Book Launch of 'Ce que les humains font avec la vie' (What humans do to life)

Convened by Michael Drolet (Worcester College)

Discussants: Rosalie Allain (School of Anthropology and Ethnology), Michael Drolet (Worcester College), & David Gellner (All Souls College)

Ce que les humains font avec la vie, Perig Pitrou, Presses Universitaires de France, 2024

To attend this event, please register here

What Humans Do with Life
How can we coexist with living beings in increasingly degraded ecological environments? How can we create living conditions that reduce inequalities between human lives and promote a better quality of life? How can we make responsible use of biotechnologies? How can we harmonize the diverse relationships human societies maintain with the world, taking into account their ties to various living environments? These four interconnected questions are linked to a central issue of our time: how do we live on planet Earth?

At the crossroads of the biological and the social, these questions extend beyond disciplines like ecology and biology. They lie at the core of a rapidly expanding field: the anthropology of life. Across the globe, humans perceive life as a force that shapes living beings, producing effects—growth, reproduction, aging, and death—on their bodies. From a comparative perspective, this book highlights how ethnographic research helps us better understand the ways societies organize themselves around this force and the inherent fragility of human life that depends on it.