We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between ve... more We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary ...
Cet article interroge la capacité des experts de la grippe aviaire à prédire des pandémies de gri... more Cet article interroge la capacité des experts de la grippe aviaire à prédire des pandémies de grippe à partir des mutations virales qu’ils observent chez les oiseaux. Plutôt qu’au vocabulaire du mythe ou de la prophétie, il recourt à l’anthropologie de la divination, dans la suite des analyses de Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, pour comprendre comment les mutations des virus chez les oiseaux sont perçues comme des signes des maladies catastrophiques qui peuvent affecter les humains. L’anticipation des pandémies ne repose pas sur un calcul des probabilités, comme dans la gestion des risques pour les questions de santé publique, mais sur l’imagination d’un événement catastrophique à partir de signaux d’alerte précoces. Dans le langage de l’immunologie, les sentinelles sont les outils qui permettent de percevoir ces signaux d’alerte avant que l’organisme ne réagisse de manière catastrophique. La préparation aux pandémies de grippe constitue un imaginaire moral permettant de donner sens aux signaux ...
Résumé Lucien Lévy-Bruhl effectue un voyage autour du monde en 1920 qui le conduit à prendre part... more Résumé Lucien Lévy-Bruhl effectue un voyage autour du monde en 1920 qui le conduit à prendre part aux controverses coloniales sur la vaccination aux Philippines. Cet article interroge la signification d’une telle controverse dans le cadre d’une anthropologie positiviste qui prétend totaliser les modes de penser « primitifs » et « civilisé » pour un sociologue typique. En mobilisant les figures de Jules Verne et d’Alfred Dreyfus, il montre que le tour du monde social peut être effectué à partir des accidents qui en interrompent son accomplissement. Le projet philosophique d’une « logique des sentiments » qui a motivé l’anthropologie française depuis Auguste Comte peut alors être reformulé à partir d’une enquête sur les sentinelles qui anticipent les accidents à partir d’une expérience passée. Un tel projet permet de suivre les significations de l’Affaire Dreyfus jusqu’à l’anthropologie de Claude Lévi-Strauss.
We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting
collaboration between ve... more We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary anthropology can therefore be defined as an anthropology of veterinarians and with veterinarians.
In recent years anthropologists have shown an increasing interest in 'zoonoses': diseases natural... more In recent years anthropologists have shown an increasing interest in 'zoonoses': diseases naturally transmitted from nonhuman animals to humans, such as anthrax, brucellosis, influenza, hantavirus syndromes, Middle East respiratory syndrome, plague, and rabies. Animal-derived epidemic crises such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) (1996), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (2003), swine flu (2009), and Ebola (2014) outbreaks have further fuelled research and debate around this type of infectious disease. In this flourishing ethnographic trajectory, zoonotic diseases and outbreaks have been approached by a wide array of analytical perspectives. Positioned and enriched by concurrent developments in biosecurity studies, critical animal studies, and debates around the notion of the Anthropocene, anthropological research has focused on discourses and practices relating to human-animal relations as sites of medical, epidemiological and public health problematisation, intervention, and contestation. Breaking new ground in this research trail, this special issue aims to foster anthropological debate by focusing on the animal-human link that forms the aetiological site of zoonotic infection. The articles in this issue provide robust ethnographic and historical-anthropological studies of human-animal relations, as both revealed and transformed by the medical focus on zoonosis. We thus aim to bring medical anthropology together with animal studies in ways that highlight the contribution of anthropology to interdisciplinary research on zoonoses and the impact of this research on contemporary practices of global health.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2018
