Can Pandas Measure Kinship to Conserve the Species? Implications of Knowing More-than-Human Heritage-Making

This issue by Christof Lammer examines how practices of measuring kinship shape more-than-human heritage-making in species conservation. Focusing on giant panda breeding programmes, the text analyses how genealogies, genetic algorithms, behavioural studies, and experimental setups enact pandas as both objects and agents of conservation knowledge. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and Critical Heritage Studies, the contribution argues that decentring the human in heritage requires a simultaneous recentring of human knowledge practices, infrastructures, and ethical decisions that determine whose lives are valued, protected, or managed in the name of biodiversity and heritage. “tbc. working through heritage concepts" is a wordbook series published by the Centre of Advanced Study “inherit. heritage in transformation". Every issue works with a key concept of heritage, its history, current state, or future transformations. "inherit" team and fellows contribute to the series, which is updated with every fellow intake. Concept-work in heritage is always in a process of tbc: “to be confirmed” (still under development, evolving) and “to be continued” (an ongoing process, part of a longer historical narrative). This series of short publications captures work-in-progress on concepts, notions, and words that are significant in the research taking place at "inherit". It gives space to experimentation, highlighting the continuous, transforming and transformative nature of heritage research.