Equality of Life: Multi-species Ethnography on the Animal Protection Movement in Taiwan

Principle Investigator：Jeffrey Nicolaisen

At the International Center for Cultural Studies, Nicolaisen will work with an emerging NYCU research team focused on multi-species ethnography. His ethnography on relationships between Han and indigenous people and nonhuman animals in Taiwan focuses on the Buddhism-inspired animal protection organization Life Conservationist Association. Nicolaisen will be further developing his dissertation research that found that (1) the politics of religion have restricted the participation of traditions such as Buddhism in public discourse on ecological issues and (2) the Buddhist concept of“equality of life,” which applies to all sentient beings, is incommensurable with international human rights and environmental conservation law based on European political and environmental theory. Nicolaisen will also continue to work on a project that focuses on the subjectivity of nonhuman animals in multi-species communities of humans, dogs, and monkeys in Taiwan. The goal is to integrate the ethological research methods of evolutionary anthropology and the ethnographic research methods of cultural anthropology to represent how both human and nonhuman animals evaluate their multi- species relationships. Nicolaisen has already conducted field research on two case studies that involve the new no-kill law at animal shelters and the conflict between monkeys and fruit farmers in Taiwan.