Posthuman pedagogy: experiential education for an era of mutualism

Abstract

Wildlife-human relations in the United States are predominantly influenced by Euro-American sociocultural dynamics and (neo)colonial legacies. Humans dominate nonhuman animals through violence, suffering, and death. Wildlife management as a practice is becoming increasingly criticized. Disagreement emerges from epistemological and ontological foundations and remains contentious in theory and practice. Environmental education reinforces the subjugation of nonhumans and particular individuals that are governed by human decision-making, and power assemblages. However, public values have shifted to a mutualism orientation where management practices are challenged by shifting moral standards of society that value the intrinsic rights, welfare, and agency of individual beings. We present two related case studies that showcase posthuman pedagogy and illustrate how ‘real-world’ field experiences can shape students’ ontologies and cosmologies. This work draws from the first author’s fieldwork on salmon-sea lion-human relations in the Columbia River Basin of the Pacific Northwest US. This includes over 120 semi-structured interviews, two deployments of the Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) model, participant observation, and archival data. We focus on four specific fieldwork moments captured by student reflection. Posthuman pedagogy allows educators and scholars to rest with the material relations that dictate the lives of nonhuman participants and provides pragmatic openings for more-than-human worlds.

Keywords:

• Posthuman pedagogy
• postcolonialism
• post qualitative inquiry
• experiential education

Introduction

In the U.S., wildlife-human relations are predominantly influenced by Euro-American sociocultural dynamics and (neo)colonial legacies where humans dominate nonhuman animals through violence, suffering, and death (see Copeland 2020; Copeland 2021; Fennell and Thomsen 2021; Thomsen et al. 2022a). These anthropocentric views are perpetuated formally by some through institutions such as USDA Wildlife Services, state wildlife agencies, universities, etc. (Thomsen 2022), and informally through media, folklore, language, etc. (Jürgens and Hackett 2017; Lappalainen 2019). University education often reinforces the subjugation of marginalized animals, particularly in environmental education. A utilitarian ethic favors species-level research and teaching in the name of wildlife conservation, often at the expense of particular individual animals (see Santiago-Ávila and Lynn 2020; Thomsen 2022). For example, compassionate conservation in the biological sciences (Bekoff 2013) and multispecies justice in animal studies have begun to question the efficacy of a species-level approach to conservation management (see Celermajer et al. 2021; Gosler 2022; Thomsen et al. 2022b). This emerging literature has been met with steep resistance by some, such as ecologists Callen et al. (2020), who state that conservation is already compassionate, and individuals are a tertiary concern of the species or other groups. Disagreements emerge from epistemological (e.g. utilitarian or virtue ethic) and ontological foundations (e.g. positivist, humanist or post-qualitative), and remain contentious in theory and practice (Mcphie and Clarke 2020; St. Pierre 2014; St. Pierre 2021; Thomsen et al. 2022c).

Manfredo, Teel, and Dietsch (2016) conducted a longitudinal study on wildlife values in the U.S., and their findings suggest that public opinion has shifted over recent decades toward an era of ‘mutualism’ that acknowledges that animals are deserving of rights. Pro-wildlife views are increasingly popular amongst younger persons (Manfredo et al. 2020a, 2020b), and the 2023 Pathways Conference that is attended by U.S. state wildlife agents and academic faculty will focus on ‘Managing Wildlife in an Era of Mutualism’. We highlight the divergence in public opinion as foundationally important to environmental education and are attentive to the conventional humanist qualitative methodologies that categorize these temporal dimensions. We question why humans feel the right to ‘manage’ other species (see Copeland 2022; Thomsen 2022), and we show how a departure from conventional logics of representation may open us to unanticipated connections in the working of chance (see MacLure 2021), which macro-level public opinion desires. This suggests that reconciliation requires displacement of conceptual order (i.e. values), and the processes (i.e. methods) by which the orderly are articulated (i.e. ‘management’, ‘wildlife’, ‘human’, etc.). In so doing, we offer openings for mutualism in an era of posthuman pedagogy (see Jukes and Reeves 2020; Jukes et al. 2022; Stewart 2018).

Quinn (2021) problematizes humanist/posthumanist paradoxes to identify two crucial gaps in higher education: (1) Western universities are pragmatically beholden to many (neo)colonial legacies and global relations produced by neoliberal models; (2) There exists a material problem with putting together a substantive posthuman vision into action. To address these gaps in pragmatic ways, attention can be drawn ‘to embrace posthumanism as a way of knowing the world and to break down traditional knowledge formations that promote this way of knowing’ (Quinn 2021, 693). Posthuman pedagogy serves as a speculative analytic to the rigid modalities of prevailing experiential learning models and/or vertically integrated project approaches. It is cautious of performativity and favors an unfinished messiness in training and fieldwork – akin to ‘patchwork ethnography’ (Günel, Varma, and Watanabe 2020). It promotes the iterative process of knowledge accumulation and simultaneously accepts underlying epistemological differences in space and time – worldings of ontological disruption (see Jukes and Reeves 2020, 1298). Posthuman pedagogy rests with the tensions of researcher-subject, expert-student, human-nonhuman, and it threads converging partnerships within the higher education system for theory and practice. This paper focuses on a unique approach to ‘more-than-human’ experiential learning as part of a 12-month multispecies ethnography on salmon-sea lion-human relations in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. during the early years of the Biden Administration. We present two related case studies that showcase posthuman pedagogy and illustrate how ‘real world’ field experiences shape students’ ontologies and cosmologies. In the next section, we review posthuman and postcolonial theories included in experiential education, for the mutualism era.

Theoretical overview

Posthumanism and postcolonial theory in experiential education

Thomsen (2022) contend ‘posthumanism is a post-modern philosophical paradigm that challenges the Cartesian dichotomization of nature and society to equally consider all species and individuals in wildlife-human relations’ (p. 7; see also St. Pierre 2016). Posthumanist project-based learning (PBL) has focused on a shared unease with students and provides space for creativity, political activism, social justice, and personal (self-reflexive) transformation (Chappell, Natanel, and Wren 2021). These traits align with MacLure’s (2021) divination and is central to the ethic of an event. Divination is a ‘mode of creative and ethical encounter with events through the affirmation of chance’ (p. 504). Posthuman and postcolonial theories expand the experiential learning process by exploring more-than-human reflection. Kolb (2014) contends:

[Experiential learning] differentiates experiential learning theory from rationalist and other cognitive theories of learning that tend to give primary emphases to the acquisition, manipulation, and recall of abstract symbols, and from behavioral learning theories that deny any role for consciousness and subjective experience in the learning process (p. 20).

The foundational principles of experiential learning and posthuman philosophy are based on relational and dialectic ways of being (and becoming). This complements a ‘slow learning’ pedagogy for reflexive, critical, and adaptive unease outside of the classroom. Thinking with a world in mutualism is explored through postcolonial and posthuman theories.

Riley (2020) states that ‘postcolonial land ethics do not suggest that we are past colonialism’, and that the structures of colonialism be more responsibly attended, ‘in understanding worldmaking as a relationally co-constituted, yet differentiated, entanglement’ (p. 98). Worlding or world making expand ontological boundaries for understanding things-in-phenomena and draw attention to entanglements of nonhuman and human subjects (Jukes and Reeves 2020). Vaughan’s (2019) posthuman experiential learning account engages undergraduate and graduate art students to produce conceptualizations of art in the ‘ethically complicated place’ of the Blönduós community, North Iceland. The author uses reflection to engage their posthuman experience as an educator, researcher, and artist:

My work as an artist, teacher and researcher is deeply inflected with environmental values that can be described as posthumanist. By this I mean that I am concerned about the future of life – very specifically, about the capacity of a luxurious biodiversity of non-human species to thrive – on our beautiful planet in this time of climate breakdown and the so-called Sixth Extinction of this Anthropocene; further, I believe that human activities and entitlements must be de-centered from personal and political decisions and the rights of the non-human world prioritized (p. 9).

Posthuman pedagogy is interested in reflective experience, grounded in posthuman and postcolonial theoretical framings. Students and professors alike are challenged to consider the ethical ramifications of their action, being, and processes in the world. Accounts of posthuman experiential learning initiatives are limited but emerging (Jukes and Reeves 2020; Jukes et al. 2022; Stewart 2018). In this work, exploratory openings emerged for future scholarship. These include (1) A project-based approach, (2) A discursive posthuman theoretical framing, (3) Reflection on experience (both concepts and personal growth), and (4) Training that utilizes transdisciplinary engagement. Post qualitative inquiry is a suggested mode to explore inquiry and analysis in these settings.

Post-qualitative inquiry and the VIP

St. Pierre (2016) critiques qualitative methodologies in US higher education for its narrowed attention to rationalist epistemologies and rush to application. Conventional qualitative methods are concerned with the production of ‘doing’ and ‘practice’, with a lack of attention to theoretical, philosophical or ontological ways of being in the world. Posthuman pedagogy is theory-based training and foundational to worlding, sense-making, and describing interconnection of self, nature, and Other (Riley 2020). This suggests that agency is not possessed by individual things or beings, but it emerges through relationships (Verlie 2020). Prevailing models of experiential learning are applied to professional degrees that emphasize collaborative team building (Kayes, Kayes, and Kolb 2005), commercial entrepreneurship (Anwar and Abdullah 2021), business performance (Leal-Rodriguez and Albort-Morant 2019), management systems (Smith 2016), information science (Kwon 2019), and other apolitical endeavors (see also Morris 2020). Posthuman pedagogy turns from human-centric approaches to being and describes more-than-human relational worlds (Stewart 2018). The Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) model combines faculty research with student learning on long-term projects (Thomsen et al. 2022d), interconnected with posthuman pedagogy and mutualism.

The VIP and Posthuman Pedagogy are strengthened by connection to theory, practice, and training that attend to exploratory post inquiries (see St. Pierre 2014, St. Pierre 2016; St. Pierre 2021). St. Pierre (2014) advises scholars to embed post theories with their thinking of the world and how knowledge is produced, suggesting methodologies will follow. Thinking with post worlds as relational is a process of un/learning conventional methods and finding new and unexplored modes of inquiry (St. Pierre 2021). The author suggests that without adapting onto-epistemological foundations of research practice, we risk failing posthuman projects (see also, St. Pierre 2021). For example, conventional approaches to language follow humanist interpretations whereby ‘we’ are the center and source of meaning and value (MacLure 2023). Post inquiry rejects assumptions ‘that our capacity for reason and for language sets us above other species and other entities’ (p. 213), problematically self-evident when considering the state of management practices in the United State. In the next section, we give weight to this sentiment. We provide the study background and describe our methods. It is written in a more conventional sense and shows our transition from thinking about things-in-themselves to things-in-phenomena.

Study background

The making of the salmon-sea lion-human complex: conventional things

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation are responsible for managing and maintaining all federal dams including that of the Lower Snake River Dams (ID) and the Columbia River Dams (OR/WA). The cultural-ecological importance of this region intertwines and entangles with the Columbia watershed and is present in the contemporary lands of Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Washington. In 1949, the development of hydropower in the region met opposition by wild salmon advocates. The State of Washington Department of Fisheries concluded that ‘if salmon are to be preserved, development wherever possible must be confined to non-fish producing areas’ (Langlie and Anderson 1949, 2). The Langlie reports review several hydro-developments during the time. Their sentiments are summarized by John Hurley, Chief of the Stream Improvement Division:

One of Nature’s greatest gifts to the Pacific Northwest was its vast river system. In the same package were five species of salmon, a matchless combination of food and recreation that was capable of seasonally renewing itself without human assistance. For years, this great perpetual machine poured forth wealth unhampered except by natural phenomenon. The rivers ran free, and a continual chain of reproduction went on in them. The development of the region surged ahead. The scope of nature’s machine steadily diminished. Industries moved in with a tremendous demand for new hydro-electric power, dams of all sizes, including the world’s largest, were superimposed on the natural watershed. At first development was allowed to proceed virtually without regard to the environmental requirements of salmon, and the welfare of the fishery resource was critically needlessly neglected. Years of wasted income, depleted fish stocks and ruined habitat, as a result, have been the heritage of today’s fishing industry (1949; p. 2).

This story of salmon has not changed in the Columbia River Basin since the 1940s (see Lackey, Lach, and Duncan 2006, Lackey 2017). Increased aquatic temperatures have proven lethal to salmon, where an estimated 2,500 fish bodies were captured using drone technology along the South Fork Nooksack River (WA) in the summer of 2021 (Ryan 2021). The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates the extinction of salmon by the year 2040 if warming waters persist (EPA 2021). The EPA (2021) identified 191 cold water refuges and 23 critical refuges for salmon conservation. No regulatory restrictions currently limit the ‘take’ of salmon in these areas, and governance structures fail to ameliorate effects under current law. For example, Monroe (2022) wrote in The Oregonian to celebrate Oregon and Washington fish managers in ‘liberalizing’ the 2022 fishing season that extended the duration for anglers allowed on the Lower Columbia and Willamette Rivers.

Salmon conservation is over-governed by hatchery production that affects the genetic diversity of non-hatchery fish; fishery management regimes lack enforcement of mixed-stock non-selective harvest that affect overall biodiversity; hydro-electric facilities obstruct fish passage that have been omitted from species management plans in North America; and, net-pen fish farming is increasingly controversial due to the negative environmental and commercial concerns of escapement, disease, and welfare (Copeland 2022; Harrison et al. 2019; Morton and Routledge 2016; Moore, Connors, and Hodgson 2021; Rice 2019; State of Washington Department of Ecology 2021; Uglem et al. 2014). Litigation has been the primary vehicle to address these issues and includes the regulatory authority of offshore aquaculture, hydroelectric obstruction, and hatchery production, as examples (see Day 2021; Gentry 2021; Parks 2021).

The salmon-sea lion-human complex, or the various multispecies sociocultural dynamics that make up relations between these species in the Columbia River Basin, is an evolving mechanism rooted in humans’ separation from nature. Blame of ecological decline is typically passed from human stakeholders onto nonhuman individuals (Copeland 2020). In the case of the Columbia River Basin, this blame is passed to California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) and Stellar sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus) (Copeland 2022; Sorel et al. 2021; Tidwell et al. 2019). The consequences of sea lion presence are situated at the base of the Willamette and Bonneville dams along their respective rivers, where salmon become bottlenecked and increased sea lion predation is observed. Wright, Tennis, and Brown (2010) show that: (1) Migratory patterns conclude that some male sea lions ‘drop out’ of their northward migration to winter at select haulout sites; (2) predation near direct obstructions (i.e. dams) from sea lions are likely to reoccur if previous animal behavior has occurred; (3) alternatively, drop-out migration patterns at specific locations are unlikely if sea lions have not visited the previous haulout site before; and (4) noteworthy weight gain was made by one sea lion after its second winter stay (over a month) at a recorded haulout site (Bonneville Dam). Wargo et al.’s (2019) modeling identified pinniped predation as the most likely source of Chinook mortality along the estuary of the lower Columbia River to the Bonneville Dam. Tidwell et al. (2019) attribute the ‘changing tide’ of threatened and endangered fish along the Columbia River to the ‘new primary predator’ - the Steller sea lion. These conventional studies produce what MacLure (2023) calls ‘bleeding the obvious’, considering the interdependence between marine mammals, fish, and consumptive habits.

