Wild and Wonderful - An Ethnography of English Naturalists

Examining social constructions and perceptions of nature.

In Wild and Wonderful, social anthropologist Vanessa Manceron investigates an understudied but indispensable scientific practice: getting to know and recognize the living worlds around us. Her research takes her to England, where a longstanding naturalist tradition brings together professionals, academics, and amateurs to study the world around them. Observing the natural world here is regarded not as a simple hobby, but as a necessary activity. This is participatory science, an itinerant brand of scholarship that immerses itself in a specific and delimited territory, meticulously documenting the species living there and how they develop and expand their domain or regress and disappear. Manceron leads us through woods and fields, showing us another way of looking, of paying attention to minute differences, sounds, and variations of color. Her book is both a contribution to the anthropology of science and an opportunity to take a fresh look at our relationship with nature, affording us a glimpse of another way of living and living with.

About the author

Vanessa Manceron is a social anthropologist and researcher at the Centre national de recherche scientifique and director of the Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative in Paris.

Product details

• Authors: Vanessa Manceron
• Assisted by: Michael Taylor (Translation)
• Publisher: HAU Society Of Ethnographic Theory
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 19.01.2025
• EAN: 9781914363092
• ISBN: 978-1-914363-09-2
• No. of pages: 260
• Dimensions: 229 mm x 152 mm x 19 mm
• Weight: 382 g
• Illustrations: 15 halftones
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Pre and early history; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Ethnology