ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on the theme of boundary crossing that permeates previous chapters. The author explores a new frontier for anthropological primatology: intersecting with humanistic fields of study. She exposes the epistemological affinities that primatology shares with sociocultural anthropology, such as the importance of being reflexive in our work, and what further insight primatologists can gain from reaching across the aisle. For example, she shows how being cognizant of context and contingencies helps us better interpret the patterns of primate behavior we observe. Because it is becoming increasingly difficult to study a primate population that is not in some way affected by anthropogenic factors, primatology’s domain of study is now more so than ever multispecies. The author therefore argues for the need to examine how humans and other primates behave together, and how they interface and change one another, socially, cognitively, and biologically. To effectively do so, primatologists must engage with the perspectives and approaches emerging from the bourgeoning realm of “human-animal studies.” This multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary body of work aims to uncover the complex and multifaceted ways human lives intersect with, influence, and are affected by non-human animals. When primatologists draw from this work they are afforded, for example, the opportunity to recognize the subjectivities of primates and see them as agents, which in turn helps one to better interpret and explain their behavior. Just as human-animal studies scholars aim to understand the human as emergent through their relations with nonhuman beings, contemporary anthropological primatology can draw from these approaches to understand the primate as emergent through its relations with other beings, including humans.
