Collecting as multiple reciprocal capture: Ethnographers, scientists and specimens in a cosmopolitical key

Abstract

Inspired by Isabelle Stengers’, cosmopolitical proposal, this article explores how our work can become a matter of interest to the scientists we work with based on a conceptualization of the capture of biological specimens and their ethnographic and biological implications. In this way, we can imagine how the biologist can be symbiote with animals and plants in excess of their species, which involves the sacrifice in presence of the entity that becomes specimen. And from there, imagine how our ethnographic exercise can be symbiote of the Biologist practice, as well as the animals and plants captured, which involves a type of criticism in presence of the scientist and those other entities involved.