More-Than-Human Agency and Domestication Regimes.

Abstract

Narratives of biodiversity management and domestication processes are still fraught with an anthropocentric hubris, manifested in stories of human control and domination over landscapes and nonhuman beings. Similarly, these have been framed in apolitical, atemporal, and otherwise nonexistent realities. This chapter aims to present an investigation of animal and plant domestication processes in relation to the notion of more-than-human agency (MTH agency), the politics of interspecies relations and human knowledges, and their assemblage by different economic and political orientations. Here, this interdisciplinary analysis is called a political ethnoecology of animal and plant domestication, and it consists of an interpretation of three frameworks (i.e., the nature regimes, food regimes, and subtle ecologies of landscape and resource management frameworks), which, together with a consideration of indigenous and posthuman thought, have allowed us to propose the heuristics we call domestication regimes. The purpose of this discussion is to contribute to abate orthodox accounts of human–environment relations, hence improving: (a) the understanding of husbandry practices as politically and ethically imbued modes of interspecies engagement; (b) the understanding of the Anthropos’ diversity itself with respect to the ways humans have historically related to nature; and (c) the knowledge of the biological, ecological, and cultural phenomena involved in such accounts.