Anthropology on Air
Anthropology on Air is a podcast brought to you by the Social Anthropology department at the University of Bergen in Norway. Each season, we bring you conversations with inspiring thinkers from the anthropology world and beyond. The music in the podcast is made by Victor Lange, and the episodes are produced by Sadie Hale and Sidsel Marie Henriksen. You can follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthropologyonair. Or visit www.uib.no/antro, where you can find more information on the ongoing work and upcoming events at the department.
Anthropology on Air
#16 Birdwatching and loss in the Anthropocene w/Andrew Whitehouse
Welcome to season 4 of Anthropology on Air! With autumn on the way in Bergen, we kick off a new season with a resident of another North Sea city: dr. Andrew Whitehouse. Andrew is a multispecies, environmental anthropologist and a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Aberdeen with a lifelong interest in birdwatching, the main topic of our conversation today.
We begin with how Andrew’s own bird-watching – mostly carried out at his local ‘patch’ of Girdle Ness, a promontory next to Aberdeen harbour – informs the kind of anthropology he practices. We also discuss the role of bird sounds in people’s perceptions of environmental changes; how watching birds can give people a strong sense of place; the legacy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962); the benefit for anthropologists of drawing on multispecies approaches, and much more.
Andrew Whitehouse is co-editor of the book Landscapes Beyond Land (Berghahn Books, 2012) and the forthcoming volume More than Human Aging (Rutgers UP, 2024), and he has published extensively on various aspects of human-bird relations. Andrew’s articles have appeared in journals such as Environmental Humanities, Conservation and Society, Social Anthropology, The Swiss Journal of Musicology, and Sociological Review.