Domestication Gone Wild: Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822371332 ISBN 13: 9780822371335

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

The domestication of plants and animals is central to the familiar and now outdated story of civilization's emergence. Intertwined with colonialism and imperial expansion, the domestication narrative has informed and justified dominant and often destructive practices. Contending that domestication retains considerable value as an analytical tool, the contributors to Domestication Gone Wild reengage the concept by highlighting sites and forms of domestication occurring in unexpected and marginal sites, from Norwegian fjords and Philippine villages to British falconry cages and South African colonial townships. Challenging idioms of animal husbandry as human mastery and progress, the contributors push beyond the boundaries of farms, fences, and cages to explore how situated relations with animals and plants are linked to the politics of human difference-and, conversely, how politics are intertwined with plant and animal life. Ultimately, this volume promotes a novel, decolonizing concept of domestication that radically revises its Euro- and anthropocentric narrative.

Contributors. Inger Anneberg, Natasha Fijn, Rune Flikke, Frida Hastrup, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Knut G. Nustad, Sara Asu Schroer, Heather Anne Swanson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Mette Vaarst, Gro B. Ween, Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Heather Anne Swanson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University.

Marianne Elisabeth Lien is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo.

Gro B. Ween is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Cultural History Museum, University of Oslo.

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Domestication Gone Wild

Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations

By Heather Anne Swanson, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Gro B. Ween

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2018 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-7133-5

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
INTRODUCTION Naming the Beast — Exploring the Otherwise · Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Heather Anne Swanson, and Gro B. Ween, 
PART I. INTIMATE ENCOUNTERS Domestication from Within, 
1. BREEDING WITH BIRDS OF PREY Intimate Encounters · Sara Asu Schroer, 
2. PIGS AND SPIRITS IN IFUGAO A Cosmological Decentering of Domestication · Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme, 
3. DOG EARS AND TAILS Different Relational Ways of Being with Canines in Aboriginal Australia and Mongolia · Natasha Fijn, 
4. FARM ANIMALS IN A WELFARE STATE Commercial Pigs in Denmark · Inger Anneberg and Mette Vaarst, 
5. DUCKS INTO HOUSES Domestication and Its Margins · Marianne Elisabeth Lien, 
PART II. BEYOND THE FARM Domestication as World-Making, 
6. DOMESTICATION GONE WILD Pacific Salmon and the Disruption of the Domus · Heather Anne Swanson, 
7. NATURAL GOODS ON THE FRUIT FRONTIER Cultivating Apples in Norway · Frida Hastrup, 
8. DOMESTICATION OF AIR, SCENT, AND DISEASE · Rune Flikke, 
9. HOW THE SALMON FOUND ITS WAY HOME Science, State Ownership, and the Domestication of Wild Fish · Gro B. Ween and Heather Anne Swanson, 
10. WILDERNESS THROUGH DOMESTICATION Trout, Colonialism, and Capitalism in South Africa · Knut G. Nustad, 
PROVOCATION Nine Provocations for the Study of Domestication · Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 
Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

BREEDING WITH BIRDS OF PREY

Intimate Encounters · Sara Asu Schroer

The breeding of birds of prey in captivity has long been deemed impossible. In contrast to well-known domesticates such as dogs, horses, and various livestock, birds of prey have resisted human-controlled breeding, a core element of classic definitions of domestication. The territorial and at times aggressive behavior of raptors, portrayed as solitary animals, toward those with whom they are most intimately bonded, namely, their breeding partner or mate, have made them exceptionally difficult to breed under "controlled conditions" within the confines of human-built environments. Yet despite these challenges, since the second half of the twentieth century, the captive breeding of raptors has become a possibility, and various species have been bred successfully through "artificial" insemination as well as through "natural" breeding pairs.

The aim of this chapter is to provide insight into captive breeding practices involving birds of prey, with a focus on the relationships involved in artificial insemination between breeders and "imprinted" breeding birds. I am concerned with how these intimate encounters require rethinking of the question of "control over reproduction," which figures centrally in classic narratives of human-domesticate relationships. Although enclosures and captivity shape breeder-falcon relationships, control is, as I will show, not exercised by humans alone. This is also philosopher of science Vinciane Despret's (2004) point in her investigations of Lorentz's descriptions of engagements with his imprinted jackdaw. Despret argues that rather than focusing on control, we should look for the essence of domestication in "emotional relations made of expectations, faith, belief, trust" (2004, 122). She understands domestication as a practice that has the power to transform both human and nonhuman subjects, opening new identities and ways of relating as a result.

Controlled breeding has been a defining element in classic definitions of domestication for obvious reasons. As this chapter will show, breeding in captivity has indeed dramatically altered the lives of these birds, but not necessarily in ways that completely disempower, alienate, or objectify them. The conditions of breeding birds of prey direct our attention to the choreographies of intimacy and sociality that emerge within such captive breeding practices and that shape not only birds' but also humans' ways of relating to their worlds (Despret 2004; see also Haraway 2008). Because birds are willful creatures with their own desires and rules of conduct, the continuous negotiation of intimacies becomes central for breeders who enter long-term, intimate, and affective social relationships with their birds that must be continuously negotiated.

Captive Breeding and Falconry Practice

Breeding practice cannot be understood without its connection to the practice of falconry. Even though the relationships between humans and birds of prey in falconry practice are diverse and have a long history, these relationships have so far not been considered under the conceptual umbrella of domestication. Like reindeer-pastoralist relationships in the Circumpolar North, sometimes referred to as "weak" forms of domestication or "semi-domestication" (Ingold 1994), the dynamic relationships involved in falconry do not easily fit into stark categories of the wild and the tame, nor do they lend themselves to domestication narratives of human superiority, domination, and control. In falconry, humans and birds of prey learn to cooperate with each other in the task of hunting. The practice involves methods and techniques peculiar to falconry and involves processes of taming and training, which in previous research I have analyzed in terms of colearning and enskilment (Schroer 2015, 2018).

Traditionally, falconers derived their birds from the "wild," where they were either taken as nestlings from the eyrie (eyasses), trapped on their first migration (passage hawks), or taken as adult birds (haggard). In this context, the "wildness" of birds of prey is not understood as something to be contested or overcome but rather something falconers appreciate and strive to get close to. In contrast to other human-animal relationships in which captive breeding led to the development of animal breeds that in some cases are considered superior to their "wild" relatives, in falconry this longing for improvement of bird species through human interference did not become dominant (for a contrast, see, for example, Cassidy 2002 in relation to the breeding of racehorses). Historically, when the taking of wild birds was still allowed, falconers typically did not put much effort into the breeding of birds in captivity, which has often been considered a difficult and time-intensive enterprise.

Today, the taking of wild birds is illegal or highly regulated in most countries, and the captive breeding of birds of prey has become a regular way for falconers to continue their practice. The first large-scale breeding successes with raptor species began to emerge in the 1960s. During this time, people concerned about birds of prey were alarmed by the decline of some species of raptors — some to the brink of extinction — due to the use of pesticides in industrial agriculture (Ratcliffe 1980). This resulted in joint efforts by falconers and researchers in different countries to work on the captive propagation of birds of prey to produce offspring for reintroduction into the wild. Much of this restoration work has been based on knowledge from falconry practice, using techniques of handling, taming, training, and hunting with birds of prey to create adequate domestic breeding environments and to keep the birds in healthy condition (both physically and mentally). During this...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822371332
• ISBN 13: 9780822371335
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Herausgeber: Swanson Heather Anne, Lien Marianne Elisabeth, Ween Gro B.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande