1
00:00:00,660 --> 00:00:08,100
So hi, everyone. Welcome to the third modern South Asian studies seminar of the still at the University of Oxford.

2
00:00:08,100 --> 00:00:12,990
My name is Nico Monter. I'm the director of the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme,

3
00:00:12,990 --> 00:00:18,930
and I'm absolutely delighted to be chairing this conversation on the study of non-human animals in South Asia.

4
00:00:18,930 --> 00:00:25,050
So for those of you who might be joining us for the first time, the still the series aims to build up conversations on the political,

5
00:00:25,050 --> 00:00:30,690
methodological and ethical challenges of doing research in South Asia way quick note

6
00:00:30,690 --> 00:00:34,740
on the format so every panellist will speak for about 10 to 12 minutes on their own.

7
00:00:34,740 --> 00:00:39,780
Very exciting research projects, and we will then open it up for a Q&A.

8
00:00:39,780 --> 00:00:45,120
Please feel free to enter your questions in the jury box that you can see at the bottom of the screen as we go along.

9
00:00:45,120 --> 00:00:50,250
So I'm going to very quickly introduce the panel in the order in which they will be speaking.

10
00:00:50,250 --> 00:00:55,650
So first to be a doctor because I was assistant professor of anthropology at the Indian Institute of Technology

11
00:00:55,650 --> 00:01:02,550
in Gardena and completed her PhD thesis in anthropology at the National University of Singapore in 2016.

12
00:01:02,550 --> 00:01:09,360
She was trained in both natural and social sciences with master's degrees in by life sciences from the Wildlife Institute of India,

13
00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:15,600
as well as in anthropology from UCO. And because monograph tigers are our brothers.

14
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:24,000
Anthropology Wildlife Conservation in Northeast India was published very recently in 2021 by Oxford University Press.

15
00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:30,810
Often become We're going to have Dr Nazarian Dubey, who is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto.

16
00:01:30,810 --> 00:01:40,890
She's the author of Queer Activism in India and of the forthcoming, keenly awaited indifference on the praxis of interspecies being after ness.

17
00:01:40,890 --> 00:01:45,810
We're going to have Dr Radical Group Androgen, who is an Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Washington,

18
00:01:45,810 --> 00:01:54,540
Seattle Erotica is the author of Animal Intimacies, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018 and Penguin India in 2019,

19
00:01:54,540 --> 00:02:00,570
and articles also published very widely, including articles in American anthologies, Comparative Study of South Asia,

20
00:02:00,570 --> 00:02:07,890
Africa and the Middle East, Cultural Anthropology, and how the Journal of Ethnographic Purity for Number Four is.

21
00:02:07,890 --> 00:02:13,590
Dr Muhammad was a Faculty of Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto

22
00:02:13,590 --> 00:02:19,320
and Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellow at the Australian National University.

23
00:02:19,320 --> 00:02:24,090
She is the author of Animal Enthusiasms, Life Beyond Cage and Google Pakistan,

24
00:02:24,090 --> 00:02:30,870
and he's also the co-editor of a special journal issue entitled Sense Making in a Modern Human World.

25
00:02:30,870 --> 00:02:33,930
And last but not least, we have Dr Bollyky Cohen,

26
00:02:33,930 --> 00:02:38,670
who is a senior lecturer in anthropology and Development Studies Programme at the University of Melbourne.

27
00:02:38,670 --> 00:02:45,420
Though luckily for us, she's currently 30, received a Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford in 2013.

28
00:02:45,420 --> 00:02:50,460
Prior to that, she did her bachelor's in law from the Faculty of Law at University Hotel in 2001.

29
00:02:50,460 --> 00:02:54,700
And she's also practised in the Supreme Court of India and the High Court in Assam.

30
00:02:54,700 --> 00:02:57,000
Dolly has published several books and articles,

31
00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:04,290
including the 2019 Living with Oil and Coal Resource Resource Politics and Militarisation in Northeast India.

32
00:03:04,290 --> 00:03:09,980
So thank you all so much for being here. You know, it's absolutely incredible to have you on the same order.

33
00:03:09,980 --> 00:03:17,380
With that, I'm going to hand over to girl to sort of kick off the start of the battle.

34
00:03:17,380 --> 00:03:19,040
Hello, everyone, thank you so much and Nicole,

35
00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:27,080
for inviting all of us and good to see you are letting go and this is fantastic news and W.M. about studying animals in South.

36
00:03:27,080 --> 00:03:32,390
So I was so excited and especially about methodology and politics, of studying animals and topics.

37
00:03:32,390 --> 00:03:41,930
I think this is a very, very, very exciting time for scholars to be studying this aspect of, you know, the the studying animals in South Asia.

38
00:03:41,930 --> 00:03:46,100
So let's start by talking about the current project. And began, then I will.

39
00:03:46,100 --> 00:03:53,390
Then you will be up. So currently, the project I'm looking at is understanding human animal relations at the margins,

40
00:03:53,390 --> 00:03:58,580
and this is the follow up of the workshop that I organised with my colleague, Dr.

41
00:03:58,580 --> 00:04:02,510
Something on this last month, last year, last year.

42
00:04:02,510 --> 00:04:15,590
And so I'm really keen to understand how human animal relations are understood by through lived experience of the lives,

43
00:04:15,590 --> 00:04:19,810
especially because I might look for a large number of years I've studied and

44
00:04:19,810 --> 00:04:23,990
notwithstanding looking at indigenous groups and not just Indian tribal communities,

45
00:04:23,990 --> 00:04:28,280
but I want to look at the little lives lived experience of the little lives and

46
00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:33,200
how their living experiences are associated with certain kinds of animals.

47
00:04:33,200 --> 00:04:40,100
And these animals are not only stigmatised, often because of association with these animals,

48
00:04:40,100 --> 00:04:47,240
because of occupation or because of the everyday humiliation of flipping the lips like animals.

49
00:04:47,240 --> 00:04:51,440
So, for example, using animal metaphors.

50
00:04:51,440 --> 00:05:05,350
To do the talk about the let's send in another marginal communities so that this interest in oh at the margin started earlier,

51
00:05:05,350 --> 00:05:11,290
but especially on a book about a specific project like that, though not the draught is not complete.

52
00:05:11,290 --> 00:05:16,180
Those entrusted to look at the Vulture Conservation Conservation Alliance just because

53
00:05:16,180 --> 00:05:20,320
they are declining because of the chemical that is found in the deadly carcases,

54
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:24,370
diclofenac and then the results charred declining population.

55
00:05:24,370 --> 00:05:31,540
And one of the projects that governments in many other countries, especially in India, is doing, is to send a bunch of gases.

56
00:05:31,540 --> 00:05:36,190
So when I heard the stomata, at first I was like, I wanted to find out more about this.

57
00:05:36,190 --> 00:05:46,840
And the idea is to revive the vulture population by setting off gases not for humans, but vultures in the in a in an in in a protected aviary.

58
00:05:46,840 --> 00:05:51,850
So it proves that these conservation sites do understand what is happening,

59
00:05:51,850 --> 00:05:57,160
but that project is very much related to how the shows are about in the live biographies.

60
00:05:57,160 --> 00:06:06,760
So I'm I'm I'm sort of I'm not comparing, but I'm looking at what is happening to one particular species who share habitat,

61
00:06:06,760 --> 00:06:15,970
sometimes compete for food with the live communities. These narratives come from the biography sports, and I've interviewed some of them.

62
00:06:15,970 --> 00:06:22,840
And if you look at the list biographies, certain animals, the recording references to certain animals especially,

63
00:06:22,840 --> 00:06:27,070
well, it's just, you know, they come in very unexpected ways.

64
00:06:27,070 --> 00:06:34,090
For example, maybe there it's time I can read like an interview from By the Liquid.

65
00:06:34,090 --> 00:06:41,960
So what happens in the in the cafes is that fresh meat and contaminated meat, you know,

66
00:06:41,960 --> 00:06:48,280
they had a good salad and they are actually the meat is processed and the fresh meat is fed to the bone.

67
00:06:48,280 --> 00:06:56,560
Just that double check and divide the population increases. So I want to I don't know how to analyse this, but I am in the stage where I want to.

68
00:06:56,560 --> 00:07:02,050
I don't know. Of course, one can easily argue that, you know, certain animals are given more priorities and humans,

69
00:07:02,050 --> 00:07:15,040
but that's a very simplistic way of looking at it. So it's to make sense of how these animals, whether it is vultures, even adult dogs, pigs and rats.

70
00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:22,840
Oh, so I want to read a bit. If you if I if you if we have time, for example, if you look at Omprakash one because Newton.

71
00:07:22,840 --> 00:07:29,650
So he asked that why Hindus worship trees, plants, etc. but they don't like Dalits.

72
00:07:29,650 --> 00:07:36,460
So often this comparison of animals with certain communities is very striking and really disturbing.

73
00:07:36,460 --> 00:07:40,900
So I'm going to look at one project I'm analysing, but we're keeping up.

74
00:07:40,900 --> 00:07:49,250
But that is also linked to my training as a wildlife biologist. So my first training is in biology there and I participate in wildlife conservation.

75
00:07:49,250 --> 00:07:56,440
And so I want to bring that until vultures are really interesting in that particular, you know, in my study,

76
00:07:56,440 --> 00:08:01,450
because there are conservation sites which are set up for what's preservation,

77
00:08:01,450 --> 00:08:07,240
but then how vultures I've got in appeared and lived experiences very different.

78
00:08:07,240 --> 00:08:14,080
So this is the one project that I'm looking at, but the other is continuation of my own Ph.D. work and not just in the islands.

79
00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:21,550
I'm looking at the narratives about animals in folklore, especially, you know, many animals.

80
00:08:21,550 --> 00:08:31,480
So that is a documentation project by ill. And but my larger interest is to make the pedagogy of environmental studies

81
00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:37,810
more inclusive of gender and cos that's my long term interest in this field.

82
00:08:37,810 --> 00:08:42,770
So stop. No thank you. And we can discuss this more a little.

83
00:08:42,770 --> 00:08:48,950
Thanks so much. This is a go to you. Thank you.

84
00:08:48,950 --> 00:08:55,160
I just want to second the thanks, Nina, go for this wonderful panel, the other people I know and haven't met yet.

85
00:08:55,160 --> 00:09:00,590
For example, Dolly Umberger. So yes, nice to be in conversation with all of you.

86
00:09:00,590 --> 00:09:07,610
So my project I would describe as in the book, that Monica mentioned indifference.

87
00:09:07,610 --> 00:09:15,980
It's about each chapter of the text tries to answer a discrete ethical question with as much clarity and conviction as is allowed to.

88
00:09:15,980 --> 00:09:23,630
An ethnographer about how humans and animals live and die in a shared world is how I would describe what the text is doing.

89
00:09:23,630 --> 00:09:28,460
A major theme of the book is this concept of indifference.

90
00:09:28,460 --> 00:09:37,250
In other words, what I'm interested in is the relationship between caring about things or four things and leaving them alone,

91
00:09:37,250 --> 00:09:48,370
which I argue that's in the text are not counter. They don't work counter to each other, but sometimes to care for things is precisely to let them be.

92
00:09:48,370 --> 00:09:53,990
In the text and in I think what I'm describing is sort of the South Asian context more generally.

93
00:09:53,990 --> 00:10:00,410
So certainly in India, there are two dominant modes of leaving animals alone.

94
00:10:00,410 --> 00:10:07,640
One is the fastest Hindu and through a patriarchal form that takes the name of Ahimsa,

95
00:10:07,640 --> 00:10:13,490
right, which we've which tends to be valorise and romanticised as a reverence for animals.

96
00:10:13,490 --> 00:10:18,860
But in actuality, there's this story that people often tell.

97
00:10:18,860 --> 00:10:22,770
I don't know if it's apocryphal. It shows up in Kipling's Beast in mountain India.

98
00:10:22,770 --> 00:10:28,280
It shows up in a memoir of Crystal Rogers animal welfare activist. Talk about it all this time, all the time.

99
00:10:28,280 --> 00:10:34,610
And in the story, there's a bowl that's hit by a speeding lorry and falls onto a man's land.

100
00:10:34,610 --> 00:10:37,430
The landowner, the bull is dying, is suffering.

101
00:10:37,430 --> 00:10:42,260
The landowner doesn't want the ball to be killed on his property because he wants his hands to be clean,

102
00:10:42,260 --> 00:10:49,730
and he waits for somebody else to shoot the ball. And of course, it takes hours and hours before slowly suffers and dies a painful death.

103
00:10:49,730 --> 00:10:55,310
So that's a form of leaving animals alone that takes the form of what I call a propertied refusal.

104
00:10:55,310 --> 00:11:00,920
It's basically a moral hygiene of keeping one's own hands clean and outsourcing killing

105
00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:06,410
to other people in order to maintain this kind of fictional purity of the self.

106
00:11:06,410 --> 00:11:09,590
And then I think there's another kind of leaving animals,

107
00:11:09,590 --> 00:11:16,880
leaving others alone that I described as indifference to difference, and perhaps controversially, I refer to it.

108
00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:22,940
I described the stance that this takes as a kind of in curiosity about others, which is to say,

109
00:11:22,940 --> 00:11:29,450
not being invested in what they mean for you and what your relationship with them is.

110
00:11:29,450 --> 00:11:34,280
And I describe that as a living, allowing others to live in their badness.

111
00:11:34,280 --> 00:11:42,920
So in other words, I'm interested in kinds and qualities of care that are made possible in and through an ethos of indifference.

112
00:11:42,920 --> 00:11:58,040
So one of the questions, then, is what does allowing others to just be look like, not farming them, not protecting them, not sheltering?

113
00:11:58,040 --> 00:12:01,670
Right. So what do what does not what is allowing others to be looked like?

114
00:12:01,670 --> 00:12:07,850
And could it be an ethos of in for our world, this idea of indifference of letting things be?

115
00:12:07,850 --> 00:12:18,090
Or why not? And if the differences come back to the imperatives of capital, then I think it really requires us to to rethink our.

116
00:12:18,090 --> 00:12:27,210
Our emphasis is on, you know, on, I guess, intimacies with animals to circle back then when I began this project many,

117
00:12:27,210 --> 00:12:32,690
many years ago, I envisioned it as a project about animal activism.

118
00:12:32,690 --> 00:12:39,440
But for any of you who know animal activists, I think you would agree with me that the ethos of letting others be in there,

119
00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:44,090
that this is not a is not a a strong imperative, right?

120
00:12:44,090 --> 00:12:51,450
And so the project is less has become less about animal activists and more about the different forms.

121
00:12:51,450 --> 00:13:06,790
It's about an imaginary that that applies to me as much for those who who kill and work animals in in forms of, I guess, structural forms.

122
00:13:06,790 --> 00:13:11,440
And applies as much to those who see themselves on the side of animals who take

123
00:13:11,440 --> 00:13:14,990
the form of this violent intervention in the lives and freedoms of others.

124
00:13:14,990 --> 00:13:18,790
So this ethos of leaving people alone, I think applies more universally,

125
00:13:18,790 --> 00:13:28,740
and I'm trying to think about about the about its practises in a range of political formations.

126
00:13:28,740 --> 00:13:33,120
And I'll leave it there for. Thank you, guys, thank you so much.

127
00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:40,530
I think the next thing you just want to echo everyone, thanks Danica and Claire.

128
00:13:40,530 --> 00:13:47,970
This is just such an amazing panel to be part of, and I'm already more interested in everyone else's work than in talking about my own.

129
00:13:47,970 --> 00:13:54,750
But I'll talk briefly about two directions, new directions that I'm going in and thinking about animals,

130
00:13:54,750 --> 00:13:58,710
but also animals in relation to other kinds of non-humans more broadly.

131
00:13:58,710 --> 00:14:07,350
So one thing I've been thinking about recently is animal ghosts and haunted animals, so both hunting and hunted animals,

132
00:14:07,350 --> 00:14:18,120
and I've been thinking about what what kinds of openness and vulnerable vulnerability and accountability hunting makes possible.

133
00:14:18,120 --> 00:14:23,310
So more specifically, I think I was drawn to this by one kind of just stand alone case.

