Animal, Body, Data: Starling Murmurations and the Dynamic of Becoming In-formation

Body and Society 27 (2):83-106 (2021)
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Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that data modelling is becoming a crucial, if not dominant, vector for our understanding of animal populations and is consequential for how we study the affective relations between individual bodies and the communities to which they belong. It takes up the relationship between animal, body and data, following the datafication of starling murmurations, to explore the topological relationships between nature, culture and science. The case study thus embodies a data journey, invoking the tactics claimed by social or natural scientists, who generated recent discoveries in starling murmurations, including their topological expansions and contractions. The article concludes with thoughts and suggestions for further research on animal/data entanglement, and threads the concept of databodiment throughout, as a necessary dynamic for the formation and maintenance of communities.

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Mickey Vallee
Athabasca University

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References found in this work

When Species Meet.Donna Jeanne Haraway - 2007 - Univ of Minnesota Press.
Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study.Sabina Leonelli - 2016 - London: University of Chicago Press.
The animal that therefore I am.Jacques Derrida - 2008 - New York: Fordham University Press. Edited by Marie-Louise Mallet.

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