Vinciane Despret, Habiter en oiseau, Actes Sud, 2019
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17501
application/pdf
2038-3460
17501
1
en
Silvia Bruzzone
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Vinciane Despret, Inhabiting as bird, Actes Sud, 2019
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
12
Book Reviews
2021-11-01
2023-06-27
2021-11-01
2023-10-19
132-136
TS
Silvia Bruzzone
2021/11/01
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17501
132
Mälardalen University
2038-3460
1
en
136
Vinciane Despret, Inhabiting as bird, Actes Sud, 2019
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17501/16346
12
132                                                        Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

  Vinciane Despret
Habiter en oiseau [Inhabiting as bird], Arles, Actes Sud, 2019, pp. 224

Silvia Bruzzone Mälardalen University

    Vinciane Despret’s Habiter en oiseau [Inhabiting asbird] is published
by Actes Sud in the collection Mondes Sauvages, a collection giving voice
to researchers who go in “diplomatic mission” in the world of other living
beings. And this is the intent of this book which brings us to the discovery
of the world of birds and in particular to the relationship between birds
and the researchers who, through the years, have developed theories and
methods on birds. She has therefore conducted a thoughtful investigation
on the “ecology of thoughts” (p. 55, my translation) concerning birds and
their attachment to a territory. Vinciane Despret is philosopher and ethol-
ogist. She is an internationally recognized scholar on animal studies and on
the relation between humans and non-humans. Her research is often asso-
ciated to Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway whose
works are mentioned in the book and to whom the book is dedicated. The
book can be also related to other STS researches (Callon 1984; Law e
Lynch 1990; Law and Lien 2012; Granjou and Mauz 2009) and feminist
studies (Singleton 2012) on the sociology of scientific practice in interac-
tion with the animal world.
    It is a passionate journey through time at the discovery of how the ter-
ritory as research object is mobilized in studies facing the same question:
what are the “functions” of the territory for birds? According to dominant
theories the territory has mainly two functions: assuring food supply and
reproduction. Despret’s intent here is to give voice to other studies and
research methodologies – mainly remained in the shadow – which have
taken the distance from those general theories in order to highlight the
complexity of the relation between birds and the space they occupy. What
these studies have in common is to show the limitation of talking about
“functions” and that there is no one way for birds to inhabit a territory.
    The book is an invitation to slow down in the way of doing research
and to acknowledge the multiplicity of birds’ modes of existence. As the
author claims, the intent is not to become more “sensitive” which does not
mean much (and which eventually can even provoke allergies) but to be-
come capable of paying attention and to acknowledge that other beings are
worth and entitled to receiving attention. In this regard, she claims sharing
Donna Haraway’s commitment in becoming with other species and of be-
ing “in responsible relation to always asymmetrical living and dying and
nurturing and killing” (Haraway 2008, p. 42).
    In this she starts by evoking the relationship with a blackbird which
comes to her window and has caught her attention by its singing. In this
anecdotal episode is the essence of the book. Singing is the only thing that
Book Reviews                                                              133
matters for that bird and is an invitation to attention. But it is also a re-
minder that our responsibility as researchers is to receive and welcome
those others’ matters and not to generate them (Despret 2020b).
    The book is divided in two parts. In the first one, she introduces the
main theories on the birds/territory and some potential counter-stories that
deserve attention. In the second part, she elaborates more what these other
forms of attention may produce.
    In the chapters of the first part, she introduces the research object: the
fact that birds settle and develop a specific relation with the space, with a
tree which is chosen as headquarter, where they develop routines and or-
ganize their living. In other terms, they become territorialized. As she ex-
plains, it is starting from the beginning of the 20th century that systematic
studies appear and elaborate general hypothesis on the “functions” of the
territory for birds. The term territory however is not new and dates back
to the 17th century with the first observations on birds’ territorial behav-
iours. On this regard, Despret recalls that it is in that period the idea of
territory for humans emerges in connection with land use as appropriation
and of property as an individual right. As she explains, if in the ornitholog-
ical domain a theory of the territory as appropriation was never explicitly
affirmed, it is no doubt that a certain terminology referring to the domain
of appropriation has been largely used in studies on birds as well as the fact
of focusing mostly on birds’ aggressive and competitive behaviours. This
tendency towards anthropomorphism reaffirms in the 20th century and
goes in parallel with methods and practices of appropriation (bird breed-
ing) for aesthetic reasons but also in order to kill them for research pur-
poses. As she claims, the territory has nothing innocent.
    The aim is to develop comprehensive theories of the territory, the most
important of them are focused on reproduction and assuring food supply.
These theories manage to persist in time because either they are simple to
observe (like feeding practices) or because alternative studies do not bring
to other new general “theories” and therefore most of the time they would
not be published.
    Despret’s intent is precisely to account of the many studies claiming
that territory cannot be reduced just to food (or reproduction) and that
there would be a bias between food and birds’ social organization.
    She argues that in mainstream theories everything goes too fast and dif-
ferences are not sufficiently taken into account. Birds have been ap-
proached through pre-established analytical frameworks whereby the ten-
dency is “to silence” rather than listening to them. This tendency is even
stronger in the '50s when economic theories are mobilized to explain ani-
mals’ behaviours. In this period the theory of regulation becomes domi-
nant. It claims that the territory has the function of regulating the popula-
tion in order to avoid a surplus of specimens on a given territory and there-
fore limited resources in food. Birds would become aggressive and kill
other birds in order to prevent that too many males reproduce, which may
134                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

