Living with Wolves

This first ethnography of the return of wolves to Germany explores what it feels like to live with large predators.

With their return to Germany, wolves leave their traces in personal feelings, in the atmospheres of rural landscapes and even in the sentiments and moods that govern political arenas. Thorsten Gieser explores the role of affects, emotions, moods and atmospheres in the emerging coexistence between humans and wolves. Bridging the gap between anthropology and ethology, the author literally walks in the tracks of wolves to follow their affective agency in a more-than-human society. In nuanced analyses, he shows how wolves move, irritate and excite us, offering answers to the primary question: What does it feel like to coexist with these large predators?

»One of the main insights we get from this nicely written and well-argued book is that not all wolves are the same. As in relations between humans, knowing the idiosyncrasies of a specific wolf individual can be crucial for balancing encounters in an increasingly tight ecology ...The author seems right in observing that, whether we like it or not, current socioecological dynamics lead us to be 'more and more entangled' with wolves, wild boars, raccoons, ducks, nutrias, and many other wild species.«

Autorentext
Thorsten Gieser (PhD) lehrt seit 2011 Ethnologie an der Universität Koblenz und ist Senior Researcher im ERC-Projekt »Veterinarization of Europe? Hunting for Wild Boar Futures in the Time of African Swine Fever« (BOAR) am Institut für Ethnologie der Tschechischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Er ist Umweltanthropologe mit Fokus auf der Koexistenz von Mensch und Tierwelt in Deutschland, insbesondere auf die Rückkehr des Wolfs und der Jagd als eine Form der Mensch-Tier Beziehung.