Unusual Travel Companions for the Anthropocene. Contemporary Enactments of the Iberian Donkeys.

Drawing on Actor Network Theory, multi-species ethnography and posthuman approaches, the paper presents some results of an on-going, slow and self-funded research on some contemporary uses, meanings and enactments of various donkey breeds of the Iberian Peninsula. For doing so, firstly, the presentation addresses some debates around the inclusion of animals as study objects in the research agenda of sociology. Then, making recourse to the posthuman theory, it briefly addresses a number of key debates around the notion of the Anthropocene. Thirdly it puts in context and describes some of the techno-cultural processes in which the donkey is currently getting involved and through which it is challenging many conventional narratives, stereotypes and binaries of western thinking (as well as the sociological one). It is in this stage where children, young people and activists emerge as elements of entanglements that have been studied in this research through qualitative methods. To conclude with, the array of study cases, examples and articulations with posthuman approaches will lead to open up fields of inquiry and pose alternatives to the ways in which the diverse crisis that the Anthropocene gathers are being framed. In other words, the paper will defend that the donkeys, as an unusual companions in the multiple crisis we are involved in, are beings that we can think-together with for developing a less anthropocentric (and harmful) social theory.