This article describes relations between humans, animals, artefacts, and pathogens in simulations... more This article describes relations between humans, animals, artefacts, and pathogens in simulations of disasters, taking bird diseases in three Chinese sentinel posts as ethnographic cases. Drawing on distinctions between simulation, ritual, and play, it shows that the engagement of actors in the imaginary of simulations, which they describe as 'realism', reflectively reverses the oppositions between humans and nonhumans, active and passive, fiction and reality that shape ordinary life. Borrowing from the anthropology of hunting societies, it argues that simulations of bird diseases, considered as signs of future species extinction, rely on cynegetic techniques of power, in which humans and animals symmetrically shift perspectives, and not only on pastoralist techniques, in which humans are above the population they monitor and sometimes sacrifice. Introduction: techniques of preparedness and human/animal relationships In the last twenty years, techniques of simulation have multiplied in the world of disaster management (Revet 2013). The stated objective of these exercises is to 'rehearse' a disaster situation in order to better prepare for it (Armstrong 2012). Actors in a simulation treat the expected disaster as if it had happened in order to immerse themselves in the reality it should produce (Seligman, Weller, Puett & Simon 2008). As such, simulations offer opportunities for social anthropology to combine science and technology studies with the ethnography of rituals. Enacting the imaginary of coming catastrophes, simulation creates an extraordinary setting for performances separated from ordinary life. Two kinds of simulation can be distinguished: desktop (or table-top) exercises, relying on computer programs and occurring indoors, and real-ground (or full-scale) drills, involving actors in an outdoor setting. Both techniques use worst-case scenarios, written by disaster-management professionals trained in fiction writing. If simulation is a regular activity for scientists working on computers, it also shapes the stage of extraordinary performances for ordinary citizens involved in drills (Sismondo 1999). However, the distinction between these two forms of simulation is not between reality and fiction, since those who write scenarios for these two kinds of simulation constantly play on the shift between virtual and actual. They rely on the memory of previous catastrophes and the anticipation of future disasters to inform a realistic engagement in the present of the simulation. If scenarios are considered as shared forms or schemes
Histoire de la civilisation ou science des mentalités Continuité et discontinuité dans le positiv... more Histoire de la civilisation ou science des mentalités Continuité et discontinuité dans le positivisme Dans les premières pages de L'archéologie du savoir (1969), Michel Foucault oppose deux types d'histoire : la nouvelle histoire des longues périodes, qui multiplie les niveaux d'analyse " de la mobilité politique aux lenteurs propres à la "civilisation matérielle" ", et l'ancienne histoire des idées, qui cherche " les grandes continuités de la pensée, les manifestations massives et homogènes d'un esprit ou d'une mentalité collective " 1 . Foucault reprend à son compte la notion de civilisation matérielle -à laquelle Braudel a donné un sens particulier en définissant par là l'ensemble des techniques qui transforment les sociétés à l'échelle de la longue durée 2 -contre la notion de mentalité, qui a donné son heure de gloire au courant d' " histoire des mentalités " fondé par Febvre et Bloch. À travers ce texte, Foucault est luimême est en train de passer d'une archéologie du savoir proche de l'histoire des mentalités -qui privilégie l'étude de blocs de pensée homogènes et fermés sur eux mêmes, selon le modèle des épistémés dans Les mots et les choses -à une généalogie des dispositifs de pouvoir qui façonnent les individus de façon matérielle, et visent à les rendre plus " civils ", polis et disciplinés -selon le modèle de la prison dans Surveiller et punir.
On compare ici l'usage des bases de données par des virologues et des observateurs d'oiseaux dans... more On compare ici l'usage des bases de données par des virologues et des observateurs d'oiseaux dans le contexte de la mobilisation contre la grippe aviaire à Hong Kong. Echappant au cadre étatique de centralisation du savoir, ces groupes ont participé à la constitution d'une « sentinelle », qui rend visibles les mutations des virus de grippe dans le réservoir animal. On étudie en particulier la tension entre les données codées et les images dans la communication de ce savoir, pour montrer que la base de données opère un décalage dans la production de savoir.
This article discusses Paul Rabinow's notion of 'form/event' in the light of the current manageme... more This article discusses Paul Rabinow's notion of 'form/event' in the light of the current management of Avian Influenza in Hong Kong. While this notion allows the study of how life sciences produce events by turning scarcity of material into abundance of information, Paul Rabinow applied it to the scene of biotechnologies where values about life are suspended in what he calls purgatory. I suggest that, for the anticipation of epidemics from the animal reservoir, the form/event is not a suspension of values but a communication by signs in what I call, following Hong Kong microbiologists, a sentinel. Moving from purgatory to sentinel in the field of biosecurity opens a plurality of scales at which events happen, and transforms the model of subjectivity, from pastoral care to hunting relationships. This theoretical shift sheds light on the ethnography of Avian Flu in Hong Kong, where birdwatchers have allied with microbiologists to practise animal surveillance.