134
00:14:23,310 --> 00:14:28,440
The Dutchy is not something that is ethnographic dense or rich in the sense that it repeats.

135
00:14:28,440 --> 00:14:36,030
But there's one woman found a bull who had been eaten by a leopard on the side of a highway and

136
00:14:36,030 --> 00:14:41,520
stopped to take a look and realise that it was a bull that she had sold to somebody a few weeks ago.

137
00:14:41,520 --> 00:14:48,090
And that person had clearly taken the bull and abandoned the bull, which is an outcome of the politics of cow protection in the mountains.

138
00:14:48,090 --> 00:14:56,460
And this is something I've looked at earlier, where people are not willing to transport bulls anymore for fear of being lynched by a cow.

139
00:14:56,460 --> 00:15:01,080
Protection is by go rogue trucks. And so they abandon these animals on the side of the highway.

140
00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:09,900
And this woman who then saw her eviscerated bull how experienced a haunting by the bull and was determined

141
00:15:09,900 --> 00:15:14,850
to do something about it through the mechanisms that people usually use in the mountains to address hunting.

142
00:15:14,850 --> 00:15:19,680
Except everyone told her cows and bulls don't come back as ghouls. You know, that's not a thing.

143
00:15:19,680 --> 00:15:27,650
This is you. This is you dealing with your guilt. This is you dealing with the fact that you are forced to confront what, what,

144
00:15:27,650 --> 00:15:33,450
what this chain looks like, right of sale of bulls in this kind of context.

145
00:15:33,450 --> 00:15:38,550
And so I've been thinking about what kinds of claims to justice are activated by hunting.

146
00:15:38,550 --> 00:15:43,110
And this ties in with something that I've been thinking about for a longer time,

147
00:15:43,110 --> 00:15:54,270
which is what happens when animals are subject to the evil eye and or when they're hunted and what forms of exploitation that might take.

148
00:15:54,270 --> 00:15:58,920
And I think this for me speaks to a larger question that a few folks are raising now,

149
00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:05,430
which is why is multi-species anthropology or the anthropology of the non-human so avowedly secular?

150
00:16:05,430 --> 00:16:08,310
And I'm thinking in particular of the work of Monte Fernando,

151
00:16:08,310 --> 00:16:13,110
who says it's interesting that you know you can have macho culture, but not supernatural culture,

152
00:16:13,110 --> 00:16:20,040
for example, and that the supernatural is something that is left out or is usually addressed as a kind of interesting cultural artefact.

153
00:16:20,040 --> 00:16:25,980
But we don't take, for example, the idea that ghosts might be serious agents in the world, right?

154
00:16:25,980 --> 00:16:30,030
That becomes something that has to be elaborated as a rich religious practise.

155
00:16:30,030 --> 00:16:35,430
I'm trying to think with some of that, but also thinking with that in the context of India,

156
00:16:35,430 --> 00:16:43,440
where one sees violent supremacist projects rooted precisely in that ideal of animated nature.

157
00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:46,680
Which brings me to the second way in which my work has been going recently,

158
00:16:46,680 --> 00:16:59,250
which is trying to think about what the Hindu right's incorporation of non-humans as Hindus looks like in the context of attractants politics.

159
00:16:59,250 --> 00:17:04,620
And I'm writing something with Mona on who I know was on a panel a couple of weeks ago,

160
00:17:04,620 --> 00:17:09,750
but we writing something on more than human fascism in the Himalaya in particular,

161
00:17:09,750 --> 00:17:19,380
and how so much of the anthropology literature in particular on indigenous A.D. and the the idea

162
00:17:19,380 --> 00:17:25,770
that non-humans are also indigenous agents is being picked up in some sense by the Hindu right,

163
00:17:25,770 --> 00:17:30,930
which is now making claims to Hindu ingenuity and is basing that claim to Hindu

164
00:17:30,930 --> 00:17:36,810
indigenous in India in the idea that its natural entities have always been Hindu.

165
00:17:36,810 --> 00:17:40,860
Well before there were human Hindus. So thinking about the Himalaya, for example,

166
00:17:40,860 --> 00:17:49,050
or the Ganga and cows and I'm we're trying to think about what it means then to naturalise the project of fascism.

167
00:17:49,050 --> 00:17:52,470
And for me, this comes up in the context of how protectionists who, for instance,

168
00:17:52,470 --> 00:17:58,590
argue that they're not the ones who who really are committed to the project of cow protection.

169
00:17:58,590 --> 00:18:03,390
It's the Ganga and into the Himalaya, because the Ganga comes out of Gulmarg, which is the cows mouth.

170
00:18:03,390 --> 00:18:07,050
So her very existence is dependent on this originally Hindu cow,

171
00:18:07,050 --> 00:18:10,980
or that the Himalaya is quaking with rage because cows are being slaughtered in India.

172
00:18:10,980 --> 00:18:15,810
And at this project then of making India Hindu is actually a more than human one.

173
00:18:15,810 --> 00:18:22,350
So we've been thinking about what what it might look like to actually return front and centre to the question of politics,

174
00:18:22,350 --> 00:18:31,440
particularly in a field which is so caught up in the idea of ontology as something that is beyond politics innocent?

175
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:40,030
And so that's I think, the two directions that I've been going in, but I'll stop there as well and look forward to hearing from the others.

176
00:18:40,030 --> 00:18:52,200
Great, thank you so much for all the coverage. Thank you for inviting me, and it's great to be in the company of Nasdaq Erotica.

177
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:56,820
Can Dolly to learn from them and share my thoughts?

178
00:18:56,820 --> 00:19:05,190
I would like to share two projects that I'm currently working on for which I'm undertaking in Toronto and the next one,

179
00:19:05,190 --> 00:19:15,900
which I will be taking on next year in Canberra. The Toronto project tries to explore various meanings associated with the departure of spy

180
00:19:15,900 --> 00:19:23,310
pigeons at the India-Pakistan border indicates any one of us is not familiar with this in 2010.

181
00:19:23,310 --> 00:19:36,360
A Pakistani pigeon was captured in a minister in the small town near dusk near the India-Pakistan border on suspicion of carrying a secret message.

182
00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:40,650
About five years later, another pigeon was captured and.

183
00:19:40,650 --> 00:19:48,660
Until now, there have been incidents, so when the script was deciphered, it did not use any concrete information,

184
00:19:48,660 --> 00:19:54,510
just names, phone numbers and addresses of some Pakistani origin flyers.

185
00:19:54,510 --> 00:20:04,770
So this led me to take this team seriously and understand, and I've been kind of studying it and flying in Pakistan from 2008.

186
00:20:04,770 --> 00:20:13,020
And I asked some of the hostages and they said that usually pigeons are stamped before their flight that if they are lost,

187
00:20:13,020 --> 00:20:15,450
they would be returned back to their keepers.

188
00:20:15,450 --> 00:20:23,040
And this was this time that Ben began flowing from somewhere near the Indian Pakistan border in Lahore or Silkwood.

189
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:29,950
They would land in another country, and the same stamp would consider them make them spy.

190
00:20:29,950 --> 00:20:39,420
But there is another side of this arrival of foreign pigeons that I am trying to consider to understand this thing comprehensively.

191
00:20:39,420 --> 00:20:44,940
And that is that those pigeons were arriving in Pakistan, not as spies,

192
00:20:44,940 --> 00:20:52,830
but as European breeds that are imported in white pigeon flyers to participate in certain pigeon sign competitions.

193
00:20:52,830 --> 00:21:00,600
Many which fences at a huge amount to get pigeons from Belgium and Denmark and host them.

194
00:21:00,600 --> 00:21:08,010
So this led me to ask questions like what does it mean for Pigeon to come from abroad

195
00:21:08,010 --> 00:21:14,100
and how mutually shared values of hospitality and hostility emerge and interplay?

196
00:21:14,100 --> 00:21:20,610
When a pigeon arrives in the foreign land as an invited desk or uninvited spy?

197
00:21:20,610 --> 00:21:25,800
So I brought these questions, as I said earlier in the European racing,

198
00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:31,920
pigeons and the Pakistanis fight pigeons and then try to understand what it means for welcoming

199
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:38,670
and accommodating the intimate foreigner or refusing the potential threat they may pose.

200
00:21:38,670 --> 00:21:49,710
So I explore this issue within the context of Punjab because most Typekit and foreign incidents are being happening in Punjab,

201
00:21:49,710 --> 00:21:55,500
and I try to understand this through the Punjab value of hospitality.

202
00:21:55,500 --> 00:22:06,150
Usually, some rights would be Faisal Jiyane, which means welcome audience who all who are right and I try to consider is coexistence

203
00:22:06,150 --> 00:22:14,880
with the attitude of hostility or in hospitality to more the human needs direct.

204
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:20,550
Theoretically, I've been trying to build on the ethical arguments of Jects Bayda,

205
00:22:20,550 --> 00:22:27,510
who suggest that the hospitality and hostility exist together in a power imbalance between

206
00:22:27,510 --> 00:22:34,620
the host and the dust and shame or understanding of whom and the question of the stranger.

207
00:22:34,620 --> 00:22:43,270
However, that is that paradox of hospitality and hostility may not appear applicable in the context of South Asia,

208
00:22:43,270 --> 00:22:46,710
since its conceptualisation is based in in Europe,

209
00:22:46,710 --> 00:22:55,170
in France in particular, where asylum seekers and refugees are ending up taking hospitality and seeking hospitality.

210
00:22:55,170 --> 00:23:05,100
So to conceptualise this in the grounded Punjabi context, I take help from Punjabi footage of artists who wrote Famous of the theatre,

211
00:23:05,100 --> 00:23:12,870
and I tried to conceive how what is understood hospitality and hospitality as unified as separate and

212
00:23:12,870 --> 00:23:19,530
values that have distinct culture roots and generally operate through the structure of reciprocity.

213
00:23:19,530 --> 00:23:23,400
So I try to merge ideas on both.

214
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:29,970
That is done by the chart to form different arguments that how hospitality and hospitality,

215
00:23:29,970 --> 00:23:39,060
as two dominant modes of relating with others, are shaped by the presence and absence of reciprocity and structure.

216
00:23:39,060 --> 00:23:44,730
Analogy No. Very quickly, I would like to discuss my future project,

217
00:23:44,730 --> 00:23:52,890
which I'll be starting next year in Canberra that investigates the China's mega Belt and Road Initiative project in

218
00:23:52,890 --> 00:24:00,600
Pakistan called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and how it shapes the life of millions of poor people in Pakistan.

219
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:05,250
Just a bed down is about sixty two billion dollars project that was launched

220
00:24:05,250 --> 00:24:11,940
in 2015 as part of China's bright and invasions to bring economic benefits,

221
00:24:11,940 --> 00:24:19,080
as well as strengthening the political and strategic relationship between China and Pakistan.

222
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:26,160
However, it is crucial that there has not been any studies that have explored this project through deep perspective

223
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:32,880
animals or the poor segment of society who are considered to be the beneficiaries of this project.

224
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:40,490
So I am focussing particularly on China's rising demand for donkeys, particularly.

225
00:24:40,490 --> 00:24:47,900
Pakistani delegates will be China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and how this presents multiple challenges to the economy,

226
00:24:47,900 --> 00:24:54,540
employment and social values of marginalised population, particularly the donkey keepers.

227
00:24:54,540 --> 00:25:03,830
And now I see and read in newspapers that those reforms are being developed in Punjab and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa two provinces,

228
00:25:03,830 --> 00:25:08,720
and that there are plans to export hundreds and thousands of donkeys to China,

229
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:22,280
where the animals hide can be used in traditional Chinese medicine, the jail, which is believed to cure immunity, ageing and many other ailments.

230
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:33,020
So I tried to understand this donkey trade to China, to this China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to see how this grounded analysis,

231
00:25:33,020 --> 00:25:40,670
cultural analysis help us to understand the lives of those people who live their lives donkeys.

232
00:25:40,670 --> 00:25:49,670
I would like to end by emphasising that both these projects and also my previous is the project, which ended up in books.

233
00:25:49,670 --> 00:25:52,220
They tried to equalise the enterprise of Pakistan,

234
00:25:52,220 --> 00:26:02,570
which have mostly been occupied with dubious such as Islamic fundamentalism, mysticism, mentality, nationalism and so forth.

235
00:26:02,570 --> 00:26:11,920
And they tried to explore humans lived experiences with more than human animals, and I tried to focus on the neglected,

236
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:20,510
the most destructive speaking people who live in the southern part of Punjab and the area that shared border with the

237
00:26:20,510 --> 00:26:31,010
interior or rural parts of SIEM and or just on this area is have been highlighted as a backward area of illiteracy,

238
00:26:31,010 --> 00:26:35,240
lower health facilities and bad infrastructure.

239
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:36,560
It's kind of famous,

240
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:47,960
so try to understand the meaning of life in the company of animals and how these speaking people make meaning of their lives with their animals.

241
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:52,940
Thank you. Fantastic, thank you so much, I wish.

242
00:26:52,940 --> 00:26:58,750
OK, onto Dolly. Thank you so much for inviting me.

243
00:26:58,750 --> 00:27:03,940
And again, hello to my families and the audience.

244
00:27:03,940 --> 00:27:12,680
So I started thinking about. Animals, trauma, human rights work here and.

245
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:23,150
I think at this moment, I after reading a few pieces on animals, particularly the dog meat debate in India has really been, I think,

246
00:27:23,150 --> 00:27:31,430
you know, one of the issues that I had been thinking about and dealing about and and what I find fascinating is that reaction, right?

247
00:27:31,430 --> 00:27:37,760
When it comes to the dog meat debate in India, there's such a forceful reaction that, you know,

248
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:45,860
I think and there's almost like kind of like, you know, how can a human being do that kind of a response that's there.

249
00:27:45,860 --> 00:27:54,680
So that's really made me think. But one of the one of the stories that I want to say is that, you know, the idea of animal.

250
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:59,330
I mean, I'm a non vegetarian and I eat meat, I eat fish very young.

251
00:27:59,330 --> 00:28:06,830
I learn how to kill. And I grew up in Nagaland. I grew up in a household where you have to do your own killing.

252
00:28:06,830 --> 00:28:14,120
You learn to butter fish, you learn to kill him if you want to eat a chicken.

253
00:28:14,120 --> 00:28:20,320
And so I grew up in that environment, a very, very kind of, you know, I like, do it yourself and I.

254
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:32,960
I grew up never thinking that one day I'll study animals because it's it's something so close to the world that I was part of being associated.

255
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:37,440
As you know, generally, it's barbaric. I mean, tribal people don't study animals.

256
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:45,050
Do you see we should be studying folklore or we should be going to, you know, tribal studies centres to document dances?

257
00:28:45,050 --> 00:28:47,510
And pretty much that was stage.

258
00:28:47,510 --> 00:28:57,260
But what really kind of intrigued me was, was that the first episode I started writing after my fieldwork in the foothills of a farm in Nagaland,

259
00:28:57,260 --> 00:29:06,890
and I started writing a piece for the American Anthropological newsletter called A Tasty Transgressions,

260
00:29:06,890 --> 00:29:12,980
because I was really amazed how the seasons would shape the coal traders who were both Hindus,

261
00:29:12,980 --> 00:29:19,370
Muslims and also Christian tribals, and how they would shoot the alliance, according to the season and where they were going.

262
00:29:19,370 --> 00:29:23,120
And certain aquatic animals like snails or, let's say, the red.

263
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:29,150
And this was such very food, right? So even when they came to Assam and they would like really practise their religion,

264
00:29:29,150 --> 00:29:32,600
you know, they wouldn't confess that they had all this in the Naga tribal villages.

265
00:29:32,600 --> 00:29:37,440
And I started writing this even for my first book Living with oil and Coal.

266
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:42,440
I have an entire chapter on food and the hot bazaar because food becomes such an important

267
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:47,960
lens actually to understand the sociology of that of that space that I was studying.

268
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:57,800
And recently, I wrote a piece for four seminar and it's it's dedicated to a big culture and it should be coming out.

269
00:29:57,800 --> 00:30:06,480
And it was about me going back to my fieldwork notes 10 years earlier and reflecting on on this process right now in my life.

