Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas“A delightful read [and] an important addition to human-animal relations studies.” —Anthropology Matters What does it mean to live and die in relation to other animals? Animal Intimacies posits this central question alongside the intimate—and intense—moments of care, kinship, violence, politics, indifference, and desire that occur between human and non-human animals. Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the mountain villages of India’s Central Himalayas, Radhika Govindrajan’s book explores the number of ways that human and animal interact to cultivate relationships as interconnected, related beings. Whether it is through the study of the affect and ethics of ritual animal sacrifice, analysis of the right-wing political project of cow-protection, or examination of villagers’ talk about bears who abduct women and have sex with them, Govindrajan illustrates that multispecies relatedness relies on both difference and ineffable affinity between animals. Animal Intimacies breaks substantial new ground in animal studies, and Govindrajan’s detailed portrait of the social, political and religious life of the region will be of interest to cultural anthropologists and scholars of South Asia as well. “Immerses us in passionate case studies on the multiple relationships between Kumaoni villagers and animals in Uttarakhand.” —European Bulletin of Himalayan Research “A memorable and innovative ethnography.” —Piers Locke, University of Canterbury |
Contents
1 | |
Sacrificial Ethics and Kinship | 31 |
Hindu Nationalism Cow Protection and Bovine Materiality | 62 |
On the Politics of Exclusion and Belonging | 90 |
Colonialism Conservation and the Otherwild | 119 |
The Intersection of Queer Desires | 146 |
Kukur aur bagh | 173 |
Notes | 183 |
199 | |
213 | |
Other editions - View all
Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas Radhika Govindrajan No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
activists acts Almora animal sacrifice argued asked Asola bears Bhalu Bisht bodies Bubu cattle chachi Chanduli chapter claim colonial cow protection cow slaughter crucial cultural Dalit death deities Delhi devi dogs domestic domestic pigs Donna Haraway dyavtas emerged encounter entanglements ethical everyday fieldwork forest department Gauri gender genre Gita goats Govindrajan Haldwani Haraway Hindu nation Hindu nationalist human and nonhuman humans and animals husband India IVRI jatis Jersey cows kill kinship Kumaon Kusum labor land leopard lives Mamta Maneka Gandhi milk mother mountains multispecies Munni Muslims Nainital nature Neema offered otherwild outsider monkeys pahari cows pahari monkeys particular people’s pigs Pokhri political practices puja relationship response rhesus macaques ritual sacrificed sexual shared social species stories symbol tell temple thought told upper castes Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand villagers violence wild animals wild boar wildlife woman women