produce a deficit in food. As Despret claims, this theory has been many
times falsified. Some researchers show in fact that underpopulation may
represent even a bigger risk for the maintenance of species (the human one
included). What is rather put forward is the fact that all species are inter-
dependent one another. The theory of regulation is the one closest to the
concept of territory as property, but also the one that has encouraged the
most brutal practices by researchers who, in order to test it, have killed
thousands of specimens. The theory of regulation is therefore understood
by Despret as a theory of inattention for not caring about one's own object
of research. And this seems even more absurd today in view of the disap-
pearance of species.
    Moreover, these theories would be clearly gender biased, limiting fe-
male mainly to a passive role. Other researchers have instead observed that
also female may become territorialized by choosing a territory – included
the male occupying it– adapted for reproduction and also by defending it.
Interestingly, then, not only female sing, even if less than males, but their
singing would be very elaborated and in any case worth of attention.
    In the second part of the book she develops what is anticipated in the
first one, that is what do these alternative stories produce? Here the author
talks about the territory by referring to Deleuze and Guattari in Thousand
plateaus ([1980] 1987), that is as a performance or matter for expression.
    The interest is no longer to try to formulate comprehensive theories on
the territory but to follow and account for the thousand possible ways in
which birds become territorialized. Here Despret goes back to some key
concepts connected to mainstream theories to better explain her point.
Concerning the idea of property, becoming territorialized is therefore not
so much the act of making a space "sien" (“one’s own”, that is something
that one possesses) but rather "soi" (“self”) that is an expression of oneself.
In this she recalls the central role of singing in this process of territorialisa-
tion. The song is way to territorialise a space as well to become with that
space. The singing would be then an extension of the bird’s body in space
like the spider with its web. In this sense there would be a dynamic of rec-
iprocity: “Appropriating a place consists in conforming it to oneself and in
conforming to it” (p. 121, my translation).
    In the same way, aggressiveness – which was seen as a primordial char-
acteristic of the territory – is also reconsidered in this view. By referring to
Deleuze and Guattari (1987), she recalls that “if aggressiveness is a consti-
tutive element of the territory, it does not explain it” (p. 151, my transla-
tion). Fights are in fact less dramatic than one thinks and singing plays an
important role in dealing with conflicts and in particular in avoiding them.
As showed by different researchers it is mostly winners who sing. Showing
the quality of the singing and displaying one’s own colourful plumage work
then as self-promotion aiming to warn potential intruders that going into a
fight would be unnecessary costly. The singing is then all about spectacu-
larization mainly addressed to other males, whereby “the winner is not the
Book Reviews                                                                  135
best fighter, but the best actor” (p. 63, my translation).
    Moreover, the outcome of the fighting would be most of the time al-
ready established in advance whereby the intruder almost never wins. So,
the author wonders, why do birds keep on fighting? In this regard Despret
claims that, if it is true that the territory is a way of organising distance (for
assuring resources), in reality it is also a way of creating one’s own neigh-
bourhood and sociality. It is said that one of the neglected functions of the
territory is the social one whereby fighting is an opportunity to redefine
and negotiate what happens at the borders.
    In this sense, the territory is a system of conventions which establishes
what is allowed and what is not. It becomes then a system of anticipation
to simplify complexity and uncertainty. As she explains “the territory only
exists through territorialization and deterritorialization since it is always in
relation to some entries and exits from the territory that it takes shape.
Territories only exist in action” (p. 144, my translation). Territories are
then forms which enact and organise relations and give shape to a society.
Everything happens in local negotiations and in the composition among
different forces. What is affirmed is a performative conception of the ter-
ritory and the capacity to affect (and of being affected).
    In the last part she comes back on the central role of singing in this
performative process of territorialization. A territory is proposed as me-
lodic composition or even as partition, that is as a way to organise and dis-
tribute singing time with the neighbours of the same species but also with
other species, resulting in polyphonic collaborations, or what she calls “ex-
pressive cosmopolitics” (p. 176, my translation). In this sense she agrees
with Haraway’s proposition – after Despret’s performative reading (2020a)
– of calling our era Phonocene to remind the multiple sonic ways of inhab-
iting the earth as well the risk for them of becoming silenced.
    By inviting us to follow birds’ parades and singing, this book brings us
also to the heart of the posthumanist debate on agency and on the relation-
ship between human and non-human, on post-qualitative investigations of
the relationship between the researcher and their object of research and on
ethics and responsibility in doing research in anthropocenic times. This
book is an original and engaging reading for researchers interested in these
topics.