270
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:14,840
Quickly, readers, right? I'm looking at my fieldwork notes and how much I erased and how easy that particularly and methodologically as anthropology

271
00:30:14,840 --> 00:30:22,310
is to be courageous enough actually to go back to the woods and see what we missed out and I missed out a lot all the time.

272
00:30:22,310 --> 00:30:29,270
And I think that's what the danger of ethnography and at the same time, the redemptive element that I can go back and say,

273
00:30:29,270 --> 00:30:39,350
you know, these are the things I missed, but currently I'm I'm actually trying to write a chapter on on milk.

274
00:30:39,350 --> 00:30:45,980
And it's part of my fermenting culture monograph, which I hope you will see the light of day one day.

275
00:30:45,980 --> 00:30:49,790
And it's on this entire process of understanding this region.

276
00:30:49,790 --> 00:30:57,450
And how, as one of the first things that happened after the the cease fires and the peace process started in this region

277
00:30:57,450 --> 00:31:03,720
was really the emphasis on political know on social development right on on kind of like self-help groups.

278
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:11,270
And it was really once again around food. And, you know, for states like Nagaland, milk became very important.

279
00:31:11,270 --> 00:31:17,090
And, you know, a lot of I think historians like Jonathan Saharawi tell us that this entire middle belt right the milk

280
00:31:17,090 --> 00:31:22,700
line and how certain communities were lactose intolerant and since certain communities were not.

281
00:31:22,700 --> 00:31:30,200
So I'm learning a lot at this stage. But but I feel that in the in the last six or seven years,

282
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:42,620
I've come to learn a lot from my students and I think from from my friends and especially around this really big conflict between,

283
00:31:42,620 --> 00:31:47,540
let's say, animal rights activists here in India and their constant attack on tribal people.

284
00:31:47,540 --> 00:31:53,730
And it really angers me, right? And you kind of.

285
00:31:53,730 --> 00:32:03,900
Clear the curtain, and this is such an upper caste elitist position that they have that tribal people don't know that,

286
00:32:03,900 --> 00:32:08,060
you know, they're ignorant, they always have to be taught and adopt me.

287
00:32:08,060 --> 00:32:15,550
Debates centres on that. And so the my my ratings have actually also looked at kind of the legal regulation.

288
00:32:15,550 --> 00:32:19,470
So what is it? Is it about safety? Can they be firm?

289
00:32:19,470 --> 00:32:23,310
Is it about cruelty and how do we deal with this?

290
00:32:23,310 --> 00:32:28,710
And so it's not. I always say that it's not that I propagate that everyone should be eating dogs.

291
00:32:28,710 --> 00:32:41,780
But, you know, since the Dogma debate actually really pushes, I think the team beyond any kind of human right, a rational human being can do that.

292
00:32:41,780 --> 00:32:50,040
It's something that I find common here, increasingly, that I'm thinking about currently is the the a more falcon project in northeast India

293
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:55,020
that's become so famous that Nagaland into this known as the Falcon capital of the world.

294
00:32:55,020 --> 00:33:02,220
And and suddenly this entire and kind of position that you know,

295
00:33:02,220 --> 00:33:06,900
you have to teach the tribals because they're so Burberry, you don't know what they are doing.

296
00:33:06,900 --> 00:33:09,900
What I think a very, very strong underlying rationale,

297
00:33:09,900 --> 00:33:21,630
even in the more feltgen conservation activities that went on and what that led to was really the accusation of the animals which were here.

298
00:33:21,630 --> 00:33:27,150
And I think a lot of scholars working on animals have said that.

299
00:33:27,150 --> 00:33:32,220
So even in the case of Nagaland and a more falcons, the Falcons who are, I think,

300
00:33:32,220 --> 00:33:39,450
tagged with the Najib's as their fly to South Africa have Naga names, some of them have made their names.

301
00:33:39,450 --> 00:33:48,000
Some of them have tasty meals and it's so naturalised. When I was doing my ethnography on oil and coal.

302
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:52,950
And then it got a lot of the geological samples have ethnic names, right?

303
00:33:52,950 --> 00:33:56,290
So the hydrocarbon samples they bring from underneath the Earth.

304
00:33:56,290 --> 00:34:03,870
And there's really a colonial a kind of a horan's kind of a dominating conversation that's happening.

305
00:34:03,870 --> 00:34:09,120
So I think these are some of the conversations that you know are making me think,

306
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:15,030
and I've been very eager to see how and where these conversations will lead me to.

307
00:34:15,030 --> 00:34:18,390
So maybe I'll stop here and take Dolly.

308
00:34:18,390 --> 00:34:23,280
Thank you so much for that. This was really, really fascinating. Opening comments.

309
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:25,920
What are we waiting for people to sort of, you know, ask questions?

310
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:35,160
I was wondering whether I could sort of open it out with a couple of questions and actually just picking up from what Dolly just said in her talk.

311
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:40,650
You know, I was just wondering, how did you guys get interested in working with non-human animals? This is still an emerging field.

312
00:34:40,650 --> 00:34:47,580
You know, some of the teams that you're looking at or see in the case of your previous work was on something quite different.

313
00:34:47,580 --> 00:34:50,960
And I'm sort of curious to know how you sort of came to it.

314
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:57,120
An article you also mentioned, are you coming to the, you know, towards the supernatural after doing your work on animals in a way?

315
00:34:57,120 --> 00:35:00,120
So I'd be just sort of curious to think about how that question opened up.

316
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:06,540
And also, you know, given that we still I mean, you know, I still think of it very much as the emerging field within South Asian studies,

317
00:35:06,540 --> 00:35:11,310
but also more broadly with an anthropology or history would seem to be sort of the dominant fields, I guess.

318
00:35:11,310 --> 00:35:16,470
But all anthropologists of one stripe or the other, you understand, you know,

319
00:35:16,470 --> 00:35:20,820
what do you think of the methodological challenges in that in this moment?

320
00:35:20,820 --> 00:35:25,350
And would it be OK if you just went in the same order? We just had the thing.

321
00:35:25,350 --> 00:35:33,000
And just, yeah, so would you like to sort of look for me?

322
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:44,050
Studying animals was like a formal training because I studied my BSE was in zoology, where these two of mock up this mystery,

323
00:35:44,050 --> 00:35:50,160
this series of books containing cities which will start from unicellular multicellular and then reptiles,

324
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:54,510
birds and mammals, but non non-human mammals, it stops there.

325
00:35:54,510 --> 00:35:58,020
So for me, it was not studying three years of zoology at all.

326
00:35:58,020 --> 00:36:03,060
And so studying animals both in the field, but also on laboratory tables,

327
00:36:03,060 --> 00:36:07,150
dissecting cockroaches and worms and studying the reproductive system brain system.

328
00:36:07,150 --> 00:36:16,450
And so science happened because I think in India that I know you are now studying also was to see this in the lower and the academic hierarchy.

329
00:36:16,450 --> 00:36:19,980
So study science and in all the science happened like that.

330
00:36:19,980 --> 00:36:28,800
And so after my bias in zoology, my interest in wildlife conservation started because when I was growing up in Gujarat and on the end of this thing,

331
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:34,170
the Marine National Park and and on, then it was, you know, I think it was more more.

332
00:36:34,170 --> 00:36:40,890
I I'm not an animal loving, you know, like a animal person that way.

333
00:36:40,890 --> 00:36:46,410
For me, it is more like a very formal pedagogical approach to studying and emotionally personal.

334
00:36:46,410 --> 00:36:52,080
And then that led me to a messy way life sciences and Wildlife Institute.

335
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:59,850
And there are those. Studying two years of studying animals, I ended up doing a master's dissertation and studying Asiatic jackals,

336
00:36:59,850 --> 00:37:02,680
really collecting them and following them so.

337
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:09,960
So I studied animals from an ecological perspective, understanding that habitat ecology feeding habits over the years to now do analysis,

338
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:14,520
get standard lab work and the least science base to work.

339
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:23,280
And that approaching animal was very, you know, in a very sort of, oh, very linear fashion.

340
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:29,550
Do you study animals and then ecological components in the ecosystem, but only non-human components?

341
00:37:29,550 --> 00:37:34,650
And at that point of time, I was on that panel. You know, I was not, I didn't.

342
00:37:34,650 --> 00:37:36,930
So the transition to anthropology,

343
00:37:36,930 --> 00:37:44,310
maybe that happened when I visited a lot of bodies to study wildlife hunting practises and in what when was mentioning about,

344
00:37:44,310 --> 00:37:48,180
you know, how you know, eating habits and everything.

345
00:37:48,180 --> 00:37:52,380
So I was looking at I approached, though I didn't go to study.

346
00:37:52,380 --> 00:37:58,200
I live on indigenous hunting practises, but I study human animal conflict in and around centuries.

347
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:12,030
And so when I was interviewing people living close to a live century to a live century, people would show me animal skulls and skins and more.

348
00:38:12,030 --> 00:38:16,500
So for someone who studied zoology and animal wildlife conservation.

349
00:38:16,500 --> 00:38:22,420
This was like, this is not how it should be. And you know, the first imperialist approach was like, No, this is illegal.

350
00:38:22,420 --> 00:38:32,850
Well, why are we hunting at all? So while I was looking at wildlife hunting surveys, I was actually doing a lot of anthropological work,

351
00:38:32,850 --> 00:38:36,240
sitting and listening to a lot of stories that people are telling about animals.

352
00:38:36,240 --> 00:38:42,420
And that side of animals was not taught to me as a wildlife biologist student.

353
00:38:42,420 --> 00:38:45,780
And that was really interesting for me, and I know, I know.

354
00:38:45,780 --> 00:38:50,640
So by the time I got a little bit disillusioned with conservation approaches.

355
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:57,880
And I just put my focus to anthropology and my training and anthropology really helped and illustrating social sciences.

356
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:07,800
So, so from studying animals in in in a in a in a set up where humans met on the periphery or completely observing in Guinea,

357
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:16,080
where biology studies shifting, going from there to studying human society, that animals are on the periphery.

358
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:21,780
So what we are doing now is to looking at human society through the lens of, you know, animals.

359
00:39:21,780 --> 00:39:30,450
It is interesting. So my oh, so this is why my approach to starting animals was, you know, sort of related to non-emotional,

360
00:39:30,450 --> 00:39:36,060
you know, approach to looking at issues of social sciences, dimension and conservation.

361
00:39:36,060 --> 00:39:42,450
So my work is largely looking at the role of what is the human dimension to damages and

362
00:39:42,450 --> 00:39:49,260
conservation and looking at politics of politics of wildlife conservation is working right now.

363
00:39:49,260 --> 00:39:56,760
Oh, so, so is it? Yeah, it's maybe well.

364
00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:03,360
Yeah, this is this is a journey of why it's really an emotional. Yeah, maybe, yeah, I'd better listen to this.

365
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,750
Oh yeah. Inputs. Yeah.

366
00:40:06,750 --> 00:40:12,900
Fascinating topic. I don't know many anthropologists who have actually done the whole biology and the wildlife side of it, so it's invaluable.

367
00:40:12,900 --> 00:40:18,000
You know, the the sort of not knowledge systems that are combining in their work.

368
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,440
Thanks for that. A. Yeah.

369
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:28,680
Well, Nicole, you mentioned that my first book was on something very different. It was unclear and feminist justice movements,

370
00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:36,870
but I think that's where the interest for this project on animals came from, as I was really interested in.

371
00:40:36,870 --> 00:40:50,490
The the complex relationship between sort of private intimacy and feeling with an identification with animals on the part of queer,

372
00:40:50,490 --> 00:41:01,770
marginalised people, but public disavowal of that, right, so I was interested in the way in which for the left in these were mostly dominant castes,

373
00:41:01,770 --> 00:41:06,380
usually middle class, English speaking elite people.

374
00:41:06,380 --> 00:41:17,930
For whom disavowing relationships to animals and the performance of mediating, which is actually an appropriation of a valid Muslim practise.

375
00:41:17,930 --> 00:41:20,810
Right. I was interested in this,

376
00:41:20,810 --> 00:41:29,660
this relationship between private intimacies with the relation with animals in public disavowal of a politics related to animals.

377
00:41:29,660 --> 00:41:33,020
And so that's that's what in some ways got me on this.

378
00:41:33,020 --> 00:41:35,880
It was in so many ways there were.

379
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:44,220
My project on queer lives and queer justice movements wasn't that different from what I'm working on right now, right?

380
00:41:44,220 --> 00:41:50,370
Like privately, these were often like these [INAUDIBLE] who pick up animals and take them to be sterilised on

381
00:41:50,370 --> 00:41:57,840
Saturdays and work at animal shelters and have animals and identify with with with street dogs.

382
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:03,810
You know, for a sense of like homelessness and not being understood and not being respected in society.

383
00:42:03,810 --> 00:42:11,190
And so, yeah, I was interested in these sort of sentimental attachments with political detachments with animals.

384
00:42:11,190 --> 00:42:17,280
I'll add to that, too. You know, like many of us, I write about like what I care about, right?

385
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:21,690
Like I'm a [INAUDIBLE] writes about [INAUDIBLE] and animal rights, about animals.

386
00:42:21,690 --> 00:42:27,510
And so I'm interested in these things. But I also want to mention this concept of animal lover that came up earlier.

387
00:42:27,510 --> 00:42:30,750
I don't love animals and I'm not into animals, right?

388
00:42:30,750 --> 00:42:39,000
But I don't. But I respect them. And that's also something that I'm I'm thinking about is this relationship between.

389
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,240
Between love and respect, care and indifference.

390
00:42:42,240 --> 00:42:49,920
Lastly, I'll just say that when I gave my opening commentary about these two different forms of leaving animals alone,

391
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:54,150
the one that comes from a kind of rabbinical outsourcing of care.

392
00:42:54,150 --> 00:43:02,310
That's the one that I grew up in. And so I was interested in this kind of this hip and to call it a hypocrisies is too little.

393
00:43:02,310 --> 00:43:09,100
Right? I think what I'm interested in is the way in which Brahman ism relies on.

394
00:43:09,100 --> 00:43:14,170
Claims of infections of care and facts of violence that are absolutely integral,

395
00:43:14,170 --> 00:43:19,780
and so the methodological problem of studying South Asia is inseparable from the political problem,

396
00:43:19,780 --> 00:43:24,660
which maybe we can talk a little bit more about later. Fabulous, thanks.

397
00:43:24,660 --> 00:43:29,390
I think we'll come back to the sort of political problem and the links to the metrological one in a minute.

398
00:43:29,390 --> 00:43:37,790
Thanks, this radical thanks, Danica. So I think I love some animals.

399
00:43:37,790 --> 00:43:47,150
I'm terrified of some animals and dislike some other animals, so I feel a whole gamut of emotions and affects around animals.

400
00:43:47,150 --> 00:43:51,080
So that, I think was part of what drew me to this.

401
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:58,700
I began actually by writing a history thesis on the formation of Corbett National Park in the 1930s,

402
00:43:58,700 --> 00:44:05,460
and I was interested in the politics of wildlife conservation and thinking about its colonial origins.

403
00:44:05,460 --> 00:44:12,440
And I, when I was applying to graduate programmes, I was thinking that it would make that anthropology made sense because it would

404
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:16,340
allow me to think about how that past had left its imprint on the present,

405
00:44:16,340 --> 00:44:24,980
which is very hard to miss, particularly with forest conservation models around Corbett and other national parks.

406
00:44:24,980 --> 00:44:32,420
And I think the broadening that out to animals really came from doing fieldwork where I realised

407
00:44:32,420 --> 00:44:36,300
that some of the distinctions that I was working with just were untenable in practise.

408
00:44:36,300 --> 00:44:43,070
So I was thinking about the questions that I was asking in a sense about leopards training or, you know,

409
00:44:43,070 --> 00:44:51,860
entering people's houses were just did not seem like they landed because people would talk about how these aren't shared spaces

410
00:44:51,860 --> 00:44:59,010
and that these are not wild animals in the sense that one would think of because they're also subject to certain regimes.

411
00:44:59,010 --> 00:45:04,980
So coming back to the supernatural thing, which I didn't really think about much that first project the the idea,

412
00:45:04,980 --> 00:45:09,290
for example, that leopards were servants of goddesses, right?

