Interpretive research from a multispecies perspective

Leslie Irvine

Chapter 27 in Handbook of Interpretive Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2025, pp 424-437 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The interpretive tradition has long regarded humans as solely possessing the capabilities needed to engage in meaningful interaction. From this perspective, other beings matter only once humans perceive, name, and describe them. However, many scholars now recognize that interaction takes place in a web of relations with beings and entities that exist beyond and even apart from the strictly human realm. The resulting research is variously known as multispecies or more-than-human research, posthumanism, actor-network theory, critical animal studies, and new materialism. Collectively, these approaches recognize human experience as only one of the countless ways that people, animals, plants, microorganisms, and other entities “become with” one another. A reimagined interpretive tradition informed by multispecies research holds promise for exploring ways of being in a more-than-human world. By revealing the arbitrariness of human exceptionalism, multispecies interactionist research can challenge othering and the resulting exclusion, exploitation, and domination of other species.

Keywords: Anthropocentrism; Becoming with; Interpretive research; More-than-human research; Multispecies research; Othering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803926384
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