Traps and the Ontology of Coexistence

Abstract

This article explores human–animal–object relations through the lens of “animal traps” employed by the Pwo Karen in the western forests of Thailand, working within a posthumanist ontological framework. Rather than presenting a purely descriptive ethnography, it moves from field to theory: brief, situated scenes of trap-making and use serve as starting points for analysis in dialogue with Descola, Viveiros de Castro, Bryant, Corsín Jiménez, Haraway, and related contemporary thinkers. Methodologically, the study takes the form of analytic, reflexive writing grounded in extensive field engagement. It describes several trap forms—fish weirs (Pwo), bird snares, monkey cages, and bamboo field traps for barking deer—and then interprets these devices through questions of ontology and the ethics of hunting in contemporary anthropology and philosophy. The analysis advances three main arguments. First, animal traps are not merely technical devices but “hybrid” formations that emerge at the intersection of humans, animals, and material forces, condensing gravity, water flow, animal behavior, and the hunter’s imagination into a single mechanism. Second, Pwo Karen cosmology situates humans, animals, and the environment as nonhuman kin within a “cosmological society,” in which sacred powers and the rule of chance govern the legitimate bounds of hunting. Trap-setting is therefore filtered through ethical commitments to sharing, limiting pain, and avoiding the killing of entire groups or animals revered by the forest spirits. Third, episodes of moral distress—such as the use of a monkey cage that led to the death of an entire family of monkeys—are transformed into local moral rules, revealing traps as sites where humans are also “caught” within their own regimes of responsibility. The article’s theoretical contribution is to conceptualize Pwo Karen animal traps as technologies with their own ontological status and as ethical mediators between humans and nonhumans. This case extends current debates on technological design and artificial intelligence (AI) by foregrounding an “ethics of consumption” and responsibility toward other beings in the Anthropocene, seen from the standpoint of a community that still lives concretely with forests, animals, and sacred powers in everyday life.