The case of sea lion is used to show how abstract discourse regarding salmon declines is used by biologists and anglers to distance themselves from broader biopolitical issues. Abstract discourse allows humans to speak for and about nonhumans without their consent, often marginalizing certain species over Others (Thomsen 2022). Competing human objectives within the Columbia River Basin have resulted in legislative action that also prioritizes a set of species over Others, displacing culpability of human interests on the environment. This study aims to redress the lack of ‘more-than-human’ university education through posthuman and postcolonial experiential learning. We describe more conventional methods that informed transition to posthuman pedagogy below.

Posthuman pedagogy and experiential learning modalities

This study leveraged multispecies ethnography to evaluate the biocultural and biopolitical aspects of salmon-sea lion-human relations in the Columbia River Basin (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Thomsen 2022). It used an iterative, bottom-up approach to understand the context that actors face (Creswell and Creswell 2017). Students conducted semi-structured interviews, archival research, and participant observation with the first and third authors. Students learned how to conduct ethnographic methods prior to entering the field (in each case study) and were taught how to perform coding and data analysis, before learning how to write for publication. We briefly describe the third author’s lab that is co-led by the first author (recent Doctoral graduate) and study lead, and how the VIP model works to teach students to conduct post qualitative research. We then describe each of the two related case studies (the first served as a pilot study for the second), and how we analyzed the data to assess the merits of posthuman pedagogy. University ethical approval was obtained as ‘exempt’ for this study. All names are pseudonyms to protect the identities of interlocutors and students to promote more honest and candid insights.

VIP near-peer mentorship model & the multispecies Livelihoods lab

The Multispecies Livelihoods Lab (MLL) is an interdisciplinary social science lab that trains graduate and undergraduate students in concepts of ethnography, animal ethics, conservation, and ecotourism; these concepts are challenged by posthuman and postcolonial perspectives. Students tend to their classes and coursework, and most maintain a job. Some work while also holding a Graduate Assistantship. They write grant applications, attend lab meetings, sit-in on and conduct interviews, code and analyze data, contribute to publication’s, review journal articles, hold guest lectures when invited, and attend research conferences. The lab is vertically integrated from Assistant Professor, Ph.D.’s, Master’s, and select undergraduate students, and the Assistant Professor is also mentored by two full professors. Tasking, discussion, and projects emerge throughout the academic year, and students are expected to contribute when available. By maintaining a team of about 12, more mature and experienced students train more junior and incoming students on the research process. This near-peer, VIP model allows students to learn in a safe-space, while contributing at increasing levels as they mature through the process (see Thomsen et al. 2022c). The first case study shows how the first author led a graduate student and three undergraduates to conduct research for about one-week in November 2021, without the Assistant Professor. The first author previously participated on three prior research trips and served as a co-lead on a summer 2021 project.

Case study #1: pilot study

Four MLL students and one Ph.D. student from two U.S. doctoral universities conducted a seven-day short-term experiential learning pilot study during the fall break of 2021. Fieldwork was replicated with 10 graduate students and an undergraduate student over spring break 2022, led by four MLL students and two faculty. In each case, the aims were to investigate social-cultural perspectives of salmon (Oncorhynchus ssp.), California sea lions (Zalophus californianus), and Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus) within the Oregon river systems and coastal communities. Both short-term experiential learning field studies were designed and led by the first author (hereafter ‘faculty’ for simplicity). The four research assistants in this pilot study consisted of three domestic students (first-year Ph.D., a graduate applicant, and a 2nd-year undergraduate) and one non-traditional international student. The faculty identifies as a cis-gender male, two students identify as female, and two identify as male. Prior to fieldwork, each student was asked to read the Ph.D. dissertation research proposal related to the study, discuss concepts and content in the lab, join remote interviews conducted by the first author, and perform administrative tasks such as building an itinerary as one example.

The four students flew across four US states and their flights were funded by their university. The faculty’s host university funded three nights of lodging on the Oregon Coast. The students were provided 100 paper surveys and asked to conduct at least 10 field interviews each. Surveys were not analyzed due to the small sample size (46), but instead used as a tool for students to engage community members in the field. Survey data and field interviews were to address community perceptions of sea lions and were conducted in the morning and afternoon hours. The faculty planned and organized one-to-three formal field visits or tours per day during the afternoon and early evening. The faculty trained students in ethnographic methods (e.g. field notes, and semi-structured interview questions), answered student concerns in the field, prompted discussion during group interviews, and led reflective conversations regarding our findings. The students completed 46 surveys and conducted 44 semi-structured interviews in the seven-day pilot. Field notes were taken each day of the study; both in the afternoon and evening, and reflection discussions were led at the end of each day.

In each case, we asked the students to reflect on the biggest takeaway(s) from our research (something they learned, felt, or experienced). These reflections were informed by field notes, a daily debrief, and two post-trip discussions with senior faculty. Each fieldwork moment was written and developed by student participants and used in dialogue to eventually situate them in contemporary debates. Fieldwork moment one and two are presented in conjunction with the first case, and we briefly follow them with reflective connection to post theories and inquiries. The same process is followed in case two. We found that by asking students to engage with critical theories such as posthumanism and postcolonialism, they became more attentive and reflexive to issues surrounding nonhuman lives, and those of Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, we are concerned with how posthuman pedagogy transformed ontologies and cosmologies in a single semester. We discuss four fieldwork moments from the students’ feedback and how they influenced posthuman pedagogy.