413
00:45:09,290 --> 00:45:13,340
And did their bidding as well. So one had to maintain that balance of relationships.

414
00:45:13,340 --> 00:45:16,760
So I think for me that trying to think about the modelling of those categories and

415
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:22,010
thinking about the the range of spaces and with similar questions were arising,

416
00:45:22,010 --> 00:45:28,370
whether it was animal rights activists and kind of saying, you know, these are wild people, right?

417
00:45:28,370 --> 00:45:33,530
They have to be tamed. They have to be brought into the civilised Indian nation especially.

418
00:45:33,530 --> 00:45:41,450
And in a sense, it's a very different politics. They're right because they're they're lapsed Hindus who must be brought back into a Hindu fold.

419
00:45:41,450 --> 00:45:47,060
You know, I'd love to talk about the activist question leader, since that's come up for several of us, but especially there.

420
00:45:47,060 --> 00:45:56,000
These were activists with tremendous political power as well, and also activists who were bringing with them people like Baba Ramdev,

421
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,450
right, and saying this is not a Hindu practise or on sacrifice.

422
00:45:59,450 --> 00:46:04,490
And I was curious about how that how that language was resonating across multiple fields.

423
00:46:04,490 --> 00:46:11,720
So I think that was what broadened an initial interest in wildlife conservation into these larger domains for me.

424
00:46:11,720 --> 00:46:18,500
And I think the methodological question is it is a tricky one because, you know,

425
00:46:18,500 --> 00:46:26,630
it can be a range of ways to to try and think about what it means to take animals as ethnographic actors of that is what one wants to do.

426
00:46:26,630 --> 00:46:32,660
I think it's also possible actually to do animal studies without necessarily making that move.

427
00:46:32,660 --> 00:46:36,740
But, you know, if that is one of the questions, I think for me,

428
00:46:36,740 --> 00:46:44,720
really being imaginative and letting go of certain desires to maintain difference can be a productive move.

429
00:46:44,720 --> 00:46:52,100
So thinking, you know, I've talked about this with anyone before, and I write about this in my book, but I was really struck by friends,

430
00:46:52,100 --> 00:47:01,550
the Wolves idea of anthropol. denial and that his assertion that we worry too much about anthropocentric without thinking about anthropol. denial,

431
00:47:01,550 --> 00:47:07,160
the idea that you know, certain emotions or something that only human animals feel and modern on humans.

432
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:18,110
So I want to think about, you know what attachment and just hate and violence and indifference look like across a range of animal actors,

433
00:47:18,110 --> 00:47:25,190
both human and non-human. And I think that requires letting go of certain forms of denial, perhaps and opening up the imaginations.

434
00:47:25,190 --> 00:47:34,790
I think there's room for creative play, but that also then brings with the challenges of what it means to what,

435
00:47:34,790 --> 00:47:39,710
what you might be reading into someone that isn't there. But I think that's an anthropological problem at large.

436
00:47:39,710 --> 00:47:43,820
So if we want to talk about that in the context of anthropology, even with humans,

437
00:47:43,820 --> 00:47:51,110
I think that can remind us that this is not an animal problem or a non-human animal problem at all.

438
00:47:51,110 --> 00:47:53,970
Great, thanks for the call. We should definitely come back to that.

439
00:47:53,970 --> 00:47:59,900
There was a question because I think all of you look at animal rights activism in slightly different ways,

440
00:47:59,900 --> 00:48:02,780
and that would be a pretty interesting comparison to make.

441
00:48:02,780 --> 00:48:08,870
One way to think of this pandemic could have been through animal rights activism that, you know, to narrow it down in a way.

442
00:48:08,870 --> 00:48:13,320
But I couldn't agree more with you on the point of sort of the creativity in animal studies, right?

443
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:19,400
And even if you just think of, say, the five or fewer you all approach on Ironwood's quite differently and deleted,

444
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:22,980
you're in conversation intellectually, even graphically with one another.

445
00:48:22,980 --> 00:48:32,120
But you know you have a different takes on it, and that's what's so fascinating and exciting about this field at the moment.

446
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:37,780
Would you like to go next for Dolly? Hi, yes.

447
00:48:37,780 --> 00:48:42,350
So. I came to study animals.

448
00:48:42,350 --> 00:48:52,130
My passion was basically to learn about the connexion between humans and pigeons while growing up in a rural self-identification.

449
00:48:52,130 --> 00:48:57,110
I would wake up every day listening to all those whistles and sounds.

450
00:48:57,110 --> 00:49:02,930
People would make sure guided pigeons flying above on the rooftops.

451
00:49:02,930 --> 00:49:11,930
So this would fascinate me how they were able to form that connexion with pigeons without any move or stream or any threat.

452
00:49:11,930 --> 00:49:14,900
You know, like we have in kite flying.

453
00:49:14,900 --> 00:49:23,990
So I fly and you have some kind of, you know, an ability to connect with the kite through that to that strength.

454
00:49:23,990 --> 00:49:31,970
But in Britain, flying, it was fascinating to see how those pigeons were ascending and descending on their kind of orders.

455
00:49:31,970 --> 00:49:35,000
So this was something fascinating for me.

456
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:43,520
And when I got this opportunity in my masters to study do ethnographic research, and I said, I'm going to do a pigeon flying,

457
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:52,880
and that was the kind of new thing for anthropology in Pakistan at the time while I was doing my email strategy in Islamabad that got Azam University.

458
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:58,280
So I told my surprise I've understood the animals, and he agreed.

459
00:49:58,280 --> 00:50:02,990
Then I came across different literature, fascinating individuals.

460
00:50:02,990 --> 00:50:06,830
One was a novel from pre partition novel.

461
00:50:06,830 --> 00:50:17,270
Ahmed Ali from Edmonton leads a call to a lake in Delhi, and it details the fascinating the fascination of being flying back in India,

462
00:50:17,270 --> 00:50:25,190
even though, you know, it's like before partition and at the end of the time, but it was still so much fascinating for many people.

463
00:50:25,190 --> 00:50:31,460
So this brought me back to the question of disconnection.

464
00:50:31,460 --> 00:50:40,490
I would say methodologically studying animals rather have given kind of a broader overview.

465
00:50:40,490 --> 00:50:49,340
But in the context of Pakistan, what I have felt, there are two dominant issues that basically structure your approach to animals,

466
00:50:49,340 --> 00:50:58,460
and one is treason, and the other one is lot of religion in the context that, for example, I was studying dogs and then I went to stray dogs.

467
00:50:58,460 --> 00:51:05,480
That was Haram Animal, Fugit Animal. So I would have to go there instead.

468
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:10,520
And in spite of facing criticism from the same village people there, I was working.

469
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:17,030
So they would ask me, Why are you going to go just starting this brutal, horrible people find chickens are fine, but dogs are not.

470
00:51:17,030 --> 00:51:24,080
That's the same with the donkeys were never going into research and legal issues in Pakistan because unlike India,

471
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:31,940
where in 1960s they developed the Animal Protection Act, revise the Animal Protection Act in Pakistan,

472
00:51:31,940 --> 00:51:36,600
the 1890 version is still there and this causes so many problems.

473
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:42,230
If you are studying animals, it would mean that it's very ambiguous.

474
00:51:42,230 --> 00:51:47,780
So many situations can arise, and it can cause so many problems.

475
00:51:47,780 --> 00:51:54,680
So I would stop here because I think we are having some other questions. Thanksgiving's fascinating.

476
00:51:54,680 --> 00:52:00,650
I love these sort of different entries to animal studies that all of you have, it's it's fascinating.

477
00:52:00,650 --> 00:52:07,070
I can see some questions already popping up in the Turin inbox. Others please feel free to, you know, right to questions down.

478
00:52:07,070 --> 00:52:10,730
But perhaps we can have Dolly go next on this.

479
00:52:10,730 --> 00:52:19,700
And then I say, I think I just shared about how I was looking at human beings for the longest time.

480
00:52:19,700 --> 00:52:26,780
You know it from a human rights work. And then I began to realise that my entry into food was also true.

481
00:52:26,780 --> 00:52:33,530
The concept that I was right. And I mean, you know, there's so much looking at something looking at a regulation like that offers a

482
00:52:33,530 --> 00:52:38,660
specialist spark inside of life as to human rights activist really impacts you.

483
00:52:38,660 --> 00:52:40,060
And so, you know, in a sense,

484
00:52:40,060 --> 00:52:47,360
I wouldn't apologise for a larger part of my life being really human centric because there's so much suffering around that.

485
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:54,170
And yet I realise that as I went into the archives, you know, a lot of the brain areas, a lot of cattle being burned down.

486
00:52:54,170 --> 00:53:04,970
And then I saw that how food is so central to counterinsurgency, how starvation and starving communities were so central to state violence.

487
00:53:04,970 --> 00:53:09,380
When I was working in the farm after I finished law school in the early part of the 2000s,

488
00:53:09,380 --> 00:53:12,800
a lot of ethnic cleansing took place in the summer around the time,

489
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:17,180
and some of the reports that came were really about, you know, burning entire livestock.

490
00:53:17,180 --> 00:53:28,370
So I still remember images of burnt pigs, goats, dogs, cows, and somehow they never entered the conversation.

491
00:53:28,370 --> 00:53:35,000
And so over over the years, I think what really kind of started to make me think was this story that I can't forget,

492
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:40,850
which made me co-author a paper that came out called The Zone of Rehabilitation.

493
00:53:40,850 --> 00:53:47,630
And this is an article that came out, I think, around two years ago, and it was because of our students here at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences,

494
00:53:47,630 --> 00:53:56,240
first-generation rural students who were going back trained, as you know, in ecology and the social sciences back into conservation.

495
00:53:56,240 --> 00:54:01,640
They were pretty much like as first generations would get when they were going back to study what ecology was.

496
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:05,750
And if you look at the North is a sense that there are so many conservation parks around.

497
00:54:05,750 --> 00:54:09,650
And so when they invited us to my nurse and my partner and there,

498
00:54:09,650 --> 00:54:14,000
when my husband and I went and it was amazing that they were in the middle of Manaus and,

499
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:22,190
you know, they would climb those watchtowers and they were there. And you know that the Manas National Park is in between Assam and Bhutan, right?

500
00:54:22,190 --> 00:54:26,060
The elephants animals are constantly crossing boundaries.

501
00:54:26,060 --> 00:54:30,140
And yet for students, fresh graduates who are working, especially the women there,

502
00:54:30,140 --> 00:54:35,680
were so gendered the rule because any time the the funders would come, you know,

503
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:37,130
from other parts of India,

504
00:54:37,130 --> 00:54:43,910
they would demand that where you donate and do you know how difficult it is to wear a borrowed coconut and walk in a wildlife park?

505
00:54:43,910 --> 00:54:50,990
So, you know, says I really began to see and for a larger part of my life, it was really anger that that made me right.

506
00:54:50,990 --> 00:54:57,590
And you need also burns me. It's really exhausting. And I think I'll just become very mellow at some point of time in my life.

507
00:54:57,590 --> 00:55:04,910
But man, I look, and they were like, Man, we come to Dakonam, you know, forget, forget.

508
00:55:04,910 --> 00:55:10,640
Don't forget the token. You have to wrap around the body in such an elegant clothing,

509
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:16,490
but you can't walk in the middle of a conservation Florida's state showing funders like from Delhi Bombay,

510
00:55:16,490 --> 00:55:20,870
you know, you know, whoa, whoa, how the leopard and the tigers are being saved.

511
00:55:20,870 --> 00:55:24,590
And it really made me think about communities. I mean, moral.

512
00:55:24,590 --> 00:55:30,050
And if you look at the level of violence and the conflict, it has really scarred communities.

513
00:55:30,050 --> 00:55:32,900
And with that, also the wildlife parks, right?

514
00:55:32,900 --> 00:55:45,350
And I saw the human side of how communities who were most impacted by the armed conflict were actually finding a voice to include animals,

515
00:55:45,350 --> 00:55:54,350
not because they were getting money from the funders, but because they saw that it was necessary that in their healing, the animals also had to heal.

516
00:55:54,350 --> 00:55:57,980
And I was amazed at the sign.

517
00:55:57,980 --> 00:56:05,390
And so I ended up writing this piece called The Zone of Rehabilitation Rehabilitation for both humans and animals together.

518
00:56:05,390 --> 00:56:11,870
And I think that writing that piece really shook me up, right in terms of what I was able to see.

519
00:56:11,870 --> 00:56:17,330
And and that made me, I think, really look at the world around me in a very different way.

520
00:56:17,330 --> 00:56:22,580
And I'm not ashamed to say that I'm still learning and it's such a humbling process.

521
00:56:22,580 --> 00:56:30,800
And also, I think my my journey to Australia, where indigenous people's experiences with the bird,

522
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:40,670
I think the bird of origin that that had such a powerful bird in a sense gave me a sense of work to come back to India and to say,

523
00:56:40,670 --> 00:56:44,420
you know, as indigenous, as tribal, we have a story to tell.

524
00:56:44,420 --> 00:56:51,980
And it's and and and, you know, sometimes as a writer, I feel that every time I don't have.

525
00:56:51,980 --> 00:56:59,030
I have to take the script that are broadcast that dominant narrative gives me, and that's a danger.

526
00:56:59,030 --> 00:57:05,810
I'll come back to the method of the analytical challenge that we have studying animals because we are.

527
00:57:05,810 --> 00:57:17,660
So I think we are so fast in giving scripts to animals and humans are on our lives that we don't dwell on movement and we don't dwell on connexion.

528
00:57:17,660 --> 00:57:23,960
And I think that's the magical thing that I think dwelling on that would actually make us see,

529
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:28,520
you know, the inhuman is of, I think, what we have done to our world honours.

530
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:32,300
And I and I go back to my tribal essence of being a Naga.

531
00:57:32,300 --> 00:57:42,320
That the dogma debate brought up so many conversations about cruelty in India, but especially in Nagaland, amongst the Naga people themselves.

532
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:46,250
Right? Is it what are we doing? How do we think of it together?

533
00:57:46,250 --> 00:57:52,850
How do we prefer animals, young people refusing to eat anything that that's game meat in Nagaland?

534
00:57:52,850 --> 00:57:57,390
My niece, she spends all her salary teaching her cats in Nagaland.

535
00:57:57,390 --> 00:57:59,270
And then what do you do? And of course,

536
00:57:59,270 --> 00:58:06,710
I send her pocket money and we don't look at the stories that are happening because our tribal people are still the forest is disappearing.

537
00:58:06,710 --> 00:58:11,060
And in my book that I wrote, I think that came out last year, 2021.

538
00:58:11,060 --> 00:58:20,480
I wrote about that one chapter is on hunters in democracy and tribal people as we lose the forest, as we lose livelihood.

539
00:58:20,480 --> 00:58:24,470
You know, there are more nano migrants than other hunters today.

540
00:58:24,470 --> 00:58:30,140
And how do we understand is, how do we understand here, you know, in the backdrop of militarisation.

541
00:58:30,140 --> 00:58:36,410
So even as violence has become such a big framework for me to understand rights and justice,

542
00:58:36,410 --> 00:58:41,450
it's it's people on the ground, communities who are helping me to see a new light.

543
00:58:41,450 --> 00:58:52,370
And I would be forever thankful to the to the people in Berlin and to the people in Manas for teaching me that the fantastic thank you so much.

544
00:58:52,370 --> 00:58:59,210
And it to Europe for a second and just ask of you. I mean, you write about animals as well, and I know you haven't had a chance to speak so far,

545
00:58:59,210 --> 00:59:06,530
but I'd love to hear from you about how you came to animals and how you would think about the methodological challenges before you.

546
00:59:06,530 --> 00:59:12,020
Yeah, I think, you know, it's it's part of the reason I'm so sort of so fascinated with this question of how you

547
00:59:12,020 --> 00:59:16,430
come to it is because I actually came to animals quite from a book and bureaucracy,

548
00:59:16,430 --> 00:59:25,190
you know, from sitting inside government offices and looking at papers and documents and the space of sort of district magistrates offices, et cetera.