This article compares the treatment of living beings (unvaccinated chickens and infected cells) c... more This article compares the treatment of living beings (unvaccinated chickens and infected cells) considered as sentinel devices in a farm and in a lab in Hong Kong. Sentinel devices are defined as living beings posted on a boundary from which they send signals of invisible threats. The ethnography looks at how they transform differences between ordinary lives and lives exposed, between good death and bad death, through the practices of those who feed them. In farms and labs exposed to Avian Influenza viruses, the logic of biosecurity intersects with a logic of care, blurring the distinction between self and other, friend and enemy through aesthetic judgments concerning what is a 'good death'. Metabolism and immunity are redefined when sentinels are fed to produce clear signals of the mutations of viruses.
We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between ve... more We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary ...
Cet article interroge la capacité des experts de la grippe aviaire à prédire des pandémies de gri... more Cet article interroge la capacité des experts de la grippe aviaire à prédire des pandémies de grippe à partir des mutations virales qu’ils observent chez les oiseaux. Plutôt qu’au vocabulaire du mythe ou de la prophétie, il recourt à l’anthropologie de la divination, dans la suite des analyses de Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, pour comprendre comment les mutations des virus chez les oiseaux sont perçues comme des signes des maladies catastrophiques qui peuvent affecter les humains. L’anticipation des pandémies ne repose pas sur un calcul des probabilités, comme dans la gestion des risques pour les questions de santé publique, mais sur l’imagination d’un événement catastrophique à partir de signaux d’alerte précoces. Dans le langage de l’immunologie, les sentinelles sont les outils qui permettent de percevoir ces signaux d’alerte avant que l’organisme ne réagisse de manière catastrophique. La préparation aux pandémies de grippe constitue un imaginaire moral permettant de donner sens aux signaux ...
Résumé Lucien Lévy-Bruhl effectue un voyage autour du monde en 1920 qui le conduit à prendre part... more Résumé Lucien Lévy-Bruhl effectue un voyage autour du monde en 1920 qui le conduit à prendre part aux controverses coloniales sur la vaccination aux Philippines. Cet article interroge la signification d’une telle controverse dans le cadre d’une anthropologie positiviste qui prétend totaliser les modes de penser « primitifs » et « civilisé » pour un sociologue typique. En mobilisant les figures de Jules Verne et d’Alfred Dreyfus, il montre que le tour du monde social peut être effectué à partir des accidents qui en interrompent son accomplissement. Le projet philosophique d’une « logique des sentiments » qui a motivé l’anthropologie française depuis Auguste Comte peut alors être reformulé à partir d’une enquête sur les sentinelles qui anticipent les accidents à partir d’une expérience passée. Un tel projet permet de suivre les significations de l’Affaire Dreyfus jusqu’à l’anthropologie de Claude Lévi-Strauss.
We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting
collaboration between ve... more We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary anthropology can therefore be defined as an anthropology of veterinarians and with veterinarians.
