The “field” as a place of interspecies encounters

on animals and zookeepers in the zoos

Abstract

This article deals with ethnography in the Zoobotanical Park Service of the Emilio Goeldi Paraense Museum, located in the city of Belém (PA) about the interspecific experiences between the professionals appointed as zookeepers and the captive animals that constitute a natural collection of the Park. Here I describe and problematize the work in the field through these meetings and conservation practices in the spatialities of animal enclosures and the implications on the conservation of species and control and organization of individuals through the structure of the facilities and architecture, as well as the possibilities of carrying out an interspecies ethnography in the captive environment. This allows us to rethink the “field” as a place of interspecies encounters, inseparable from heterogeneous species, things, objects and practices for which they are articulated in the zoo, where humans and non-humans come together through cultures, politics and natures.