549
00:59:25,190 --> 00:59:30,920
And also so partly, that's sort of the entry point for me, but also partly like really serendipitously,

550
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:33,110
like it wasn't something I ever was thinking about working on.

551
00:59:33,110 --> 00:59:38,390
And then, as you know, in the field, you know, all sorts of things come to you and then these big cats sort of,

552
00:59:38,390 --> 00:59:45,020
well, thankfully that didn't come for me, but they came out several times, and that's how it sort of I got into it.

553
00:59:45,020 --> 00:59:50,930
But I think for me, the really interesting question personally and you know that I'm working on and I'm going to be wrestling with them.

554
00:59:50,930 --> 00:59:55,130
I think in the near future is also thinking about non-humans and the climate crisis.

555
00:59:55,130 --> 01:00:01,850
And how do we how do we read something like the famine crisis through animal studies

556
01:00:01,850 --> 01:00:06,200
and through human relations with animals is something that I'm interested in.

557
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:08,720
And again, all of them have just come.

558
01:00:08,720 --> 01:00:16,100
The slaughter thing is very much gone from some of the more recent interest in thinking about methods of thinking

559
01:00:16,100 --> 01:00:21,980
about how anthropology can speak to history or to the natural sciences and to politics and political theory,

560
01:00:21,980 --> 01:00:28,490
etc. But yeah, but it can go ahead and answer, but it's just sort of it's done from a range of things.

561
01:00:28,490 --> 01:00:37,550
It's been I can't think of one particular interest or one particular moment in my field say that got me just an animal studies.

562
01:00:37,550 --> 01:00:44,720
Yeah, it's been a I consider lots of questions sort of popping up already into the books.

563
01:00:44,720 --> 01:00:48,200
I had several more questions to sort of pursue,

564
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:55,070
but perhaps what we can do is we can take a round of questions and then we can come back to some of the questions like the one you raised.

565
01:00:55,070 --> 01:01:01,550
I think about animal rights activism, which I think is a really important one, but also I think something that all of you sort of refer to,

566
01:01:01,550 --> 01:01:08,540
which is the political stakes of the work that you're doing right of your individual project, especially in this moment in time.

567
01:01:08,540 --> 01:01:15,350
And I'd love to be able to think a bit more about that collectively, but perhaps we can just take some of these questions first.

568
01:01:15,350 --> 01:01:26,400
How would you like to ask your question? I'm going to just give you the right to speak and then perhaps you could ask a question.

569
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,250
So this is a very interesting band,

570
01:01:29,250 --> 01:01:38,790
and I really enjoyed listening to all the products that all of you are doing and how it all is really nice to hear you talk.

571
01:01:38,790 --> 01:01:44,040
And I've been reading many articles that you have written and really fascinated.

572
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:50,580
I actually you've mostly answered my question, but I just kind of I just read it out what I've written.

573
01:01:50,580 --> 01:01:55,020
OK? Because we've talked about ourselves and project.

574
01:01:55,020 --> 01:01:59,670
And of course, you know that it was.

575
01:01:59,670 --> 01:02:06,900
The Falcons began roosting because of the boundaries of wire and bone overall, who I remember did a story on it.

576
01:02:06,900 --> 01:02:13,770
And kind of the process snowballed the conservation process after that,

577
01:02:13,770 --> 01:02:18,150
which was taken up forward by others along the dialogue and discussion with the villagers.

578
01:02:18,150 --> 01:02:23,430
And one of the things was that all about Falcon, as you rightly said, that the hunters,

579
01:02:23,430 --> 01:02:33,030
because of the shrinking forest and also over hunting and overconsumption they were Falcon actually gave,

580
01:02:33,030 --> 01:02:36,210
brought them enough money to tide them over the year.

581
01:02:36,210 --> 01:02:43,710
And I remember reading that, you know, the number of falcons that they were able to to hunt for and sell.

582
01:02:43,710 --> 01:02:47,430
So they had to also talk about, you know, how to replace that.

583
01:02:47,430 --> 01:02:55,110
You know, how how can they earn money? And they were trying to give them chickens and other animals to raise something like that.

584
01:02:55,110 --> 01:02:59,700
And also, there was a conservation project in Coloma long before this Abu Falcon game.

585
01:02:59,700 --> 01:03:07,680
And I remember now there are kind of bird watching societies and tours and kind of my village that's

586
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:13,710
begun to take quite a bit of pride about the way the conservation has looked around that area.

587
01:03:13,710 --> 01:03:21,150
And also because my work has been on religion, church and religious conversion also.

588
01:03:21,150 --> 01:03:28,890
And I remember talking to the best looking mine. He was telling me that he was showing me that how they've started discouraging offering

589
01:03:28,890 --> 01:03:35,100
of wild animals during the certain time in the church when harvest offerings are made.

590
01:03:35,100 --> 01:03:41,880
So I was just wondering if you could shed some light on these issues, which are some from within the community as such,

591
01:03:41,880 --> 01:03:46,590
rather than people from Bombay and others that are talking about dog meat and,

592
01:03:46,590 --> 01:03:50,490
you know, animal activism, which is like imposing from outside and things.

593
01:03:50,490 --> 01:03:58,890
But the way conservation, especially ecology and I think it was, let's do some kind of a climate change idea.

594
01:03:58,890 --> 01:04:05,700
Also, what are the times when maybe the hunters used to not hunt in the forest or something like that?

595
01:04:05,700 --> 01:04:11,040
I mean, I don't know what's going on. There's a lot of work that is happening and that would if you could shed some more light,

596
01:04:11,040 --> 01:04:19,310
but you have actually already answered my question in what you were talking about the Bodo and the anX.

597
01:04:19,310 --> 01:04:23,620
Thanks, Bieber. Wonderful to hear from you. You're right.

598
01:04:23,620 --> 01:04:28,520
You know, Bono is an elder sister and we have been in touch,

599
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:38,660
and I think her her recent concerns have been something that touched ED on climate change and change of migration seasons.

600
01:04:38,660 --> 01:04:48,050
So, so increasingly, there are less, I think falcons that come the timings are not kind of routine as they used to be.

601
01:04:48,050 --> 01:04:56,630
And so that's one thing that's happening is also perhaps in disrupting the kind of the tourism element that's been tied to conservation.

602
01:04:56,630 --> 01:05:04,820
And so what do you do with that? The second element within community conflict that's that's come up is that like with every conservation,

603
01:05:04,820 --> 01:05:12,170
because it's tied to livelihood and money making, that communities should stop everything they're doing and entertain tourists and

604
01:05:12,170 --> 01:05:17,830
take them to the roosting sites internal conflict that this should this year,

605
01:05:17,830 --> 01:05:24,020
should that a more welcome kind of sightseeing spaces be constructed, right?

606
01:05:24,020 --> 01:05:28,670
Which politician and which constituency would get the money?

607
01:05:28,670 --> 01:05:36,650
In a sense, I think some of the internal conflicts that that come up within community has been quite fascinating.

608
01:05:36,650 --> 01:05:48,500
The third point that's come up, I think, is is around. Then perhaps, you know, how do we understand and what are the limits of conservation tourism?

609
01:05:48,500 --> 01:05:53,810
Do do you do a life concert there in Punta Gorda tokens that come in?

610
01:05:53,810 --> 01:05:57,560
So there's not a young generation, they can also have a great party and like concerts.

611
01:05:57,560 --> 01:06:01,860
And in the morning when kind of like, you know, look at look at the Falcons,

612
01:06:01,860 --> 01:06:07,550
and I think there's really a script that's going wrong once like once again with conservation.

613
01:06:07,550 --> 01:06:17,000
And I think that's been also one of the debates across Adivasi areas with conservation that is to do with Tiger or other big cats have come right.

614
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:21,360
You can't have the tourism element tied to conservation so much.

615
01:06:21,360 --> 01:06:25,160
I think at some point for any kind of roosting, the birds need to be left alone.

616
01:06:25,160 --> 01:06:31,340
Any, any anything just to tell you that. So I think that's something that the Naga people have really been struggling with because

617
01:06:31,340 --> 01:06:35,060
anything that comes up in the note is to do with conservation is that there's money,

618
01:06:35,060 --> 01:06:38,540
right? Sure. I know there's money riding elephant is money now.

619
01:06:38,540 --> 01:06:43,880
Go see and we're talking, you know, and this money. So you're right.

620
01:06:43,880 --> 01:06:49,190
So, you know, I'm really fascinated by the internal conversations that are that are coming up.

621
01:06:49,190 --> 01:06:57,680
And how do we then eventually then define what is why are they really why the why we bother and disturb them so much with the money angle?

622
01:06:57,680 --> 01:07:08,540
Or, you know, are they then part of us as in the urban, you know, zones, you know where they are eventually there to just entertain us?

623
01:07:08,540 --> 01:07:17,740
Emotionally, I was wondering, I mean, we all know about the, you know, the way.

624
01:07:17,740 --> 01:07:24,400
The Indian Army action on the villages to do so to suppress insurgency and nationalist movement,

625
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:33,310
how it has also disturbed the life and you know, the knowledge that comes down from one generation to the next.

626
01:07:33,310 --> 01:07:36,010
That has also been disturbed, isn't it?

627
01:07:36,010 --> 01:07:47,770
So when you think of the even timber logging, the over logging of the forest or over hunting and also the knowledge of the seeds and you know,

628
01:07:47,770 --> 01:07:56,990
there's there is something else also going on. There's a kind of a disturbance that has happened in the.

629
01:07:56,990 --> 01:08:01,820
In sort of generational knowledge giving, and there's a whole generation of the 1950s,

630
01:08:01,820 --> 01:08:05,840
I mean, we all know about the 1956 and how so many villages were burnt.

631
01:08:05,840 --> 01:08:12,180
And you know, that's the how it has disturbed that knowledge base as well.

632
01:08:12,180 --> 01:08:15,630
Would you would you think that you're right?

633
01:08:15,630 --> 01:08:22,860
I think you're right, I think absolutely, you know, working on militarisation, all your points are spot on.

634
01:08:22,860 --> 01:08:29,760
And I think when you talk about non-human, I wrote this paper called Terrifying Politics and it's about the disappearance of the cosmos

635
01:08:29,760 --> 01:08:35,700
flower from the hills of Manipur and how that was part of counterinsurgency to actually kind of,

636
01:08:35,700 --> 01:08:39,420
you know, clear the forests around the highways. So yeah, you're spot on.

637
01:08:39,420 --> 01:08:45,270
You're right. Thank you. Sorry.

638
01:08:45,270 --> 01:08:52,210
Thanks for that. Thanks, Tony. We go to quite a few other questions coming in this one from an anonymous attendee.

639
01:08:52,210 --> 01:08:59,370
I'm going to just read it out and they say, Hi, my question pertains to the relation between non-humans and religion,

640
01:08:59,370 --> 01:09:03,210
as mentioned usage of animal metaphors, forms of living alone.

641
01:09:03,210 --> 01:09:07,860
Should the social and religious conceptualisation of animals in South Asian context.

642
01:09:07,860 --> 01:09:13,800
For my Ph.D., I'm working with the atheist visuals digital, where many animals are used in means of visual arts.

643
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:19,500
How do think about digital visuals involving animals and religion?

644
01:09:19,500 --> 01:09:25,870
Who would like to get it means, you know, you don't have to lobby to try and take it.

645
01:09:25,870 --> 01:09:28,380
But I have an answer for you that sounds like a fascinating project.

646
01:09:28,380 --> 01:09:36,630
I'm a huge consumer of 80s memes involving animals, so I look forward to reading about this.

647
01:09:36,630 --> 01:09:43,110
But I do think that there's been so much interesting work on the plate of popular

648
01:09:43,110 --> 01:09:46,860
culture and the production of digital media around religion in particular.

649
01:09:46,860 --> 01:09:52,290
You know, whether it's thinking about what kind of charisma transmit through images, for example,

650
01:09:52,290 --> 01:10:01,260
what it means to take in the popular Hindu context, for example, darshan right through a digital meme or so on.

651
01:10:01,260 --> 01:10:08,310
And certainly, I mean, there's a lot of digital media circulating on WhatsApp, for example, right?

652
01:10:08,310 --> 01:10:13,200
These kinds of religious names in the Hindu right uses that a lot as well.

653
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:18,360
So I think for me, you know, the way to think about it would not be that different from thinking about the atheist means

654
01:10:18,360 --> 01:10:25,740
I think it would be questions about what what forms of digital media are able to cultivate,

655
01:10:25,740 --> 01:10:29,550
what kind of messaging accompanies them. And it would be interesting to think.

656
01:10:29,550 --> 01:10:35,100
I think about how people receive that and how they imagine the work that the image is doing.

657
01:10:35,100 --> 01:10:40,320
But yeah, I look forward to reading it. Thanks for the call.

658
01:10:40,320 --> 01:10:50,050
Would anybody else like to jump in on the episode visuals?

659
01:10:50,050 --> 01:10:55,480
OK, well, we can come back to the question of which reality in a bit, but thank you for that question.

660
01:10:55,480 --> 01:11:01,150
I think, Meghna, you had a question if you'd like to ask it. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you.

661
01:11:01,150 --> 01:11:08,410
This was all really fantastic. And actually, I have so many questions, but I'm going to stick to two of them if I may.

662
01:11:08,410 --> 01:11:13,180
And one is, I think I should add the. And the other one is for now target.

663
01:11:13,180 --> 01:11:18,310
But I think I was really, really glad that you sort of brought up animals in the supernatural.

664
01:11:18,310 --> 01:11:22,450
And as Nicole mentioned, that it is an emerging field.

665
01:11:22,450 --> 01:11:29,890
And I think, you know, Nizar Sakinah had been part of a workshop two years ago on questions of the non-human in South Asia,

666
01:11:29,890 --> 01:11:35,710
and a lot of the literature that one thinks about is in relation to Ontology and

667
01:11:35,710 --> 01:11:40,000
was citing it from the South America where we think of separate ontologies.

668
01:11:40,000 --> 01:11:43,870
And I think something you said was really fascinating and I've been thinking about it,

669
01:11:43,870 --> 01:11:49,090
which is that do you really what is, you know, does do South Asians have a separate ontology?

670
01:11:49,090 --> 01:11:53,620
And I know this is a really large question, but I think in so many ways, you know,

671
01:11:53,620 --> 01:12:00,850
not just in rural South Asia or forest dwelling South Asia, but what you said is that, you know, the Hindutva is an animistic tradition.

672
01:12:00,850 --> 01:12:08,920
It's that they're using the Ganga and the Himalayas as vital forces in ways that I wondered if there was

673
01:12:08,920 --> 01:12:15,700
an answer to this question of ontology vis a vis South Asia in this kind of feel that that there's,

674
01:12:15,700 --> 01:12:22,000
you know, it's populated with so much of this literature from perspective ism and, you know, elsewhere in the Amazonia or the Andes.

675
01:12:22,000 --> 01:12:25,270
But what do South Asia have to say about ontology?

676
01:12:25,270 --> 01:12:35,260
And very quickly, if I may, and I said I had a question for for, you know, thinking about freedom and unfreedom alongside difference and indifference.

677
01:12:35,260 --> 01:12:41,380
And so when you were talking about animals being left alone, you know, I in the Sunderbans,

678
01:12:41,380 --> 01:12:46,600
at least some of the wildest animals, you know, the daigo or riverine turtles are so veiled.

679
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:54,130
So they have the radio collar and they have these tracking devices. And I think Dolly just mentioned this, you know, how wild are these wild animals?

680
01:12:54,130 --> 01:12:58,810
And I think Emma Morris maybe talks about autonomy of words in the US,

681
01:12:58,810 --> 01:13:06,880
and she sort of says that maybe a clue or a common sparrow is actually more wild or more free than than these wolves.

682
01:13:06,880 --> 01:13:11,620
And I think in this in their bones, in these tigers, because they're trapped constantly.

683
01:13:11,620 --> 01:13:17,830
And I just wondered alongside different scare in difference, if you thought about freedom,

684
01:13:17,830 --> 01:13:23,890
autonomy, wilderness or wildness in in in this book that we all can't wait to read.

685
01:13:23,890 --> 01:13:30,280
So thank you all for really fantastic thoughts. Thanks, Peter.

