The 9th Southeast Asian Studies for Sustainable Humanosphere (SEA-SH) Research Seminar: “Disconcerting Primates: from Anthropological Theory to Area Studies”

Date： April 23th, 2013
Venue：Tonan-tei (Room No. 201), CSEAS, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Speaker: Vincent Leblan

Abstract

In establishing ‘humanity’ as its field of investigation, anthropology has predominantly focused on animals as elements of social meaning within political institutions, susbsistence production systems, rituals, and so forth. Yet, a consequence of confining animals to human societies’ environment and material culture has been to exclude the social, cognitive, and even ‘cultural’ animal which interacts with humans.

In the first half of this presentation, I will review how the ambition of a primate ethnography is presently called for in primatology, a project that remains at the margins of anthropology. Primatology’s approach is very close to that of American (USA) cultural anthropologists’ in the 1920s and 1930s at a time when they were drawing the boundaries of their discipline, sometimes by commenting on studies in anthropoid psychology. This will provide evidence that the relegation of apes’ disconcerting behavior on anthropology’s periphery is a part of the foundation of the discipline. It will also enable us to map at least a portion of the rift separating contemporary approaches to culture in primatology and anthropology.

In the second half of the presentation, I will deal with a case study of human/ chimpanzee coexistence in Tristao Islands (Guinea/Guinea-Bissau). In this locale, chimpanzees exhibit a behavioural peculiarity that consists of building the majority of their nests in palm trees, which negatively impacts on their fruit productivity according to the inhabitants. The chimpanzee, which is one of the most prominent elements of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, is thus locally perceived as threateaning livelihoods rather than as a heritage to be preserved.

Bio

Vincent Leblan is currently a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Kyoto University’s Centre for African Area Studies. He earned his PhD at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France. He aims at integrating ethnology, field primatology and environmental history in a common analytical framework of human/nonhuman primate relationships, with field research in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. His research links the anthropology of nature, primate ecology and traditions, landscape dynamics analyzed through various socio-cultural lenses, human and animal territories, and the study of north-south conservation politics.