This presentation is based on multispecies ethnographic research conducted in a Finnish zoo with the aim of looking at education as more-than-human practice (Kirksey &  Helmreich 2010; Ogden et al. 2013; Rautio et al. 2021). The overall educational aim in the research is to  cultivate “arts of attentiveness” (van Dooren et al., 2016) towards multispecies co-existence in all its complexity. We ask and experiment with the question: how to take other than human species as protagonists of the stories in their own right? Focusing especially on encounters and assemblages involving human children and barnacle geese, we ask: how does a multispecies approach based on open-ended assemblages work as a critical educational approach, and what could multispecies stories teach us about educational practices? 

Our approach is prompted by discussions around the so-called Anthropocene (e.g. Latour 2017) that have stressed the interdependencies of humans, other species, and materialities (Godfray et al., 2018). This discussion insists on reconsideration of anthropocentric epistemologies in current educational practices and research methodologies (Common Worlds Research Collective, 2020). 

For this study, of specific interest is a policy adopted by the zoo which aims to further co-living of humans and barnacle geese in the zoo area. During spring time and early summer the zoo is a popular place for groups of school kids to visit. Simultaneously it is home to the population of wild barnacle geese, which nest there every year. The shared history of human and barnacle geese in Finland is a relatively short one, and not without conflicts. Barnacle geese are “newcomers” as nesting birds in Finland, and the population has increased rapidly during the last decades (Yrjölä et al., 2017). The fast growing presence of these birds have brought out irritation, economical concerns, political dispute, fear of bacteria and viruses and even hatred. 

The short and problematic history of the cohabitation of humans and barnacle geese in Finland calls for attentiveness towards complexities and imagination to find new ways of co-living and becoming-with in consequential relationships with others (Van Dooren et al. 2016).

Multispecies ethnography (Ogden, et al. 2013) enables us to foreground all kinds of creatures that according to Kirksey & Helmreich (2010) have traditionally appeared mostly in the margins of ethnography, as part of the landscape, as food for humans or as symbols. We use the concept of assemblage (Tsing 2015), as a tool to stay open to the complex, messy, ever changing and surprising entanglements. By focusing on open-ended gatherings, we examine how species are brought into being through relations (van Dooren et al. 2016). Our approach requires us to avoid unnecessary simplifications, universalisations, or sugar coating of the relations of children and barnacle geese (Hohti & Tammi, 2021). We consider the zoo, located on an island near a shoreline of the busy city, as a vibrant more-than-human assemblage (Tsing, 2015). As much as it is a zoo governed by humans, it is a home island for nesting birds and other critters. The concept of assemblages helps us see the co-existence of these multiple realities and emerging tensions and frictions. We use the emerging approach of multispecies storytelling (Hohti & Tammi, forthcoming; Bencke & Bruhn, 2022) to write small stories on educational practices with barnacle geese as our protagonist. We rely on thinkers such as Haraway (2015), who describes good stories as big enough to involve complexities, but still left open at the edges so that they remain greedy for potentially surprising connections. These stories are composed with layered and mismatched practices of knowing and being (Tsing, 2015). Despret (2022, 6) encourages us to aim for “-- explanations which end up multiplying worlds and celebrating the emergence of an infinite number of modes of existence”. Rhythms of migrating barnacle goose population affect the timing of our ethnographic practice. We start during the beginning of nesting season. Next, collaborating closely with the zoo’s staff and an environmental educator, we participate in guided excursions of groups visiting from schools, and a daytime camp for children. At the time of these educational practices, goslings are leaving their nests with their protecting parents around. During our time in the zoo, we discuss with children and staff, record audio landscapes and videos, and take photographs. To expand our research practice from verbal and visual modes of thinking, we also devote time for slowness and sensing with other senses (Hohti & Tammi, forthcoming).

The ontoepistemological starting points of multispecies ethnography do not allow producing outcomes that would reduce reality into hierarchical categories, or universal epistemic claims. By situating stories on barnacle geese and humans we aim to discuss substantial questions of the Anthropocene, while simultaneously avoiding abstraction (van Dooren 2019). Through multispecies storytelling, we present some findings but moreover, we appreciate the internal inconsistencies, potential thread ends for new questions, and openings for new connections. We claim that the concept of assemblages can be employed as a critical approach in that it allows us to discuss ethico-political questions on the constitution of multispecies communities and the terms and procedures of co-living (van Dooren, 2019). Even though our study begins with free birds nesting in the island, the Zoo is rich with contradictions: for example, it simultaneously presents animals as entertainment for people and as means of education, and works on conservation of endangered species. Therefore, we weave critical threads into the stories, considering for example, how histories of violence entangle with the current practices taking place in the zoo (Hohti & Tammi, forthcoming). Van Dooren and colleagues (2016) describe the arts of attentiveness as the ability of both paying attention to others and crafting a meaningful response (van Dooren et al., 2016). Our study shows how the ability to notice other species can be elaborated towards this broader aim in both education and ethnographic research methodology. Despret (2022) points out that we should also acknowledge how other species, in our case barnacle geese, are attentive themselves (Despret 2022).

Bencke, I. & Bruhn, J. (eds.) (2022). Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices. Punctum books. Common Worlds Research Collective. (2020). Learning to become with the world: Education for future survival. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374032 Despret, V. (2022). Living as a bird. Polity Press. Godfray, H., Charles J., Paul Aveyard, Tara Garnett, Jim W. Hall, Timothy j. Key, Jaime Lorimer,... & Susan A. Jebb (2018). Meat consumption, health, and the environment. Science, 361(6399), eaam5324. Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press. Hohti, R. & Tammi, T. (forthcoming). Composting storytelling: an approach for critical multispecies ethnography and worlding. Kirksey, S.E., & Helmreich, S. (2010) The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545–576. Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia. Eight lectures on the new climate regime. Polity Press. Ogden, L. A., Hall, B., & Tanita, K. (2013). Animals, plants, people, and things: A review of multispecies ethnography. Environment and society, 4(1), 5–24. Rautio, P., Tammi, T., & Hohti, R. (2021). Children after the Animal Turn: Child–Animal Relations and Multispecies Scholarship. The SAGE Handbook of Global Childhoods, 341. Tsing Lowenhaupt, A. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world : on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press. van Dooren, T. (2019). The Wake of Crows. Living and dying in the shared worlds. Columbia University Press. van Dooren, T., Kirksey, E., & Münster, U. (2016). Multispecies Studies. Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness. Environmental Humanities, 8(1), 1–23. Yrjölä, R. A., Holopainen, S., Pakarinen, R., Tuoriniemi, S., Luostarinen, M., Mikkola-Roos, M., Nummi, P., & Väänänen, V.-M. (2017). The Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis) in the archipelago of southern Finland - population growth and nesting dispersal. Ornis Fennica, 94(4), 161–171