686
01:13:30,280 --> 01:13:34,280
Rather, go direct to go first and then make a mess or whichever way.

687
01:13:34,280 --> 01:13:40,300
Yep, that's fine. Sorry, if somebody is not going to unmute myself, I.

688
01:13:40,300 --> 01:13:45,550
It's lovely to hear from you. Thank you for that question. I think that's exactly what we're trying to take on.

689
01:13:45,550 --> 01:13:53,920
The dominance of ontological anthropology is the way to think about the non-human supernatural.

690
01:13:53,920 --> 01:14:02,920
And I think that, you know, there have been very substantial critiques of the ontological tone that point to exactly this kind of the lack of history.

691
01:14:02,920 --> 01:14:10,510
But I think what I find interesting is how, you know, academic work doesn't circulate in a vacuum in a sense, right?

692
01:14:10,510 --> 01:14:18,250
And I was struck by this when I was at a Gotoxa rally and one of the speakers there said, we are like the people of Peru and Ecuador.

693
01:14:18,250 --> 01:14:24,610
We're struggling with with colonialism, and we have to also shake it off like them.

694
01:14:24,610 --> 01:14:30,640
And he interestingly said, you know, Ecuador has made Mother Earth the mother in their constitution.

695
01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:34,480
And yet when we're talking about making the cow, the cow mother of the nation,

696
01:14:34,480 --> 01:14:39,400
everyone's laughing at us and saying that this is, you know, this is a political movement.

697
01:14:39,400 --> 01:14:44,320
So those are in that kind of the way in which ontological anthropology, if you will.

698
01:14:44,320 --> 01:14:48,760
I don't know that they're reading Eduardo Rivera as the Castro, but certainly that kind of popular sense.

699
01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:57,190
The fact that that's being drawn into these Right-Wing movements really made us think about returning the question of politics to you,

700
01:14:57,190 --> 01:15:00,440
not just table ontologies, but questions of ontology in general.

701
01:15:00,440 --> 01:15:06,280
So even someone like Mauricio de la Cadena, for example, and in the domain of anthropological writing on this,

702
01:15:06,280 --> 01:15:15,940
she's much more, I think, circumspect about total ontologies, but still says something about how these are not.

703
01:15:15,940 --> 01:15:20,320
These are not things that one can question because one is not off that world, right?

704
01:15:20,320 --> 01:15:22,420
If it's so it's not just a belief, but it's a world.

705
01:15:22,420 --> 01:15:26,740
And if you're not off that world, then you actually don't have a space from which to question this politics.

706
01:15:26,740 --> 01:15:29,380
And this is exactly, in a sense, what the Hindu right is saying as well, right?

707
01:15:29,380 --> 01:15:35,950
If you're not Hindu, you don't actually understand that the Ganga and the Himalaya are agent of Hindu forces.

708
01:15:35,950 --> 01:15:40,600
So what do we what do we do of that with that? And I think for us, the question is really,

709
01:15:40,600 --> 01:15:49,960
can South Asia return the question of politics to this discussion of quote unquote non-Western cosmology and ontologies?

710
01:15:49,960 --> 01:15:56,350
And I think that's where we come down and really think about what are the political effects of such claims as well,

711
01:15:56,350 --> 01:16:03,730
not just in terms of who is better placed to make them, but what kinds of politics are they imagining as an outcome of that?

712
01:16:03,730 --> 01:16:08,170
So I think that's how I will try and think about what South Asia can bring to that.

713
01:16:08,170 --> 01:16:14,750
But thank you for the question. Thank you, Magnus.

714
01:16:14,750 --> 01:16:21,410
Nice to hear from you and to sort of see you again. Thank you for your question.

715
01:16:21,410 --> 01:16:29,330
I guess I would just start here. I haven't thought too much about wildness. In particular, most of my research has been done in urban areas,

716
01:16:29,330 --> 01:16:38,900
but I think we can think about sort of the freedoms of of street dogs as a kind of is a kind of wildness.

717
01:16:38,900 --> 01:16:47,210
But I guess I would just respond to your question, first of all, by saying that I do think I mean, I have been thinking about freedom and autonomy.

718
01:16:47,210 --> 01:16:55,620
And what's important to me is that. The recognition that freedom is fundamentally relational and that I think if we think about it,

719
01:16:55,620 --> 01:17:00,690
most forms of unfreedom come from assertions of unreleased banality,

720
01:17:00,690 --> 01:17:07,380
right, that are exemplified, for example, in what radical was talking about with anthrax denialism.

721
01:17:07,380 --> 01:17:17,070
So the fear of recognising the self in the other that then leads to a denial of relation is the grounds for for freedoms,

722
01:17:17,070 --> 01:17:22,140
the ground for justifications of interventions, putting surveillance callers,

723
01:17:22,140 --> 01:17:27,270
having tourists come by to pay money, to see Belkin's for their own pleasure, right?

724
01:17:27,270 --> 01:17:31,890
Those are. Those are premised fundamentally on an unrelated.

725
01:17:31,890 --> 01:17:39,750
And I was really struck, I love this comment that Darlene made earlier about about the relationship between scripts and movements.

726
01:17:39,750 --> 01:17:47,550
So these assertions of unrelated, which is to say that thing is so unlike me that I have the right to surveil it because

727
01:17:47,550 --> 01:17:52,230
of my own human curiosity and my desire for knowledge about this other thing,

728
01:17:52,230 --> 01:17:59,880
right, comes from the scripts that we create about what we are and what we are not about our right to knowledge,

729
01:17:59,880 --> 01:18:03,000
about our right, to curiosity, about others.

730
01:18:03,000 --> 01:18:12,780
But if we, I think, focus more on this question of movement, we find that animals in their freedom don't necessarily want nothing to do with us,

731
01:18:12,780 --> 01:18:15,660
want nothing to do with other animals, want anything to do with humans.

732
01:18:15,660 --> 01:18:24,240
But in fact, that movement tends to be a movement towards relation let you just not the relationally of intervention.

733
01:18:24,240 --> 01:18:31,880
So, yeah, I think this is really like just lovely concepts, a desire to think about scripts and movements.

734
01:18:31,880 --> 01:18:38,090
Tastic, thank you to all the kindness, and thank you for the question, we got quite a few more sort of pouring in,

735
01:18:38,090 --> 01:18:45,680
so I'm going to ask you to ask a question of if you're happy to ask it otherwise, I can.

736
01:18:45,680 --> 01:18:50,300
I can. Oh, I think Lauren's going to. Sorry, you might have had a glass.

737
01:18:50,300 --> 01:18:54,320
OK, so Aaron, I had a question where he?

738
01:18:54,320 --> 01:19:01,250
He asked. He said, My question is for Dr. Keegan, how how has your study of the dog meat debate affected your idea of racism?

739
01:19:01,250 --> 01:19:05,870
Indian culture and citizenship is understanding the responsibility of certain animals,

740
01:19:05,870 --> 01:19:13,690
of liberalising vast differences within societies, states, regions and India and of course, the world's.

741
01:19:13,690 --> 01:19:23,020
Thank you so much. I think it's all very tight and I bring it out in my writing, and that's what really I think got me thinking about racism and food.

742
01:19:23,020 --> 01:19:36,940
Recently, I wrote this article called Dirty Food and you know, it's part of a series on thinking about cost and thinking about racism in South Asia.

743
01:19:36,940 --> 01:19:42,880
But I find that, you know, really, really in a way intertwined with racism,

744
01:19:42,880 --> 01:19:49,870
because irrespective of what we eat and what we don't eat every kind of face in India that you see who is a tribal migrant,

745
01:19:49,870 --> 01:19:55,990
they get asked this question, right? You eat snakes, you eat dogs, and it starts going, What is there?

746
01:19:55,990 --> 01:20:00,820
Was this gusting food for? Then you do you eat rats?

747
01:20:00,820 --> 01:20:10,030
And often this taunting that goes on not only stays within the boundaries of South Asia, but you know, in Australia as well, you have you have,

748
01:20:10,030 --> 01:20:19,000
you know, kind of students from the North East who constantly say that even the work needs, you know, from other parts of India they are focussing on.

749
01:20:19,000 --> 01:20:27,580
They're like, you know what, dirty food you eat? I just want to tell you this story in Melbourne because we're talking about dog food, racism and all.

750
01:20:27,580 --> 01:20:36,370
But I would say, you know, in terms of racism and what we eat as tribals advances indigenous, it goes a step, it goes one step further.

751
01:20:36,370 --> 01:20:45,190
And that's that's the link with cannibalism, right? I'd make other, you know, you'll eat human beings and and and here and here,

752
01:20:45,190 --> 01:20:51,280
what we need to understand is the dog is more and more precious than than the human right.

753
01:20:51,280 --> 01:20:55,190
That is much more disgusting. You know, the cannibals they eat human beings, kind of.

754
01:20:55,190 --> 01:21:00,940
It's just that they get taken that once I had taken a I taken a cab in Melbourne, it was raining.

755
01:21:00,940 --> 01:21:06,160
It was dark. You know, the street was deserted and it was it was Melbourne Winter.

756
01:21:06,160 --> 01:21:09,490
So it was like the deep June July and I got it from the cab.

757
01:21:09,490 --> 01:21:16,480
And, you know, usually people ask me a lot of cab drivers, you know, if they see me, this is where you're from.

758
01:21:16,480 --> 01:21:23,200
I've like for a larger part of my life because the moment I say I'm from India, I exactly know where they're going to place me, right?

759
01:21:23,200 --> 01:21:27,580
They said, Well, I think by water, or let's put that out there, they said. And that happens in Melbourne.

760
01:21:27,580 --> 01:21:33,430
Mind you, it's not in Delhi. The attitude is so same when it comes to racism in South Asia and Africa.

761
01:21:33,430 --> 01:21:38,450
It's unbelievable that it kind of says, I think that's a word that I'm going to use them.

762
01:21:38,450 --> 01:21:43,630
They get Hansen's right this eating non-human and and making us non-humans.

763
01:21:43,630 --> 01:21:47,500
So I said, not alone. And so the cab comes to a stop.

764
01:21:47,500 --> 01:21:52,660
I get off, it's drizzling. And he looks at me in Hindi, immediately switches to Hindi, and he said, You know,

765
01:21:52,660 --> 01:21:57,440
I'm going to ask you on things like Nagaland Mela, you know, you're human beings.

766
01:21:57,440 --> 01:22:03,590
Look at me, cut in awe and I'm standing there and I have no reply for for that kind of a question.

767
01:22:03,590 --> 01:22:07,150
And I just look at him and I'm like, That's where I want to play a game with him, right?

768
01:22:07,150 --> 01:22:17,070
And I look at him and I say, I smile and with my tribals, I look at him and I go closer and I say to become the.

769
01:22:17,070 --> 01:22:21,690
And he just sleeps, and it just kind of they start the car and flees from there.

770
01:22:21,690 --> 01:22:26,040
Right? It's kind of a horror story, but it can also be a joke. For him, it's a horror story.

771
01:22:26,040 --> 01:22:31,770
You find is you find this Adivasi that is done Dundee, who eats human beings and is lurking around Melbourne.

772
01:22:31,770 --> 01:22:39,390
So imagine the story you create. But for me, it was such a joke standing there in that rainy night at Melbourne, which happened recently.

773
01:22:39,390 --> 01:22:46,020
So I think to answer the question, it is, it comes, I think, back to the question of not only citizenship,

774
01:22:46,020 --> 01:22:52,680
but the idea of cost and racism that is so tied and beyond South Asia.

775
01:22:52,680 --> 01:23:03,300
And then when I think if I can add those examples from Gujarat where I am based on it, so I think it's it's you know, oh, you know,

776
01:23:03,300 --> 01:23:08,700
I can sort of I have some of the examples in Gujarat on some things that people say that, you know,

777
01:23:08,700 --> 01:23:14,790
if you are looking for a house or flat, the first thing is ask him, Do you eat meat or non-vegetarian?

778
01:23:14,790 --> 01:23:21,420
And I think that question is not about knowing this in this part of being tribal and non-tribal, but [INAUDIBLE] Muslim or not.

779
01:23:21,420 --> 01:23:26,040
And then then it comes whether you're, you know, the loser or not.

780
01:23:26,040 --> 01:23:31,310
So and I spend side by socialists the problem because they're immediately asked,

781
01:23:31,310 --> 01:23:37,560
you are not asking caste or religion directly, but food becomes a marker of your social identity.

782
01:23:37,560 --> 01:23:42,840
And so so I think immediately the answer would be like, No, no, we don't give full.

783
01:23:42,840 --> 01:23:49,980
It's immediately, they'll say. So people are from outside Gujarat are not within the Gujarat, also largely Muslims and Dalits,

784
01:23:49,980 --> 01:23:53,650
but people from outside who are actually looking for a place here.

785
01:23:53,650 --> 01:24:02,430
It's very difficult to find a kind of led because it's a very, you know, it's a question that comes up out of nowhere,

786
01:24:02,430 --> 01:24:10,500
you know, you're not prepared for it when you're looking for those that are not. So I think I can understand that, of course, Meat-Eating is in India.

787
01:24:10,500 --> 01:24:14,190
I think racism is still a very mild word for it.

788
01:24:14,190 --> 01:24:23,250
Discussed as it is, the cost destroyed many places because in northeast people, when we've been like when we go to study that study,

789
01:24:23,250 --> 01:24:28,500
you do field work that I think people from Indians were caste Hindus,

790
01:24:28,500 --> 01:24:35,140
largely for them going to Northeast and India looking at northeast us now up, which behaves very many.

791
01:24:35,140 --> 01:24:39,330
But I have written that in my book about how students from Noctis when they come on,

792
01:24:39,330 --> 01:24:46,950
this is that and people from non-autistic places when they go to northeast, one of the things are down because of witchcraft there.

793
01:24:46,950 --> 01:24:55,410
And that also is tied to wildlife conservation. When we are looking at the world of hunting hunting as a threat to ecological species.

794
01:24:55,410 --> 01:25:01,890
One of the approaches that wildlife conservation organisations use to wean people away from hunting that is seen as

795
01:25:01,890 --> 01:25:10,980
a project goals asking people to give up hunting and instead of looking at dust as a way to promote conservation.

796
01:25:10,980 --> 01:25:11,720
It is ultimately,

797
01:25:11,720 --> 01:25:22,020
but I'm going to convey to way of approaching the approach using that as a policy to ask people to give up certain livelihood practises to say well,

798
01:25:22,020 --> 01:25:30,000
species, and especially when hunting is largely tied to consumption and markets and and on the social identity.

799
01:25:30,000 --> 01:25:33,120
I just want to bring that. Thanks. Thanks.

800
01:25:33,120 --> 01:25:43,730
Because really important, I'm going to ask a borer to just ask this question because I think it links up to what I just said about food and animals.

801
01:25:43,730 --> 01:25:50,640
Honestly, how would you like to just read out a question or ask it? Because I think it's very much linked to the conversation we're just having.

802
01:25:50,640 --> 01:25:56,730
Hey, hey. Hello. So amazing discussion.

803
01:25:56,730 --> 01:26:00,930
First of all that I'm down with COVID, and this is like the best thing that has happened.

804
01:26:00,930 --> 01:26:08,610
I just wanted to ask the question around like, so I work in central India and mostly I work with the Adivasi community and so on.

805
01:26:08,610 --> 01:26:19,200
Growing narrative is that there's a moral judgement around the consumption and killing of animals for food like that is custom where it's called mine,

806
01:26:19,200 --> 01:26:29,700
where people wish for something. And if that comes like, I mean, if it happens for them that way, they could enjoy food with the community, et cetera.

807
01:26:29,700 --> 01:26:37,590
So often, like the commentary around this, especially by the goalie image, is that, you know, it's violence.

808
01:26:37,590 --> 01:26:47,520
It's something that people should not do, especially the iDevices. And of course, it falls under the larger ambit of kind of enjoys the iDevices.

809
01:26:47,520 --> 01:26:59,580
So as an outsider, I'm chromosome. I work here. And so the way they look at me is as an outsider who probably adheres to these ideas as well.

