CTSTA Webinar–Anthropology’s Ontological Turn, Human Rights, and the Anthropocene: How can a Tiny Formosan Bird Speak to so Much?

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Date/Time (EST)
Date(s) - 12/11/2020
8:00 pm

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“Let me tell you about Gaya (customary law),” he said, before continuing, “There is a tiny bird in the forest called sisil.” Among all of the disciplines in the modern academy, probably only anthropology makes it possible to spring from enunciations such as this one from a Truku elder to broader reflections on human rights and the Anthropocene. After having done research in Taiwan for 25 years, I am now leading a Taiwan-based, multi-sited research project entitled “Austronesian Worlds: Human-Animal Entanglements in the Pacific Anthropocene.” I will discuss one of the first articles based on that research (Simon 2020), but also place it in its social context in Taiwan. What does the tiny sisil bird have to say to topics of Indigenous rights, indigenous ontologies, and the contemporary ecological crisis? Finally, I reflect on the evolution of my own career in anthropology, including how it has been shaped by long-term engagement with the ideas of ordinary people I have met in Taiwan.

 

 

Simon, Scott. 2020. “A Little Bird Told Me: Changing Human-Bird Relations on a Formosan Indigenous Territory.” Anthropologica 62: 70-84. Scott Simon is full professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa, co-chair of the uOttawa Research Chair of Taiwan Studies, and researcher with the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) and the Human Rights Research and Education Centre. His research interests include Indigenous rights in Taiwan, ontologies (including human-animal relations), the right to self-determination; and the place of Taiwan in the broader Indo-Pacific. He has also done field research in Japan and Guam. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals including American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Anthropologica, Anthropologie et sociétés, Human Organization, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, Taiwan Human Rights Journal, and Taiwan Journal for Indigenous Studies, as well as in numerous edited books. He has published three books about Taiwan, and is near completion of a fourth. He also writes commentaries about Taiwan for the CIPS blog, Canadian newspapers, and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He now leads a multi-country research project called “Austronesian Worlds: Human-Animal Entanglements in the Pacific Anthropocene.”

Scott Simon’s research project “Austronesian Worlds” is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Prof. Lee Yi-tze at NDHU 東華大學 will co-host this event with Prof. Simon.

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