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SUMMARY:Book Launch: Naturekind: Language\, Culture and Power Beyond the H
 uman - Melissa Leach\, CCI
DTSTART:20251016T163000Z
DTEND:20251016T173000Z
UID:TALK235252@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:130933
DESCRIPTION:Join us to celebrate the release of a new book by Melissa Leac
 h\, CCI Executive Director\, and James Fairhead: Naturekind: Language\, Cu
 lture and Power Beyond the Human.\n\nAre language and culture uniquely hum
 an\, justifying an exceptionalism that sets people apart from the rest of 
 nature?\n\nNew discoveries in the biological sciences have challenged this
  assumption\, finding syntax\, symbolism and social learning beyond the hu
 man\, and identifying culture as a second inheritance system across the ph
 yla from whales to insects and plants. Biologists are constrained\, howeve
 r\, by the mechanistic ways communication is understood.\n\nIn Naturekind\
 , Melissa Leach and James Fairhead address this impasse by extending insig
 hts from structural linguistics\, social semiotics\, anthropology and Indi
 genous theorization into wider life\, integrating them with new biological
  findings to develop a new structural biosemiotics paradigm. They suggest 
 that this can provide a unified theory of meaning-making across all of nat
 ure\, or “naturekind\,” allowing new theorisation about human and nonh
 uman communication and culture. They examine people’s communicative enco
 unters with chickens\, horses\, bees\, bats and plants\, and with assembla
 ges of living and nonliving entities—forests\, seas\, soils and cities.\
 n\nMarrying the new biology with the structural social sciences\, they con
 tend\, provides powerful insights for living well with wider life on a sha
 red planet\, transforming political relations and shaping conservation and
  restoration policy and practice.\n\nChaired by Professor Rebecca Kilner\,
  Professor of Zoology at the University of Cambridge\, this event is an op
 portunity to hear and discuss the book’s arguments and implications with
  the authors and an influential multi-disciplinary panel:\n\nLiana Chua\, 
 Professor of Social Anthropology\, University of Cambridge\n\nArik Kershen
 baum\, Researcher and Author on Animal Communication\, Zoology\, Universit
 y of Cambridge\n\nBram Buscher\, Professor and Chair of the Sociology of D
 evelopment and Change at Wageningen University\n\nFollowed by a drinks rec
 eption\; copies of the book will be available for purchase at a discount.
LOCATION:Pembroke Auditorium\, Pembroke College
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