In recent years anthropologists have shown an increasing interest in 'zoonoses': diseases natural... more In recent years anthropologists have shown an increasing interest in 'zoonoses': diseases naturally transmitted from nonhuman animals to humans, such as anthrax, brucellosis, influenza, hantavirus syndromes, Middle East respiratory syndrome, plague, and rabies. Animal-derived epidemic crises such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) (1996), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (2003), swine flu (2009), and Ebola (2014) outbreaks have further fuelled research and debate around this type of infectious disease. In this flourishing ethnographic trajectory, zoonotic diseases and outbreaks have been approached by a wide array of analytical perspectives. Positioned and enriched by concurrent developments in biosecurity studies, critical animal studies, and debates around the notion of the Anthropocene, anthropological research has focused on discourses and practices relating to human-animal relations as sites of medical, epidemiological and public health problematisation, intervention, and contestation. Breaking new ground in this research trail, this special issue aims to foster anthropological debate by focusing on the animal-human link that forms the aetiological site of zoonotic infection. The articles in this issue provide robust ethnographic and historical-anthropological studies of human-animal relations, as both revealed and transformed by the medical focus on zoonosis. We thus aim to bring medical anthropology together with animal studies in ways that highlight the contribution of anthropology to interdisciplinary research on zoonoses and the impact of this research on contemporary practices of global health.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2018
This article describes relations between humans, animals, artefacts, and pathogens in simulations... more This article describes relations between humans, animals, artefacts, and pathogens in simulations of disasters, taking bird diseases in three Chinese sentinel posts as ethnographic cases. Drawing on distinctions between simulation, ritual, and play, it shows that the engagement of actors in the imaginary of simulations, which they describe as 'realism', reflectively reverses the oppositions between humans and nonhumans, active and passive, fiction and reality that shape ordinary life. Borrowing from the anthropology of hunting societies, it argues that simulations of bird diseases, considered as signs of future species extinction, rely on cynegetic techniques of power, in which humans and animals symmetrically shift perspectives, and not only on pastoralist techniques, in which humans are above the population they monitor and sometimes sacrifice. Introduction: techniques of preparedness and human/animal relationships In the last twenty years, techniques of simulation have multiplied in the world of disaster management (Revet 2013). The stated objective of these exercises is to 'rehearse' a disaster situation in order to better prepare for it (Armstrong 2012). Actors in a simulation treat the expected disaster as if it had happened in order to immerse themselves in the reality it should produce (Seligman, Weller, Puett & Simon 2008). As such, simulations offer opportunities for social anthropology to combine science and technology studies with the ethnography of rituals. Enacting the imaginary of coming catastrophes, simulation creates an extraordinary setting for performances separated from ordinary life. Two kinds of simulation can be distinguished: desktop (or table-top) exercises, relying on computer programs and occurring indoors, and real-ground (or full-scale) drills, involving actors in an outdoor setting. Both techniques use worst-case scenarios, written by disaster-management professionals trained in fiction writing. If simulation is a regular activity for scientists working on computers, it also shapes the stage of extraordinary performances for ordinary citizens involved in drills (Sismondo 1999). However, the distinction between these two forms of simulation is not between reality and fiction, since those who write scenarios for these two kinds of simulation constantly play on the shift between virtual and actual. They rely on the memory of previous catastrophes and the anticipation of future disasters to inform a realistic engagement in the present of the simulation. If scenarios are considered as shared forms or schemes
Histoire de la civilisation ou science des mentalités Continuité et discontinuité dans le positiv... more Histoire de la civilisation ou science des mentalités Continuité et discontinuité dans le positivisme Dans les premières pages de L'archéologie du savoir (1969), Michel Foucault oppose deux types d'histoire : la nouvelle histoire des longues périodes, qui multiplie les niveaux d'analyse " de la mobilité politique aux lenteurs propres à la "civilisation matérielle" ", et l'ancienne histoire des idées, qui cherche " les grandes continuités de la pensée, les manifestations massives et homogènes d'un esprit ou d'une mentalité collective " 1 . Foucault reprend à son compte la notion de civilisation matérielle -à laquelle Braudel a donné un sens particulier en définissant par là l'ensemble des techniques qui transforment les sociétés à l'échelle de la longue durée 2 -contre la notion de mentalité, qui a donné son heure de gloire au courant d' " histoire des mentalités " fondé par Febvre et Bloch. À travers ce texte, Foucault est luimême est en train de passer d'une archéologie du savoir proche de l'histoire des mentalités -qui privilégie l'étude de blocs de pensée homogènes et fermés sur eux mêmes, selon le modèle des épistémés dans Les mots et les choses -à une généalogie des dispositifs de pouvoir qui façonnent les individus de façon matérielle, et visent à les rendre plus " civils ", polis et disciplinés -selon le modèle de la prison dans Surveiller et punir.
On compare ici l'usage des bases de données par des virologues et des observateurs d'oiseaux dans... more On compare ici l'usage des bases de données par des virologues et des observateurs d'oiseaux dans le contexte de la mobilisation contre la grippe aviaire à Hong Kong. Echappant au cadre étatique de centralisation du savoir, ces groupes ont participé à la constitution d'une « sentinelle », qui rend visibles les mutations des virus de grippe dans le réservoir animal. On étudie en particulier la tension entre les données codées et les images dans la communication de ce savoir, pour montrer que la base de données opère un décalage dans la production de savoir.
