About the lecture:
Singaporean wildlife conservationists say that the major threat to local animal life is the state. At the same time, they are continually lobbying the Singaporean state to expand its legal powers over wildlife. This talk explores this apparent contradiction to consider the relation between law, sovereignty, animal agency, and the sacred. How is contemporary conservation like religious practices of consecration (literally putting something aside or reserving it)? What does this reveal about the nature of sovereignty—who has the power to decide on which rules should be followed? And how do such practices relate to animal agency in human social life? By considering these issues together, the talk examines both the implications of continuities between conservation, law, and religion, but also just why non-human subjectivities are so critical—and vexing—in their conceptual entanglement.
About the presenter:
Stuart Earle Strange is assistant professor of Anthropology at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. He is the author of Suspect Others: Spirit Mediums, Self-Knowledge, and Race in Multiethnic Suriname (University of Toronto Press, 2021), and articles in journals that include Cultural Anthropology, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Ethnos, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.