Fieldwork moment #1: reflections of Tim

Our fieldwork in Portland, OR (on the Columbia River) was met with restrictions by demarcated private property signs, gated boat-home communities, and a man called Tim. On Saturday, November 20^th, the first group of students gained permission from the owner of a bait and tackle store to survey their customers in the parking lot. The team of five split into two groups, positioned on either side of the pillars, at the front entrance. This was productive as many individuals that entered and exited the store were willing to participate, and responses to salmon-sea lion-human relations ranged across a broad spectrum. Most negative claims towards sea lions came from persons who self-identified as men. Some participants made comments such as ‘you don’t want my opinion’, or ‘I’m not the person to talk to’, once they discovered sea lions were being discussed. Others asserted ‘kill them all’, or ‘they don’t belong in the rivers.’ After reassurance that all opinions and ideas were welcome, participants shared their comments freely and expressed no discomfort in taking the survey. The surveys provided students a reference sheet to refer to when learning how to speak with interlocutors.

After an hour of survey work, Tim exited the store and stood in the center of the entryway. He positioned himself between the two sets of surveyors. He appeared at first to be waiting for someone. Our faculty attempted to greet him but was met without a response. The man continued to look at his phone as if we were not there, still located in the middle of the entrance where customers were now walking around him. Upon a second team member’s attempt to greet him, Tim angrily replied that he was not going to take the survey and that he, (an employee on his break), did not appreciate or support our efforts. Tim claimed that although the team had received permission from the store’s manager, he felt we were obtrusive to both him and the customers. After a survey team member attempted to explain that customers had not expressed this concern, and were free not to participate, he continued to maintain his presence in the center of the entryway. He stared intently at the actions of each team member as they approached various individuals for survey participation. His physical stance was imposing with arms folded and a disgruntled scowl openly expressed. The students felt that Tim was trying to intimidate them into leaving. Upon his reentrance to the store, he was approached by the store’s security personnel who appeared to instruct him to finish his break on the side of the entryway. He remained distant but near the entrance and was instructed to not bother the survey team during the rest of his shift.

Tim, though abrasive, did nothing more than share his opinion, as did the survey participants, whether positive or negative. However, his physical demeanor and body language made the interaction threatening and removed the level of mutual respect that is imperative to the research process. Sarah Tickle (2017) shares that, ‘qualitative participatory methods are understood as the most appropriate way to empower and respect young people in the research process’ (p. 66). Prior to this interaction, the energy level of the survey team had remained high due to the affirmative responses received from participants. This is not to say that participants had to respond in a certain way to elicit a high-energy attitude, but rather that a cordial response allowed for the free flow of communication between groups. Although some individuals declined to participate in the survey and others responded with frustration to the content, Tim was the first individual to display aggression. The students’ interactions with other survey participants directly following this exchange were much more stifled and the members of the survey team all expressed feelings of discouragement.

Some were fearful of continuing to approach other individuals in the area. The experience changed the enthusiastic nature with which surveys (and interviews) were being administered, and the team members now shared concern that they would bother others. The role of intimidation as an element in these interactions was extremely off-putting as one student stated, ‘my social battery ran out when that employee tried to scare us away.’ The evident irony of a singular male subject feeling sufficiently threatened by a group of students discussing marine life to the point of displaying physical intimidation is both confusing and perhaps comical. On a broader scale, this exchange exemplified the disruption of differing ideologies (or beings) and the ensuing response of aggression or physical intimidation. One student noted in our evening reflection, ‘it’s funny, after doing fieldwork in the morning [Tim] and then the tour [Bonneville Dam], there’s not much that separates them.’ They’re both the byproduct of a colonial legacy that’s blocking our path. The students eventually rebounded from the negative interaction with Tim, and turned it into a positive experience by viewing Tim’s behavior as representative of a neocolonial legacy that favors the status quo, at the expense of nonhuman lives.

A post response to conventional qualitative methods

St. Pierre (2021) discuss the refusal of rigid research designs, pre-determined methodologies, and the onto-epistemological foundation in conventional qualitative methods. The above reflection highlights transition from pre-determined methods to something new. This was due to our empirical experiences in the field and our reflective dialogue. We questioned the efficacy of pre-determined questionnaires and quantifiable reason, for their interest in stating the obvious. Many anglers in the Pacific Northwest that hate seeing sea lions. While these sentiments are not the opinion of most people in this study, sea lions often represent the disappearance of salmon. These narratives refuse to see themselves in the struggle for salmon bodies and the erasure of customs, laws, and traditions in relation to the multispecies community that they are entangled with. More than the material possession of salmon, traditional peoples in the Pacific Northwest territory relate to salmon as cousin; first to sacrifice their flesh for growing human populations. Tim saw salmon as a possession for sport, angling opportunity, and recreational interests. Surveys, questionnaires, and structured interviews cannot address the depth of these sentiments and lived experiences (i.e. fragility, anger, aggression) in an era of mutualism.