References

Callon, M. (1984) Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of
        the scallops and the fishermen of st brieuc bay, in “The Sociological Re-
        view”, 32 (1, suppl.), pp. 196-233.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari F. ([1980] 1987) Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis: Uni-
       versity of Minnesota Press.
Despret, V. (2020a) Phonocene, Fabbula and CCCB, in https://fabbula.com/art-
       ists/phonocene-by-vinciane-despret/
136                                                               Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)
Despret, V. (2020b) “Inhabiting the phonocene with birds”, in Latour, B and
       Weibel, P. (eds.), in Critical Zones. The Science and Politics of Landing on
       Earth, Cambridge, the MIT Press, pp. 254-259.
Granjou C. and Mauz I. (2009) Quand l'identité de l'objet-frontière se construit
       chemin faisant. Le cas de l'estimation de l'effectif de la population de loups
       en France, in “Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances”, 3(1), pp. 29-49.
Haraway, D. (2008) When species meet, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota
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Law, J. and Lynch, M. (1988) Lists, field guides, and the descriptive organization
        of seeing: birdwatching as an exemplary observational activity, in “Human
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Law, J. and Lien, M. E. (2012) Slippery: Field notes in empirical ontology, in “So-
        cial Studies of Science”, 43(3), pp. 363-378.
Singleton, V. (2012) When contexts meet: Feminism and accountability in uk, cat-
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        433.



                                       ***
   Juliane Jarke
Co-creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society. Evidence for User-
centric Design, Cham, Springer, 2021, pp. 228

Linda Tonolli Università di Trento

    In recent years the Science and Technology Studies (STS) debate about
how ageing, technology and society are intertwined is rapidly emerging, as
living conditions improve and life expectancy increases, especially in
wealthy countries. The growing importance of this phenomenon is exten-
sively supported by EU and national fundings that promote projects to de-
sign new technologies and services for the aging society. These research
trajectories lay on normative narratives that describe ageing as a problem
to fix, and so they lead to an extensive development of assistive technolo-
gies that strongly focus only on a medicalized, individual dimension of ag-
ing (Cozza et al. 2017). These approaches picture humans as isolated bio-
logical machines, forgetting that humans are also (and especially) social be-
ings, made by their relationships with others and the context they live (and
age) in. In this context, STS researchers have been fruitful in highlighting
two aspects of the phenomenon of active ageing technologies. The first as-
pect is that STS scholars analyzed how behind the apparent healthy and