810
01:26:59,580 --> 01:27:05,550
And so it is really hard to make sense of what they're thinking because conversations with me are also

811
01:27:05,550 --> 01:27:14,070
often followed by the same narrative that people are trying to sort of impose on them in a certain way.

812
01:27:14,070 --> 01:27:21,990
So I just wanted to understand how those and quote-unquote outsider make sense of this whole process.

813
01:27:21,990 --> 01:27:34,220
Yeah. And because a or anybody would like to sort of jump in on this point.

814
01:27:34,220 --> 01:27:39,590
For me, actually looking at animal slaughter, because in my own family, you know, in my in the fathers villages,

815
01:27:39,590 --> 01:27:48,590
we slaughter chicken goats and all of us as we know it as part of family rituals.

816
01:27:48,590 --> 01:27:58,430
So so I think a lot of what we do in our studies say what what we observe in our study site is.

817
01:27:58,430 --> 01:28:04,040
I think the reading is, of course, from academia and and what we read, but it's also about your own background.

818
01:28:04,040 --> 01:28:09,380
So for for I think the position of the researcher is it's very important to understand

819
01:28:09,380 --> 01:28:16,070
here about the class class gender questioned Agusto identity because management an for me.

820
01:28:16,070 --> 01:28:19,730
I don't have any these wrongful numbers in the family. People don't report.

821
01:28:19,730 --> 01:28:23,930
But then I started paperwork when I went to an autism outside and lived abroad.

822
01:28:23,930 --> 01:28:31,060
And so when it comes to food, I'm not. But there are. I can actually bet you may experience about how sometimes you know,

823
01:28:31,060 --> 01:28:36,880
if you're coming from a certain, you know, background, this may look very, very immediately.

824
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:40,720
The and the labelling is that know their ecological communities.

825
01:28:40,720 --> 01:28:49,700
So some of my religious friends have said that that a lot of people didn't know and I don't know, children hunting and eating.

826
01:28:49,700 --> 01:28:51,320
How can you work with them there?

827
01:28:51,320 --> 01:29:01,490
So some kinds of labels that we use SS, we are pretty careful when that's usually as outsiders and don't know if you go and study other communities,

828
01:29:01,490 --> 01:29:05,720
you know, in a setting that is not familiar to us as to be a little bit of mind.

829
01:29:05,720 --> 01:29:11,310
Be very mindful and A. So that's what ethics of research comes in.

830
01:29:11,310 --> 01:29:19,280
And sometimes that I think is going to be very stigmatising the practises rather than trying to understand.

831
01:29:19,280 --> 01:29:23,840
So if I say in my case when no, so I can give an example.

832
01:29:23,840 --> 01:29:32,150
After I finished my Ph.D., I went to the village where I studied and we we actually started a big and I have a village feast and all of that.

833
01:29:32,150 --> 01:29:38,280
So, so so for me, understanding Oh.

834
01:29:38,280 --> 01:29:46,470
Understand why people think that is more important than what they do and think how much they're hunting, whether it is.

835
01:29:46,470 --> 01:29:48,930
Of course, all these angles are very important to many.

836
01:29:48,930 --> 01:29:55,350
All the activities that we are doing, as in animal studies or the research that you're doing is really multidisciplinary.

837
01:29:55,350 --> 01:30:00,460
So rather rather than looking at an activity from one specific point of view, for example,

838
01:30:00,460 --> 01:30:06,540
dog leadership only from a legal perspective or from a moralistic perspective is very problematic.

839
01:30:06,540 --> 01:30:11,320
So I think all of us have also big responsibility to.

840
01:30:11,320 --> 01:30:21,780
Be very aware of. You know, you know, doing justice in many ways, because I think religious groups that it's tribalism already faced.

841
01:30:21,780 --> 01:30:27,720
And you know, and and yet we are at a stage where because of animal rights issues, where I live,

842
01:30:27,720 --> 01:30:34,320
my life issues and medical issues, many of these communities will get for this marginalised and stigmatised.

843
01:30:34,320 --> 01:30:40,080
And also many of them will easily fall under the the other side of the law.

844
01:30:40,080 --> 01:30:46,350
So I think when we call ourselves as animal studies, scholars or anthropology,

845
01:30:46,350 --> 01:30:52,500
often we're not underfunded just so I think we have to be a little bit careful about that, even if you I'd say that.

846
01:30:52,500 --> 01:31:04,130
So it's better to just stay there rather than looking at livelihood activities from one specific angle that can be very, very problematic.

847
01:31:04,130 --> 01:31:10,300
If I if I can just add to what I'm saying and you know, A.J., it's it's.

848
01:31:10,300 --> 01:31:15,520
I think for you then to understand is not not by labelling yourself as an outsider,

849
01:31:15,520 --> 01:31:18,610
but labelling yourself as somebody who's trying to understand what's happening,

850
01:31:18,610 --> 01:31:24,520
and I think there's a larger politics there in terms of making certain practises taboo in the area where you are.

851
01:31:24,520 --> 01:31:29,140
Even in the case of of let a lot of tribals.

852
01:31:29,140 --> 01:31:34,510
They are really pressure to prove they're they a warrior like identity, right?

853
01:31:34,510 --> 01:31:44,460
So what what militarisation did was in a way to ban every kind of storytelling because, you know, they they imposed any kind.

854
01:31:44,460 --> 01:31:52,360
They say that any kind of gathering is illegal. So through the 50s and the 60s, as Naga people, we lost our art of storytelling.

855
01:31:52,360 --> 01:31:55,990
We we lost any kind of social gatherings that we would have.

856
01:31:55,990 --> 01:32:00,880
Their stories were passed down. And what we have is Naga culture. Today, we have to understand, right?

857
01:32:00,880 --> 01:32:10,180
The warrior, the feathered and Modi bears that a lot of you see at the Hornbill Festival are really very select ideas of what culture ought to be.

858
01:32:10,180 --> 01:32:16,600
We don't have today because of militarisation and what we have lost a larger part, let's say, of seasons,

859
01:32:16,600 --> 01:32:25,360
a larger part of our ancestors who then hunt and would really kind of make sure that the forest grew on its own because the

860
01:32:25,360 --> 01:32:34,120
storytelling has been so selective and has been imposed by the state to make Nagas and tribals and indigenous stuck in a time.

861
01:32:34,120 --> 01:32:39,370
There is a pressure for so many young people who are unemployed to prove their Naga masculinity,

862
01:32:39,370 --> 01:32:45,430
so the only thing they do is go to the jungle and hunt because hunting is part of what now domestic nutrition?

863
01:32:45,430 --> 01:32:49,180
Right? I think that losing the entire picture there, and that is fear.

864
01:32:49,180 --> 01:32:56,470
Perhaps that anthropologist I come in to study that this idea of masculinity and tied to hunting that car,

865
01:32:56,470 --> 01:33:02,740
then going and killing in the forest is also really part of a history of violence and militarisation.

866
01:33:02,740 --> 01:33:09,360
And how do we understand it? So I think thank you for your question, and I think this is something we need to think together.

867
01:33:09,360 --> 01:33:14,160
Really important question, thank you and began to reflect on what position nodded in answering this.

868
01:33:14,160 --> 01:33:15,780
Does anybody else want to respond to this?

869
01:33:15,780 --> 01:33:22,110
Because you know, what I'm seeing is that there are a couple of sort of linked questions and method that we're getting in the Q&A books,

870
01:33:22,110 --> 01:33:28,200
which I might sort of combine and and ask together. But before that, and if I'm saying your name correctly,

871
01:33:28,200 --> 01:33:36,770
perhaps you wanted to ask a bigger question on popular media, so perhaps you could please go ahead and ask that?

872
01:33:36,770 --> 01:33:46,970
No, thank you, and I did, and I think I would also echo with Dr. Dog about how, you know, because I'm also from the East and the London region.

873
01:33:46,970 --> 01:33:54,780
So whenever we go out, even if it's to a conference or something, especially in places where all kinds of to eat and they'll all get this up,

874
01:33:54,780 --> 01:34:01,430
which which means like, you know, you eat everything so you don't have any other option but to eat everything in front of everybody.

875
01:34:01,430 --> 01:34:12,800
So that does come back again and again to how they are defining you by what you eat, and it is a little complicated in many ways.

876
01:34:12,800 --> 01:34:19,670
As for Dr. Ambika, I was when you presented your work, when you said you be working on,

877
01:34:19,670 --> 01:34:25,130
you know, Dalits and animals and their associations via via literature.

878
01:34:25,130 --> 01:34:31,520
But also what came to my mind immediately was movies such as Vanjie, which which, you know,

879
01:34:31,520 --> 01:34:42,800
which talks about the foundry itself is is big right and how the whole movie is built around the caste hierarchy and how classism plays out.

880
01:34:42,800 --> 01:34:47,570
But using the imagery of an animal such as, you know, pigs.

881
01:34:47,570 --> 01:34:53,870
But also, I think this it has also come up in other movies, which I don't know many of you will agree with me or not,

882
01:34:53,870 --> 01:34:59,870
but movies such as Article 15 in the Hindi movie where they talk about, well, you know,

883
01:34:59,870 --> 01:35:06,620
there are certain scenes which are very, you know, very stark, which which are not very, you know, in your faith,

884
01:35:06,620 --> 01:35:12,560
but they are kind of indicative of, you know, talking about slaughtered animals but not showing the slaughtered animals.

885
01:35:12,560 --> 01:35:19,340
But, you know, just it's just that you have to make up that they're talking about slaughtered animals and the relation ship to the hierarchy.

886
01:35:19,340 --> 01:35:24,440
So would you also be exploiting other kinds of media apart from literature or you know,

887
01:35:24,440 --> 01:35:28,790
or are you just focussing on the existing literature at the moment?

888
01:35:28,790 --> 01:35:32,330
Thanks. Spencer, thanks added on. No.

889
01:35:32,330 --> 01:35:37,220
Thank you for your comments. Actually, this project, I think we're actually writing a book proposal.

890
01:35:37,220 --> 01:35:38,720
It's an edited volume.

891
01:35:38,720 --> 01:35:49,100
So although there are two beautiful papers in the water, both are on movies and animals and cast and canon and period them put them on.

892
01:35:49,100 --> 01:35:56,450
These are very powerful movies. I think if you watched that and no, you will go back with, of course, are memories of atrocities.

893
01:35:56,450 --> 01:36:00,200
But animal images, images of animals will remain with you.

894
01:36:00,200 --> 01:36:01,670
And certain kinds of animals.

895
01:36:01,670 --> 01:36:10,880
I think that's what is very interesting, whether it is the the the dog in body, Albemarle and the multiple animals in an apartment or family.

896
01:36:10,880 --> 01:36:17,540
So I think there are two book chapters. But I think I'm using this as a teaching tool.

897
01:36:17,540 --> 01:36:24,980
Some actually, I'm teaching a course called the politics of the Environment, and those weeks are dedicated podcast to nature.

898
01:36:24,980 --> 01:36:36,290
Somebody not borrowing a lot from my work, but using movies and movie analysis, you know, movie reviews and also a lot of music videos.

899
01:36:36,290 --> 01:36:45,140
If you look at enjoy and I mean, you know, these are all image images about fighting for social justice, ecological justice, I think.

900
01:36:45,140 --> 01:36:54,960
I think as scholars and teachers, we have to go beyond the textbook and law journal articles and borrow from from music videos.

901
01:36:54,960 --> 01:37:01,160
So this week, actually, we look at the top of my class was environmental movements.

902
01:37:01,160 --> 01:37:06,410
And so one of my favourite video is gone sort of me.

903
01:37:06,410 --> 01:37:09,200
It's a very old album and it's very powerful.

904
01:37:09,200 --> 01:37:18,230
You know, you play that and using those videos, you discuss what how people are protesting, you know, through folk art to music.

905
01:37:18,230 --> 01:37:24,410
So I think popular culture, music videos, folk songs are very, very powerful.

906
01:37:24,410 --> 01:37:31,550
So I will be I'm analysing that I'm not going to publish anything about visual media because I'm not from that field,

907
01:37:31,550 --> 01:37:43,010
but I have the contributors to the world who have analysed these these films and they've written they'll be writing book chapters on that.

908
01:37:43,010 --> 01:37:49,910
So I'm very happy to collaborate with people who have who the visual media, arts and culture is.

909
01:37:49,910 --> 01:37:53,390
I don't know that other. I don't know. I think they've become big, too.

910
01:37:53,390 --> 01:37:58,250
We all have to come together and then tell these stories because all of us cannot do that.

911
01:37:58,250 --> 01:38:02,510
It's not. I don't know what I can discuss, but then I think that.

912
01:38:02,510 --> 01:38:08,030
But I think that's what I think that, you know, if we can make our records is something I'm really interested in.

913
01:38:08,030 --> 01:38:15,980
How do we leave this to the younger generation and then give, you know, in all forms of different?

914
01:38:15,980 --> 01:38:20,460
And that's why stories about the little that it is very powerful.

915
01:38:20,460 --> 01:38:22,760
And also in the environmental movement, in the next class,

916
01:38:22,760 --> 01:38:31,100
I'm going to talk about models of Deborah and the question I'm asking you why does not that both as an environmental movement in India,

917
01:38:31,100 --> 01:38:36,510
but we talk about the movement and that model, which I London, but not to my head to take your hand and.

918
01:38:36,510 --> 01:38:43,800
Is that a Bakelite approach to its environmental environmental isms?

919
01:38:43,800 --> 01:38:46,620
These are some things that I'm interested in. But thank you for the question.

920
01:38:46,620 --> 01:38:53,760
I think I'm going, I'm going beyond what you asked for, but thanks for your question tonight.

921
01:38:53,760 --> 01:38:57,420
Thank you. I really want to attend your classes. That's on some days.

922
01:38:57,420 --> 01:39:02,550
I take this course of yours. So if you could that I've got, please go ahead.

923
01:39:02,550 --> 01:39:07,320
Yeah, I was just actually going to ask if we could respond to that question about historical methods.

924
01:39:07,320 --> 01:39:14,940
And because I think there's this discussion actually has been pointing in so many ways to why the question is from an anonymous attendee and is,

925
01:39:14,940 --> 01:39:20,190
I'm wondering how historical methods are relevant or not do ethnographic or anthropological studies?

926
01:39:20,190 --> 01:39:24,300
And I was just thinking from listening to my amazing Chobani's that I think everyone's pointing

927
01:39:24,300 --> 01:39:29,100
to the importance of thinking with process and sitting with the complexities it throws up.

928
01:39:29,100 --> 01:39:35,730
And I was thinking of what Dolly was saying about militarisation and its effects, like the desire to, for example,

929
01:39:35,730 --> 01:39:44,310
the kind of validation of hunting right and the need to perform masculinity in the face of this large, colonial, militarised violence.

930
01:39:44,310 --> 01:39:49,740
To me, that's the importance of attending to history rather than saying, you know, this is how, for example,

931
01:39:49,740 --> 01:39:54,840
narco culture has always been also paying attention to how those clean some claims that are

932
01:39:54,840 --> 01:39:59,280
attenuated because of certain kinds of historical events or thinking about capacious work,

933
01:39:59,280 --> 01:40:03,810
for example, and just when debates around cockfighting amongst people.

934
01:40:03,810 --> 01:40:10,930
So I think it's important to be attentive to how people are thinking with movement right to come back.

935
01:40:10,930 --> 01:40:14,490
And yet like this, I actually really love that idea of the script in the movement.

936
01:40:14,490 --> 01:40:20,910
And I think that also points of the importance of of thinking about history and thinking through the role that people,

937
01:40:20,910 --> 01:40:25,200
the people themselves are caught up in these debates as political and social forms

938
01:40:25,200 --> 01:40:30,360
are shifting and being attentive to that in ways that don't necessarily replicate

939
01:40:30,360 --> 01:40:34,650
either the kind of cleansing violence that demands in himself or the violence that

940
01:40:34,650 --> 01:40:43,860
demands a difference to quote unquote culture as something that hasn't moved.

941
01:40:43,860 --> 01:40:45,360
Thanks for business.

942
01:40:45,360 --> 01:40:54,450
Yeah, yeah, I'll just add on to that as a way to to come back to that earlier question about about marginalisation and food cultures, right?