Fieldwork moment #2: reflections of Jon

On Monday, November 22, we met with a professor, Jon, from a regional university. Jon introduced himself as a natural resource economist, involved in several large grants and projects. After a few days of gaining more insight than we had expected, the group was full of anticipation for the wisdom we would gain in speaking with someone with experience in the field. Jon began the interview by telling us that he read a few articles on posthumanism, and he rolled his eyes at the concept. The professor took issue with our research being ‘normative’. He explained how ‘biased’ research would never be taken seriously in an academic setting, ironically ignoring his own biases. Whether we’re discussing indigenous logic/perspectivism, multi-naturalism (see De Castro 2019), or posthuman theory (Thomsen 2022), his sentiments were that practical science-based approaches (i.e. cost-benefit analysis) was of top priority, which conformed to a neoliberal capitalist model that has marginalized Indigenous peoples, women, minorities, and nonhumans for centuries.

Posthumanism was dangerous to him, as he questioned its limits, ‘where do we stop in giving animals rights?’ The first author probed him about the legal positioning of nonhuman personhood (rooted in indigenous philosophy), citing policy developments involving the Māori in contemporary New Zealand. He explained that the Māori were different than Tribal Nations of Oregon. The Māori had significant fishing and land rights (acknowledged by written treaties, in their own language) prior to the decision of granting their land personhood that apparently Oregon Indigenous Peoples did not. Claims for similar rights in the North Pacific were not universal due to historic agreements, negotiations, treaties, and intact fishing areas established between some groups and colonial governments in the 1800s, and unevenly distributed in the 1970s. We then probed him on positions of power in resource management and cited ‘usual and accustomed’ fishing rights of the United States, not granted to Siletz, Cowlitz, Grand Ronde, and various Lower Columbia Tribal Nations (see The United States Department of Justice 2017). Jon’s response was that Tribal Nations are becoming more included in co-management arrangements, culverts (i.e. fish obstructions) were being consulted for removal via priori of the state’s management strategy, US commercial practices are near-zero bycatch, and talks about dam removal are ongoing. ‘Posthumanism simply isn’t necessary’.

The research team felt discouraged. So many times, we wanted to debate with him. Yet, every time, we refrained. As evidenced by Jon’s interaction, we knew our contributions would fall upon deaf ears. After an hour of being spoken down to, invalidated, and talked over, we concluded our meeting, and our team took some time to reflect. Initially, we were discouraged to the point of contemplating canceling our fieldwork for the rest of the day. Our interview had not gone the way that we had planned. The students had been disappointed that such an educated person was not even open to discussing the merits of a counter perspective that challenged the status quo, perhaps even his own identity and work. Who were we to question him? As frustrating as the experience had been, it also taught us many things about the challenges of conducting ethnographic research and that a posthuman pedagogy may not be embraced by those who already hold power in more-than-human relations. We walked away with an understanding that sometimes ethnographic research is messy and doesn’t go the way we would like, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.

A post response to humanist supremacy

In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant stressed the importance of studying humanity from two perspectives (Sørensen 2013). This involved examining how nature makes human beings (i.e. the study of Other), and exploring how humans, as autonomous individuals capable of free action, make himself or have the ability and responsibility to do so (i.e. human-centric). Humanist philosophies were widely celebrated at the advent of the enlightenment era and fundamentally constructed in the belief of man’s (i.e. Euro male subject) supremacy, privilege, and reason over nature. The authors discuss how the granting of power and legitimately onto the human creates an imagery where the human is independent of nature and matter; the ontological foundation of modern science and ‘belief in progress through science technology’ (p. 116). This fieldwork moment captures these phenomena. Institutional hierarchies devote funding to seasoned professors, for expertise and practice in delivering publications/scientific information to the public, and private funders. Many of these professors are practicing positive methods from decades previous and separate theory from their analysis or act to replicate ‘proven’ theories in their analysis. These works largely reproduce humanist foundations and create value-laden judgment while taking possession of ‘objective’ language and culture. Cost-benefit analysis cannot displace power structures upheld by humanist claims for progress in an era of mutualism.

Case study #2: the master of tourism management (MTM) students

After successfully leading the first group of students in November 2021, the first and third authors co-taught a Master of Tourism Management experiential-learning course at the third author’s institution, in the spring semester of 2022. Over the first seven weeks, students reviewed the first author’s case study, a wide array of natural resource management, environmental social science, postcolonial, and posthumanist theories, ethnographic methods, and data analysis. Students practiced interviewing in the local community and were eager to ‘get into the field’ after enduring strict lockdown restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Once in the field, they were eager to conduct interviews, learn from faculty leads (including the first author here), and improve ‘in real time’. Students discussed lived encounters with more than 50 people with various contexts in Portland, Astoria, Newport, the lands of the Grande Ronde Tribal Nation, and Oregon City, OR. At each stop over the nine days, students increasingly conducted more in-depth interviews, were less shy to speak with interlocutors, and were more outspoken during daily reflections as a group. This helped to shape their perspectives in analysis writing for publication. Fieldwork moment three captures a brief creative non-fiction vignette in dialogue (McGannon and McMahon 2022). It represents reflection of management practices and control of the bios that translate to violence, suffering, and death.

Fieldwork moment #3: reflections of nonhuman captivity

Along the Oregon Coast, there is an aquarium and education center with a goal to provide its visitors with hands-on experiences, marketed to young people and families. The center seeks to build knowledge and interest in the extravagant world of marine life. After spending time in this space and indulging in the experiences provided, we were struck by one student on our team who said, ‘what are we teaching kids by having this – to engage in science or that it is okay to keep animals in captivity?’ There were many beautiful species of fish and different marine life in enclosures ‘being robbed of a way of life that was never meant to be taken away from them’. We even observed a dead fish and a few behaving in a manner that was not natural to fish - perhaps a signal of distress.

