Abstract
New York sociologists Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut carried out a three-year ethnographic study of the urban beekeeping scene in New York City during 2010–13, and this remarkable book is the fruit of that research. Its publication is very timely in the context of rapid growth in the uptake and popularity of urban beekeeping in numerous Western cities in recent years – the eponymous ‘Buzz’ – as well as the burgeoning public and media interest in bees amidst growing concern about declining honeybee numbers that have been linked to agricultural pesticide usage. The book looks at beekeeping from various thematic angles, with each chapter covering a distinct aspect of ‘the buzz’: from the media buzz about the phenomenon of sudden disappearances of bee colonies known as Colony Collapse Disorder; to the intimate buzz of human-insect exchanges and interrelations in beekeeping practices; to the inflection of notions of bee domesticity with gendered discourses of essentialized identity; to the racialized buzz of species distinctions and their genealogical contribution to projects of citizenship; to the commercial buzz of commodified bee products and the often invisible role of bee ‘labour’ in networks of global capital; and finally to arguments concerning the desirability of various bee-related lifestyle and policy changes in the interests of more ethical human-bee relations. There are also common strands recurring through several of these chapters so that together they constitute a richly woven tapestry.
The ethnographic depth of the research underpinning Buzz is impressive, with the authors having immersed themselves enthusiastically in the world of urban beekeeping, initially through participation in a six-month beekeeping course in Central Park, allowing them to learn about bees and the practice of beekeeping whilst simultaneously establishing connections with urban beekeepers and learning in-depth about their social milieu. This first-hand ethnographic knowledge and experience is evident throughout, and is a real strength of the book. Moore and Kosut weave a reflexive narrative that oscillates between a personal journey and an analysis in the more traditional sense, in an excellent example of the possibilities of participant-observation where skilled researchers are able to maintain an appropriate balance and productive tension between those two component elements.
Theoretically the book is situated intriguingly at the intersection of cultural sociology with human-animal studies, and thus conjoins more conventional sociological analysis of subcultures and social movements with theoretical currents in posthumanism and multispecies ethnography. In addition to the numerous lively vignettes arising from the ethnography, this challenging and multi-faceted theoretical and methodological location is often what makes Buzz most interesting, with the authors simultaneously insisting upon the relevance and inescapability of cultural analysis whilst making a conscious attempt to go beyond the human-centred approach this usually entails. This is not without its problems however, and where occasionally the book seems to fall short – at least for this reader – it is often because whereas the narrative is thoroughly infused with a flair for socio-cultural analysis that brilliantly illuminates the human dynamics of urban beekeeping, the engagement with human-animal studies seems relatively less organic and fully developed in comparison. That is perhaps not surprising, given that the authors are very open about not having engaged in much depth with human-animal studies prior to embarking on this project. Nor is it always a weakness; it means, for example, that their mobilization of multispecies ethnography has a wonderfully experimental, ad-hoc and explorative feel about it, which I think will make it particularly useful and stimulating reading for advanced students wondering how to go about multispecies research in practice. But for those who are already familiar with ideas and debates in human-animal studies the book does not really move any of the key debates in the field forward as much as one might hope, and as much as might well have been possible given the fascinating subject matter.
Buzz is permeated with a real sense of delight in discovery which propels the reader along through wonderful descriptive passages and draws him or her into the researchers’ own journeys as well as into the multispecies world of beekeeping. Along with the generally light, accessible and at times near-lyrical style of writing, this makes Buzz unusually readable for an academic research monograph. On the other hand, and not disconnected from this, where the book engages with more abstract theoretical ideas from posthumanism or human-animal studies, it can sometimes read too much like an introductory text presenting these ideas to the uninitiated, and consequently there is at times a lack of theoretical or analytical depth. Influential ideas are gestured towards and apt connections skillfully made, but trickier matters are often left hanging or concluded rather unsatisfactorily with a clever turn of phrase. Although persisting with them in a more exacting and rigorous way might have risked interfering with the present tone of the book, it might also have proffered the possibility of contributing in a more theoretically significant way to the field of human-animal studies. Nevertheless, Buzz is a very sophisticated and insightful ethnographic study, which deserves to be widely read, providing a lively and always-stimulating example of how to do reflexive cultural sociology in a more-than-human world.