Many anthropologists who focus on anthrozoology have voiced that there are new, potential ways to research and monitor the relationship between humans and animals over time. These methods are being explored all over the world. In this post, quotes from Paige West are analyzed and explained to investigate her views on the subject.
Dr. Paige West is a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University and teaches anthropology; her main studies center around the relationship between societies and their environments and has written numerous books surrounding this broad topic. Dr. West has traveled the world to conduct research projects including places like Papua New Guinea, Australia, Germany, England, and the United States. In 2017, Laura Murray hosted Paige West on her podcast titled "AnthroPod," where West shared some thoughts on what she feels should be done in the future of anthrozoology to broaden our understanding of human-animal relationships.
"And one of the things that I've tried to do ... is think about what it would look like if we used indigenous theory to actually try and understand the relationship between people and their surrounds and the relationship between people and animals" - Paige West
West's first book published in 2006 was titled Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea and explores the political ecology of environmental conservation projects and connections between indigenous ideas about land and ancestors and how conservation organizations viewed these ideas.
She wants to expand this idea of indigenous theory into the subject of anthrozoology to further study how animals and humans have interacted over time. By incorporating similar tactics used when studying indigenous tribes, anthropologists may be able to see similar patterns and migration tactics used by societies to follow food sources.
"What would it really look like to analyze something via archival material, or ethnographic material, or political documents - if we analyzed those things through indigenous theory about the relationship between people and animals" - Paige West
These direct quotes were said by Paige West in the following podcast: https://soundcloud.com/cultural-anthropology/32-animal-and-anthropology
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