A feeling of sadness rolled over the group as we realized what this meant to us. The center indirectly promotes captivity and enculturates an ethic of caging animals with the hopes of educating the general human population. We felt that this was unjust to the particular marine life being held in these sites.

• S1: it is not appropriate for human beings to take a living being that has a heartbeat and a conscience and cage it for our amusement. For our younger generations to see this and to develop thoughts that legitimize these actions only makes a posthuman approach to coexistence substantially more difficult.

• S2: But how else do we fund conservation, what else are we supposed to do?

• S3: the focus should be to provide better habitat and a way of life for our friends in the rivers and the sea. Being exposed to animal captivity as children may produce human adults that are likely to replicate these practices because they saw it as a positive experience in their youth. I think, if we care at all, there are better ways to promote this type of marine education that are less invasive.

• S4: There are alternatives and substitutes for funding. Technology is there to utilize artificial fish, and XR [extended reality] can get us to immersive learning experiences without animal suffering.

From a posthumanist and postcolonial lens, the students had clearly embraced a critical approach to how we teach and learn about marine life in the U.S. Later that night, the students discussed how unfair it was to the animals in captivity. Abstract notions of ‘marine life’ became real to them. Particular individuals were starting to matter.

A post response to ecosystem superiority

Relating to self, nature, and Other through entangled cosmologies is emphasized in posthuman pedagogy (Riley 2020; Stewart 2018; Vaughan 2019). Ecosystem management distances the human from natures by centering the human to the object of scientific research and legitimizes the captivity of individuals to preserve Other populations (i.e. the wild). We do not necessarily advocate for the abolition of all zoos or aquariums but do question the efficacy of these practices, and the foundational logic of limiting agency to human interests alone. Our reflection to self, nature, and Other is evident by posthuman claims for nonhuman others, including machine. It reveals sentiments for more active engagement with restoration, rescue, rehabilitation, and principles of ecotourism. This includes a commitment to community, environment, and the welfare interests of nonhuman animals (Fennell and Thomsen 2021). These interests should align with a wholistic imagery of community, including traditional marginalized human and nonhuman peoples in an era of mutualism.

Fieldwork moment #4: reflections of Peter

We were ‘humbled to get the opportunity to hear from Peter’, a Professor and expert in fisheries management at a public university in Oregon. Peter used a slide deck from 2006 to present the issues of salmon recovery and continues to do because, as he explained, not much has changed for Pacific salmon. Peter discussed the three rules of succeeding as a politician or a senior administrator at a policy agency. Decision makers must adhere to (1) popularity, (2) achievability, and (3) affordability, and they should have at least two of these three traits in any proposal. Here lies the salmon paradox. These fish are popular (in the abstract) amongst many peoples in the Columbia River Basin but saving them would most likely be achieved by removing dams and drastically reconfiguring human ‘progress’; an unpopular sentiment of those already in power, and expensive. Peter shared his experience working with state and national governments worldwide on fisheries management, and how he had come to question current modeling systems that seem to be failing marine life in favor of ‘big fishing’, akin to ‘big [corporate] agricultural’ on land.

We were surprised to hear that salmon were 40 million years old and that they could soon become locally extinct due to Euro-American over-fishing, pollution, and dam building. Peter shared that salmon have proven resilient and adaptable in nearly all regions of the contemporary world and are even viewed as non-native ‘pests’ in ecosystems where they have been introduced. Salmon have survived ice ages, the Missoula Floods, and repatriated habitat after dams have been removed. Over 100 distinct salmon stocks have disappeared since European settlement, and only one-tenth of the historic 16-million (conservative estimate) salmon now return to spawn in the Columbia River Drainage, during a good year. Hatcheries are being reduced due to issues with genetic diversity loss, and fewer salmon are expected to return year after year. Salmon are endangered, threatened, or extinct in two-thirds of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California habitats. Coastal range salmon (South Oregon/North California) make up a large proportion of healthy populations, with access to habitat and ocean. Species that spend a greater amount of time in freshwater, like Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), are in more trouble than salmon species that do not i.e. Coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch). This is largely due to habitat degradation, dams, urbanization, mining, forestry, farming, and fishing as major anthropogenic causes of salmon declines. We were eager to learn ecological knowledge and how socio-ecological relations are often confounded by (neo)colonial interests that favor corporate profits over animals or local people.

Peter continued, ‘30 years ago when I arrived in the Pacific Northwest, more people lived in rural communities where farming, forestry, and living wage jobs were popular. This has changed with rapid acceleration. Identities, values, and belief systems are becoming further divergent’. The priori of management regimes has changed the human relationship with salmon. Student interns and managers make normative claims that place uneven value on so called ‘wild’ and ‘hatchery’ fish. New graduates often focus on tracking ‘less valuable’ salmon that return to rivers, searching for the absence of the adipose fin that has been genetically altered to identify fish raised in hatcheries. Clubbing, death, and the capture of eggs for further production is the result. Peter then played a YouTube video called ‘Celilo Falls silenced by the Dalles Dam’. One student shared, ‘being from Europe, I get the sense that Indigenous voices are silenced in the United States like many places globally’. This sentiment was shared by the group at large, and they would later get to meet with First Peoples at a sacred site and visit their cultural museum, which we discuss in another paper on ‘more-than-Western’ (posthuman) pedagogy. In a time when two-thirds of Oregon counties want to succeed and become a part of new, ‘Greater Idaho’ (Perry 2022), what becomes of the identity of the Pacific Northwest and the 10,000-year ethnographic memory of Indigenous People?

