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Monkey Troubles: Confronting Control in Contemporary Singapore

Project description

Control perception in human–monkey interactions in Singapore

Monkeys are significant in Singapore’s religion and tradition and interact with citizens. However, these interactions also bring uncertainties that prompt people to reflect on the extent of human control. Thus, monkeys are crucial to how Singaporeans perceive wildlife management, conservation and environmental governance. The MSCA-funded Monkey Troubles project examines how Singaporeans perceive control in their interactions with monkeys and the environment. The study analyses the diverse understandings and practices of control in everyday encounters with monkeys and a monkey deity. It investigates how humans interpret the intentions of non-human beings through gestures, facial expressions, posture and gaze direction and shows that control is shaped by how people perceive limitations in interactions with non-human entities.

Objective

Monkey Troubles is a comparative ethnography of control in human-monkey interactions and in the worship of a monkey deity in Singapore. It investigates how everyday interspecies and ritual encounters prompt ordinary Singaporeans to reflect on what control is, who has it, and how these ideas shape Singaporean relationships with other species and the environment. The study deploys an interdisciplinary approach grounded in anthropology, religious studies, and the environmental humanities to comparatively analyse the diverse understandings and practices of control that take place in everyday interactions with monkeys and a monkey deity. The project approaches these encounters as parallel interactive contexts in which humans struggle to interpret the ultimately opaque intentions of non-human others through communicative cues, including gesture, facial expression, posture, and gaze direction. The many uncertainties raised by these encounters make them key sites in which people generate ideas about the limits of human control, with critical implications for Singaporean attitudes toward wildlife management, conservation, and environmental governance. The project demonstrates that control is a culturally diverse and multispecies phenomenon that is decisively shaped by how people interpret the limitations of human control when interacting with more-than-human others. It also serves as a ground-breaking model for applying interaction analysis to other situations dealing with nonhuman entities such as religious studies and multispecies studies.

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 226 751,04
Address
PROBLEMVEIEN 5-7
0313 Oslo
Norway

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Region
Norge Oslo og Viken Oslo
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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