Feral Futures in the Anthropocene

Feral Futures is an undergraduate research group that
formed spontaneously after taking Professor Anna Tsing’s
powerful and awareness-raising Anthropology and the
Athropocene class (ANTH 147) during the Winter 2021 quarter.
The class introduced the entanglements of non-human animals
and environment connected to human interference which impacts
global ecosystems in catastrophic ways. The interference is
revealed through a contextual lens expressed in the Feral Atlas
(FeralAtlas.org), a virtual, global library of collected scientific
examination and research, art, music, poetry, and literary critique
detailing the nexus of the effects facing us today. Students were
involved in group and individual research projects that promoted
personal empowerment in identifying origins and, most
frequently, unintended consequences of human impact on the
environment.

As the quarter drew to a close, Professor Tsing urged each
individual student to share what was learned beyond the
classroom and develop a life-long sense of responsibility to
prevention, intervention, solutions and disarmament of the
human-initiated triggers that lead to environmental destruction.

Six students sought to continue what we learned and either
develop a group project or individual projects to expand our
understanding of issues presented in class. The goal is to
complete our research and offer results to Professor Tsing for
feedback by the end of this quarter or during the summer break.

We set up a weekly meeting and sought to work on a group
project. After a few weeks, we felt a more impactful way to
proceed would be through individual projects, using the group for
feedback and shared resource suggestions. The initial research
projects include fire management policies, loss of butterfly
populations, societal effects of inmates training shelter dogs,
multiple impacts on a Middle East fishing village struggling to
cope with corporate oil destruction during political conflict. Each
of us has been faced with schedule pressures and are now looking
to adapt a different group structure, meeting in smaller groups
and during more customized times for the smaller groups. We use
Discord to stay in touch and anyone interested in anthropogenic
research can reach out to Feral Futures on Discord.

The research group that came from an anthropology class is
exemplary of the umbrella-like nature of anthropology. The field
of study is expansive and examines the intersection of human
activity with the past and today. The study is not limited to
culture, archaeology, forensics, primatology, physical or
linguistics. Within each classic field there is the opportunity to
blend sociology, history, psychology, art, botany, chemistry,
zoology, math, biology in order to create a wider field of view
about the existence of humans on this planet. Anthropology
allows us to look to our past and the future simultaneously. It
provides increased rigor, versatility in science and strengthens
the ability to question and answer how we humans came to exist
and where we go from here.