This is a past event
Andrew Whitehouse will explore seasonality and temporality including sensing of seasons through bird sounds in northeast Scotland and elsewhere on Thursday 22 October 2015 at 3pm.
This article explores seasonality through the lens of British relations with other beings. The Middle English song ‘Sumer is icumen in’ took as its theme the intersections of seasons and the activities and arrivals of other-than-human beings, a concern that continued with the quintessentially British institution of writing to The Times to report hearing the first cuckoo of spring. Exploring examples of seasonality such as these, it is argued, provides a productive means through which to explore various more-than-human entanglements, such as wild/domestic, time/place, landscape/ weather.
The article draws on recent discussions of temporality and seasonality by Ingold, Harris and Krause to consider a range of examples. These include phenological studies and the sensing of seasons through bird sounds in northeast Scotland and elsewhere. The relations between wild and domestic seasonalities are examined through farming on the Scottish island of Islay, where wild geese and domestic livestock graze the same pastures and where government conservation schemes require the mowing of grass at specific times to foster the breeding success of rare corncrakes. Finally, recent attempts to track the migrations of cuckoos to and from Africa are discussed to reveal the threads and frictions of British seasonalities as they extend outwards to encompass other parts of the world. Seasonality is thus explored as a means to consider the specific relationships of place, the contradictions and tensions between being-in-the-world and bureaucratic schemes, and the fragility of the ties that bind weather, wildlife and nation in a time of rapid environmental
All Welcome!
Anthropology Research Seminar Room F61, Edward Wright Building, Aberdeen University, Scotland, UK.
- Speaker
- Andrew Whitehouse