Picture by Léa Lacan, southwestern Zambia, March 2023.
The article “The Assemblage: A Framework for Anthropological Research in Multispecies Studies” by Léa Lacan, Paula Alexiou, Julia Brekl, Emilie Köhler, Wisse Van Engelen, Hauke-Peter Vehrs, and Michael Bollig was just published in Sociologus, Journal for Social Anthropology.
The article examines the concept of “assemblage” in anthropological research on multispecies relations. The contribution begins by situating “the multispecies assemblage” within the theoretical legacy of Deleuze and
Guattari. Then, it delves into three case studies of multispecies research in southern Africa, first to highlight their use of the assemblage as an analytical framework, and second to discuss methodological implications.
Overall, we argue that the assemblage concept provides an open-ended analytical and methodological framework in terms of spaces, actors and times. These three trajectories take multispecies research to be multi-sited rather than site-bound, to encompass a heterogeneity of actors, and to trace linkages between actors historically.
