Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas

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University of Chicago Press, May 29, 2018 - Social Science - 234 pages
“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 Introduction
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
References
199
Index
213
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About the author (2018)

Radhika Govindrajan is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Washington.    

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