Exploring Earthly relations through curiography

Abstract

Recognizing that humans inhabit Earth with multiple others and that humans have worsened opportunities for life on Earth calls for a reassessment of the research practices through which the world is explored. The development of more-than-human methodologies is underway, as reflected in the emergence of more-than-human or multispecies ethnographies. However, leaning on ethnography as a methodological approach easily leads to the perpetuation of a human-centric worldview and directs scholars towards the conventional methods and views of scientific activity. We introduce curiography as an alternate mode of engaging with earthly relations, in a response-able and polite way. Curiography, stemming from curiosity, is a process of knowledge co-constitution valuing sensitivity, literal engagements, openness, politeness, and listening. It situates itself at the crossroads of post-qualitative and post-anthropocentric inquiry and is informed by relational ontology. This chapter explores, what happens when theorizing, knowing, and knowers are considered in the spirit of curiography?