WIRE: Fluid Realities of the Wild

This research aims to revise our understanding of human-animal relations: we will study the diversity of ways in which people perceive the domesticity, wildness, hybridity and ferality of northern animals, which are fundamental to local cultures in our case sites in Finland and Russia.

The project team will re-think human-animal sustainability through ethnographic documentation (anthropology), analysis of past human-animal partnerships (history), gene expressions (genetics), and comparative analysis of norms (law).

Perspectivist approaches will be used for showing that the reality of 'what is an animal' is not static but depends on the standpoint. With participatory research, we shall integrate these perspectives to contribute to theoretical renewal in the field of human-animal sustainability, advance perspectivism as a theoretical direction in interdisciplinary research, and raise awareness in society of the diversity of understandings of domestic and wild animals in our environment.