This article discusses Paul Rabinow's notion of 'form/event' in the light of the current manageme... more This article discusses Paul Rabinow's notion of 'form/event' in the light of the current management of Avian Influenza in Hong Kong. While this notion allows the study of how life sciences produce events by turning scarcity of material into abundance of information, Paul Rabinow applied it to the scene of biotechnologies where values about life are suspended in what he calls purgatory. I suggest that, for the anticipation of epidemics from the animal reservoir, the form/event is not a suspension of values but a communication by signs in what I call, following Hong Kong microbiologists, a sentinel. Moving from purgatory to sentinel in the field of biosecurity opens a plurality of scales at which events happen, and transforms the model of subjectivity, from pastoral care to hunting relationships. This theoretical shift sheds light on the ethnography of Avian Flu in Hong Kong, where birdwatchers have allied with microbiologists to practise animal surveillance.
This article compares the treatment of living beings (unvaccinated chickens and infected cells) c... more This article compares the treatment of living beings (unvaccinated chickens and infected cells) considered as sentinel devices in a farm and in a lab in Hong Kong. Sentinel devices are defined as living beings posted on a boundary from which they send signals of invisible threats. The ethnography looks at how they transform differences between ordinary lives and lives exposed, between good death and bad death, through the practices of those who feed them. In farms and labs exposed to Avian Influenza viruses, the logic of biosecurity intersects with a logic of care, blurring the distinction between self and other, friend and enemy through aesthetic judgments concerning what is a 'good death'. Metabolism and immunity are redefined when sentinels are fed to produce clear signals of the mutations of viruses.
Les Mots et les Choses aujourd'hui, on pourrait le renvoyer au livre de Francis Wolff intitulé No... more Les Mots et les Choses aujourd'hui, on pourrait le renvoyer au livre de Francis Wolff intitulé Notre humanité. De Michel Foucault, dont il suivit les cours dans les années 1970 1 , Francis Wolff a retenu au moins trois enseignements. Il se situe dans l'école française d'épistémologie des sciences humaines, qui répond à la question « Qu'est-ce que l'homme ? » en examinant ce que ces sciences en disent 2 . Il s'inscrit à la fois dans le structuralisme, puisqu'il étudie ces savoirs du point de vue de leur cohérence conceptuelle plutôt que de leur vérité empirique, et hors du structuralisme, puisqu'il considère la méthode structurale comme une des formes du savoir sur l'homme. Enfin, il oriente sa réflexion vers des considérations éthiques empruntées aux philosophes anciens qui ouvrent des possibles pour aujourd'hui.
Par delà nature et culture propose une théorie anthropologique d'une grande ampleur. Philippe Des... more Par delà nature et culture propose une théorie anthropologique d'une grande ampleur. Philippe Descola revient sur le partage entre nature et culture, considéré comme un invariant par l'anthropologie moderne, et en conteste le caractère universel. Si l'on veut rendre compte de conceptions du monde dans lesquelles les rapports entre humains et non-humains sont conçus tout autrement, il faut plutôt partir selon lui de la distinction entre des intériorités et des physicalités. Quatre modes d'identification apparaissent alors : l'animisme, le totémisme, l'analogisme et le naturalisme. Le sociologisme de l'anthropologie moderne, qui présuppose que la société se forme avec le passage de la nature à la culture, est ainsi contourné par une enquête sur les ontologies, c'est-à-dire les modes d'identification des existants. Les relations entre ces existants font ensuite l'objet d'une autre enquête, qui permet de suivre comment se forment des collectifs. Dans cet article, on s'est attaché à reconstruire le problème qui a rendu nécessaire cette construction, en repartant d'un mode de relation particulièrement déroutant pour nos modes de penser, et qui prévaut dans les sociétés animistes : la prédation.
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Papers by Frédéric Keck
collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary anthropology can therefore be defined as an anthropology of veterinarians and with veterinarians.
collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary anthropology can therefore be defined as an anthropology of veterinarians and with veterinarians.