Haraway, 2008). As Colombino and Bruckner claim, in order to attend to the animal in human-animal relations, “we need to adopt, adapt and deploy frameworks that enable our methods to focus on the experiences of animals” (2023: 14) in addition to the experiences of humans. The presentation engages with these questions, examining a case of anthropological-ecological collaboration of a detailed investigation of human-bear entanglements in the commons around the village of Yagodina (Rodopi Mountains). Such combination of ethnographic research methodology, perspectivist tracking and camera trapping, offers an opportunity to overcome the methodological challenge of ‘getting at’ nonhuman experiences of human-animal relations (Gibbs, 2020), and to leave the researcher better placed to analyze the interactions, significance and meanings of various human and non-human knowledge involved in the process.