A post response for the individual

Postcolonial and posthuman theories have guided us through this discourse, and we arrive at a pragmatic paradox in advocating for the rights, welfare, and agency of particular individuals (Thomsen et al. 2022a). The population of salmon is dependent on hatchery production and is supported by numerous human interests, including Tribal Nations. Hatcheries also support angling opportunities for sport fishers within the river systems. Human interests dictate the value of particular nonhumans (e.g. wild, hatchery, sea lion, etc.) and cannot be easily transformed. Basin wide conversation exists to develop new forms of interconnected electricity, dam breaching and removal, transportation, etc. These initiatives are led by US States, federal government agencies, and numerous tribal nations, along with scientists, advocates, industries, and more. However, for the interest of science and practice, some may relate this paradox to what Pinch (2011) calls the ‘uncertainty principle’, and that doing and writing about science as a scientist is mutually exclusive to doing and writing about science as a science studies practitioner.

This view is largely apparent in the study design, information, and foundational elements to science and wildlife management in the United States Columbia River Basin. Drawing from Barad’s (2011) agential realism, we are attuned to the ‘intra-active constitution (rather than two-way production) of subjects and objects, nature and culture, and matter and meaning’ (p. 7) in the era of mutualism. By largely refusing science studies practices in fisheries management (or viewing them as mutually exclusive endeavors), including feminist science studies, postcolonial, and posthuman scholars, we run the risk of misrepresenting mutual constitution of subject/object, nature/culture, human/nonhuman, and science/society, ‘and also, crucially, to how the exclusions that are enacted in making such cuts matter for epistemological, methodological, ontological, and ethical reasons’ (Barad 2011, 3). Barad (2011) contends, ‘uncertainty principles represent an absolute in principle limit on the possibilities for knowledge-making, not a practical limit that might be overcome’ (p. 1). Posthuman pedagogy is an intimate practice of relationality that may highlight future works and trajectories to better safeguard salmon, sea lion, and multispecies Others. Foremost, posthuman pedagogy is concerned with the dimensions of power and politics. This may include historic and contemporary water regimes and water use (e.g. irrigation districts, agriculture, and wetlands drainage); tribal rights and sovereignty (e.g. ratified and unratified treaties, and inter-tribal agreements); and the plight of species management regimes over nonhuman Others (e.g. sea lion, wolf, mustang, spotted frog, etc.).

Conclusion

Posthumanism: an intersectional tool for pedagogy in practice

This study provided two related case studies to contextualize the depth and context to posthuman pedagogy in practice and unpacks barriers in constructing posthuman worlds. Students learned that the Pacific Northwest is a fragile human-dominated geographical area that is dominated by (Euro-American) physical and ideological power structures. This includes the objectification of nonhuman bodies, and institutions that mostly speak of conservation in the abstract. This paper illustrated our attempts to teach with nonhumans, and to represent the conditions for salmon and sea lions in the Columbia River Basin. Posthuman perspectives are critical to the environmental social sciences due to their theoretical position concerning political, social, and environmental issues.

Posthuman pedagogy is ultimately an ontological trap in that it is a practice of understanding the nonhuman world from a human lens. The VIP model by itself is a useful tool for graduate and undergraduate student training as everyone felt that they were contributing, and constantly learning how to do new things, and do them at a higher level. Posthumanism and postcolonial critical theories elevated student learning by challenging them to critique the data collected from a particular theoretical positioning. Even if they did not fully agree with it, all participants of the research team expressed that this approach made them rethink what we owe nonhumans.

We suggest four openings to embracing posthuman pedagogy in experiential learning education: (1) Each person should state their positionality at the start of the study, and all team members should respect each person’s view as nonhuman views range on a spectrum. Faculty should then touch base with students throughout the research process to see how each person’s positionality has or hasn’t changed, and why, (2) Spend extra time at the beginning of a research project to build trust within the team so that students are more caring, productive, and engaged in the field so that when they encounter someone who is hostile against nonhumans they can ‘lean on’ each other, (3) Promote near-peer mentorship (VIP) from student to student, based on experience, not hierarchical status, (4) Allow the students to reflect on their experiences through a variety of mediums (e.g. discussions, journal reflections, etc.) as their own worldviews are likely to be challenged. Further research into posthuman pedagogy should be tested for its efficacy on whether or not students view conservation and wildlife-human coexistence differently at scale and through multiple contexts. Though this was an initial attempt to apply posthuman pedagogy in practice, each participant on the research team started to question our (human) relationship to nonhumans. Only by teaching nonhuman rights, welfare, and agency can we begin to treat them as equals in practice.

Authors’ contribution

All authors contributed equally to the manuscript, including data collection and writing sections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).