How Pinot Noir Thinks
Marion Demossier
Inspired by the work of the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn 'How Forests Think. Towards an Anthropology Beyond the Human', I investigate to what extent the turn in environmental anthropology, especially the post-human paradigm, sheds some light on the study of Pinot Noir. Kohn's work challenges anthropocentric perspectives, proposing an anthropology that extends beyond human boundaries. His work seeks to integrate multiple ways of understanding the cosmos and rethinks the nature of existence by recognizing intelligence in all life. Starting from this premise, I would like to argue that Pinot Noir or the vine (with a focus on the plant) has little in common with forests in Amazonia although thinking the non-human might provide some creative solutions to environmental adaptation. Pinot Noir is, first and foremost, the product of human creativity and its domestication has relied extensively on human ingenuity. It is also, however, the result of nearly one hundred years of intense monocultural control of its production and as such has left little imagination for environmental biodiversity. I will discuss through ethnographic examples how the post-human turn might benefit a Pinot Noir focus.
Marion Demossier is a social anthropologist by training. She is passionate about teaching ethnography as a modern languages method and believes that ethnographic theories and practices provide a unique mode of analysis of contemporary cultures and societies. Her research seeks to engage with different forms of ethnographies in diverse geographic locations, at different historical junctures and across humanities and social sciences. Her fieldwork experience includes France, Italy, the UK, New-Zealand, Switzerland and Zambia. Her research focuses on wine-growers and terroir defined as a link between place, taste and 'quality'. Her new project investigates the relationship wine-growers have established with the environment and the ecological turn which has emerged in French rural society. Her expertise extends to food heritage, museums, the Roma and French politics and policies.