943
01:40:54,450 --> 01:41:00,210
Is that also if we pay attention to history as opposed to just what people say?

944
01:41:00,210 --> 01:41:07,760
One of the things that we recognise is that the BJP, the Hindu right, is where it is right now.

945
01:41:07,760 --> 01:41:14,630
So much because of the breeding captivity, sexual abuse and killing of animals.

946
01:41:14,630 --> 01:41:24,890
Right. That and so to take as earnest or sincere any of their [INAUDIBLE] about protection of animals or care for animals or love for

947
01:41:24,890 --> 01:41:33,710
animals takes us away from the point that that Hindu fascism is premised precisely on the the structural abuse of animals.

948
01:41:33,710 --> 01:41:47,300
And when that is happening to the tune of billions of dollars, right to even sort of to to focus at all on on stigmatising like the food practises

949
01:41:47,300 --> 01:41:52,460
of of oppressed peoples makes absolutely no sense to me when we have right here,

950
01:41:52,460 --> 01:41:57,980
like such an example of a reliance on the breed in captivity and killing of animals.

951
01:41:57,980 --> 01:42:04,310
So I think a historical perspective also takes us away from the rhetoric of Hindu fascism to the materiality

952
01:42:04,310 --> 01:42:13,630
of Hindu fascism and how premised it is on the weaponization and the structural culpability of animals.

953
01:42:13,630 --> 01:42:22,120
Thank you. I was wondering with we're basically we're actually out of time, but I was wondering we could do one quick round with everyone,

954
01:42:22,120 --> 01:42:28,360
and what I'm going to try to do is pick up the remaining questions and put it into, well, maybe two.

955
01:42:28,360 --> 01:42:33,940
There are a couple of questions on animal rights activism which are there, you know?

956
01:42:33,940 --> 01:42:40,960
So for instance, there's another one on competing dietary regimes, cost and food practises and what happens when you encounter them?

957
01:42:40,960 --> 01:42:44,440
Animal rights activists. And there is there are quite a few questions.

958
01:42:44,440 --> 01:42:52,210
Everyone on again on discipline. So you know what? We just discussed history and we've discussed popular media.

959
01:42:52,210 --> 01:42:59,290
But there's another one which is sort of from an anonymous attendee who's asking, Hi, I'm trying to wonder what are the ways in which we,

960
01:42:59,290 --> 01:43:06,430
as researchers disseminate what we gain from these more than human projects going beyond, say, articles, books, publications?

961
01:43:06,430 --> 01:43:10,480
Now, in some senses, I'll be in a position to engage with multiple stakeholders.

962
01:43:10,480 --> 01:43:17,380
And I'm wondering if any of you have gone through this in your work so far and how could this be thought of a methodologically as well?

963
01:43:17,380 --> 01:43:23,110
Swirsky Dungeon has a question, a really important question actually on law.

964
01:43:23,110 --> 01:43:29,530
And she asked. I was wondering what the panellists view is on institutionalising the relationship between humans and animals,

965
01:43:29,530 --> 01:43:35,950
quite often through law, especially given that the dominant perspective of law is to set this relationship in very definite domes.

966
01:43:35,950 --> 01:43:44,820
So how do we understand the law that govern such relationships and be moved beyond the current depravity that is defined by climate change?

967
01:43:44,820 --> 01:43:50,560
It was whether we can do one quick last round because I know Viraj actually time and some, you know,

968
01:43:50,560 --> 01:43:58,900
many of you have to go in which you can either answer the question or both think about which disciplines or methods you're engaging with.

969
01:43:58,900 --> 01:44:03,400
And also, if you wanted to add anything to the question of animal rights activism,

970
01:44:03,400 --> 01:44:07,550
just because I know several of you sort of worked on that, would that be OK?

971
01:44:07,550 --> 01:44:12,190
And then I think we would have answered most of these really great questions that we've got.

972
01:44:12,190 --> 01:44:20,500
And also some of the threads of this discussion so far. So I'm gonna ask you to quickly begin if that's okay.

973
01:44:20,500 --> 01:44:24,250
No, no wonderful questions, actually, because when I was writing my book,

974
01:44:24,250 --> 01:44:32,140
I was I have written in my book that my book will be largely read by people in the Dibango and United in my field book.

975
01:44:32,140 --> 01:44:37,180
And I really wanted I did not read written by, of course.

976
01:44:37,180 --> 01:44:42,880
But it's not just, but I know because during my fieldwork, people are very curious about what I'm writing.

977
01:44:42,880 --> 01:44:46,510
So I think all of us, when we are writing, of course we want to,

978
01:44:46,510 --> 01:44:52,870
but I publish and I go and get a read articles which will be read by academics like us.

979
01:44:52,870 --> 01:44:56,530
But the human animal relations work.

980
01:44:56,530 --> 01:45:00,880
I don't know this kind of the kind of work we are doing that the information is coming from people,

981
01:45:00,880 --> 01:45:05,200
you know, especially from people who are in a whose work has not been published in.

982
01:45:05,200 --> 01:45:10,390
Many communities are not, you know, there is no script for writing.

983
01:45:10,390 --> 01:45:15,690
So I think in many ways when I was doing my work, I also felt a little bit of no guilt about what is that I'm doing.

984
01:45:15,690 --> 01:45:21,880
It's all about extracting information, and I'm putting and I'm packaging their stories and presenting.

985
01:45:21,880 --> 01:45:28,150
And so even the title I goes on our brothers and all the credit goes to the individual people.

986
01:45:28,150 --> 01:45:32,250
This is not my. The people are asking, can you be asked to give the title?

987
01:45:32,250 --> 01:45:36,790
I said, no, it was from reading my interviews, people telling stories about tigers and tigers.

988
01:45:36,790 --> 01:45:41,680
I don't believe this. So I feel that, you know, when we are seeing, how do we disseminate our work?

989
01:45:41,680 --> 01:45:50,500
I think what we can keep respondents, collaborators, people with who we are giving this information.

990
01:45:50,500 --> 01:45:55,420
I think one responsibility is to give this information back to them and a new one.

991
01:45:55,420 --> 01:45:59,490
Then I also I can't write so much.

992
01:45:59,490 --> 01:46:08,500
So I write in a very simple English side as I took the books to the bank, really, and I had posted them three four months back that received my book.

993
01:46:08,500 --> 01:46:15,250
So what was very rewarding for me is that actually many of them have read my books and then they asked me questions about it.

994
01:46:15,250 --> 01:46:20,860
There are agreements over disagreements, and the disagreement was also about A. Oh,

995
01:46:20,860 --> 01:46:24,490
so I know that one of the interesting so there is a politics of knowledge.

996
01:46:24,490 --> 01:46:25,770
Innovation is there.

997
01:46:25,770 --> 01:46:36,820
And so my my particular project is I am reading the Gawker piece with my friend in the bumblebee about a River Valley book is coming out.

998
01:46:36,820 --> 01:46:41,340
So I think my next projects, I feel like it should be a collaborative work.

999
01:46:41,340 --> 01:46:46,090
You know, in many ways, it's also very, you know, it's very cliché saying that in all,

1000
01:46:46,090 --> 01:46:54,070
I I'm getting information from that I'm theorising and publishing. And then that is cool because that is also very problematic.

1001
01:46:54,070 --> 01:47:01,720
But what I'm trying to say is when I shared my work with them, I think many of them have read the interesting things about know,

1002
01:47:01,720 --> 01:47:08,560
because in some places that I read said that no tigers may not be their brothers in the future because of the markets coming in,

1003
01:47:08,560 --> 01:47:12,890
and that that was me and I was a book Protecting tigers make back.

1004
01:47:12,890 --> 01:47:18,830
So interesting discussions of that, I think in that way. What was all the transition?

1005
01:47:18,830 --> 01:47:25,610
Oh, I will always feel that we should pray more for the general audience who will,

1006
01:47:25,610 --> 01:47:33,460
who should, for example, policymakers in addition to the academic work that we doing.

1007
01:47:33,460 --> 01:47:44,480
And and then and then if if not able to communicate our work with the means, I don't call them stakeholders will the will.

1008
01:47:44,480 --> 01:47:52,070
So basically just giving back to them. So it's it's also, I don't know, I feel that I did that and I feel okay about that.

1009
01:47:52,070 --> 01:47:57,500
So now people are asking, we're not going to write a book at 11:30 coming back.

1010
01:47:57,500 --> 01:48:05,090
So all this is nice, but I know the responsibility of publishing for whom is a really important question to think about.

1011
01:48:05,090 --> 01:48:17,840
And when I answer to the law question, I'm going to use wildlife conservation laws in India and somewhere where Protection Act was set up

1012
01:48:17,840 --> 01:48:24,320
in 1972 and from 1972 onwards still doesn't prove you see the lives of national parks in India,

1013
01:48:24,320 --> 01:48:29,300
where I live centuries in India has increased, has increased tremendously.

1014
01:48:29,300 --> 01:48:38,890
And so because of this wildlife loss. People who live in that protected area that are at a huge loss so that not many studies,

1015
01:48:38,890 --> 01:48:44,010
except a few studies about Aspectos comparative work on displacement because of conservation.

1016
01:48:44,010 --> 01:48:48,180
It is a huge there's a very interesting environmental justice map.

1017
01:48:48,180 --> 01:48:55,320
I don't know that you know that, and it doesn't actually capture all the conflicts that related to natural resources.

1018
01:48:55,320 --> 01:49:01,200
And if we look at they have also captured the conflicts in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries,

1019
01:49:01,200 --> 01:49:12,270
which I think we are in to see the kind of in-depth study of serious studies on displacement social justice issue due to a life conservation,

1020
01:49:12,270 --> 01:49:20,820
because asking people to make make way for animals like elephants and tigers is something we have to have to.

1021
01:49:20,820 --> 01:49:28,230
Not many studies have been done on that, and I feel that this loss has to be relooked and in the meat, more meat,

1022
01:49:28,230 --> 01:49:36,930
little bit people centric, rather than just looking at wildlife conservation as as a priority and displacing people.

1023
01:49:36,930 --> 01:49:40,860
And most of the people are not getting the, let's say, tribal communities,

1024
01:49:40,860 --> 01:49:48,800
women and children and so on, and violence in the name of conservation has to be studied in detail.

1025
01:49:48,800 --> 01:49:54,560
A lot of this violence, actually because of the legal regimes, because if you have a law,

1026
01:49:54,560 --> 01:50:00,660
you are always just just like you're legitimising violence in the name of wildlife conservation.

1027
01:50:00,660 --> 01:50:06,860
And that is not correct. And when I say no, I didn't have to discuss these issues in detail.

1028
01:50:06,860 --> 01:50:12,790
Yeah. Thanks for the question.

1029
01:50:12,790 --> 01:50:21,540
This would you like to have a final stab at all of the questions and all the quick stab at maybe the animal activism question,

1030
01:50:21,540 --> 01:50:24,960
since that's one sort of closest to to what I'm doing.

1031
01:50:24,960 --> 01:50:30,690
So, yeah, so as I said in the beginning, my book started out as a project about animal animal activism.

1032
01:50:30,690 --> 01:50:35,430
I would call it that instead of animal rights or animal welfare groups, because it's easier.

1033
01:50:35,430 --> 01:50:42,850
And I will I will say that for anyone who knows me, I am sympathetic to animal justice.

1034
01:50:42,850 --> 01:50:50,050
I am definitively unsympathetic to any kind of politics that needs unfreedom with unfreedom,

1035
01:50:50,050 --> 01:50:57,910
and that is so much of what happens in animal activism, not just in India, but elsewhere.

1036
01:50:57,910 --> 01:51:00,820
Right. So in my text, in my work,

1037
01:51:00,820 --> 01:51:08,710
one of the things that I'm really trying to and not just intellectually but practically and materially figure out is what does it mean

1038
01:51:08,710 --> 01:51:15,730
in real terms to be on the side of the lives and freedoms of animals and on the side of the lives and freedoms of human persons?

1039
01:51:15,730 --> 01:51:19,660
What does that mean materially? Not rhetorically, right?

1040
01:51:19,660 --> 01:51:23,080
But what kind of work do we produce? What kind of arguments do we make?

1041
01:51:23,080 --> 01:51:33,030
What kind of questions do we open up? And so, yeah, so part of that for me is, you know,

1042
01:51:33,030 --> 01:51:40,590
I use this concept of critical solidarity in my first text that comes from Secretary Henry Donner and that what it means to be with

1043
01:51:40,590 --> 01:51:47,610
others and on the side of others and sympathetic to the politics of politics and meet those of others is often is often critique.

1044
01:51:47,610 --> 01:51:53,730
Right. And so one of the things that I'm really thinking about in my book are what are the ways in which animal justice movements

1045
01:51:53,730 --> 01:52:02,100
trip up over themselves and end up replicating the very sort of structures and modalities that generate the kill ability,

1046
01:52:02,100 --> 01:52:04,830
caster ability of animals in the first place, for example,

1047
01:52:04,830 --> 01:52:12,750
there is I spent a lot of time in the book talking about the way that animal welfare activists insist on the innocence of animals and the way

1048
01:52:12,750 --> 01:52:19,830
that that that replicates Hinduism through a patriarchal ideas of the innocence or speech listeners or lack of agency of not just animals,

1049
01:52:19,830 --> 01:52:26,910
but women, right in their guise of protection, more generally, that sort of paternalistic modality.

1050
01:52:26,910 --> 01:52:36,870
So, yeah, so for me, the the being in sympathy with something broad like like animal justice means.

1051
01:52:36,870 --> 01:52:43,230
Thinking, very frankly and honestly about all of the ways in which that politics fails,

1052
01:52:43,230 --> 01:52:49,170
commits violence, for which it remains responsible and complicit.

1053
01:52:49,170 --> 01:52:54,450
And to think really seriously and frankly about about those issues.

1054
01:52:54,450 --> 01:53:02,010
Anxious not to go. Would you like to keep it or answer all the questions as you wish?

1055
01:53:02,010 --> 01:53:10,260
I mean, the questions are great and aren't you? What has been said so far is really fantastic and I can try and maybe just piggyback off of that.

1056
01:53:10,260 --> 01:53:14,700
I think the NIS would needs to set right now on how to put that is really powerful,

1057
01:53:14,700 --> 01:53:22,120
which is what does it mean to think about multiple freedoms together without necessarily setting them against one another?

1058
01:53:22,120 --> 01:53:26,310
And I think that's really one of the challenges of doing this work, particularly in a South Asian context, right?

1059
01:53:26,310 --> 01:53:31,950
Where you where you're constantly up against the fact that one project entails violence,

1060
01:53:31,950 --> 01:53:38,340
one project of liberation entails violence against some other. But I've been thinking about this recently in another vein,

1061
01:53:38,340 --> 01:53:45,670
which is to this piece by talking Yang, which circulates a lot in anthropology and indigenous.

1062
01:53:45,670 --> 01:53:51,180
That decolonisation is not a metaphor. And they're arguing that, you know, there's this very loose use of decolonisation,

1063
01:53:51,180 --> 01:53:54,960
but there's a section at the end where they talk about income instability.

1064
01:53:54,960 --> 01:54:00,600
And what would it mean to recognise that sometimes different political movements,

1065
01:54:00,600 --> 01:54:08,370
no matter how kind of well-intentioned or how important in their own right that they might just be implementable?

1066
01:54:08,370 --> 01:54:16,980
And they're talking about, for example, immigrant justice and decolonisation in terms of giving land back to native communities and just saying,

1067
01:54:16,980 --> 01:54:19,590
OK, what did these projects actually can't be squared?

1068
01:54:19,590 --> 01:54:25,920
That doesn't make them any less important, but you might not be able to have the projects work together.

1069
01:54:25,920 --> 01:54:30,670
And I'm wondering, what would it mean at least to think about that in the current political moment?

1070
01:54:30,670 --> 01:54:36,090
And I don't want to say the projects remaining common struggle forever or that they are necessarily incremental.

1071
01:54:36,090 --> 01:54:43,200
But how do we think about the question of politics, right and where we are politically?

1072
01:54:43,200 --> 01:54:50,040
And how does that political moment and how things get said and taken, how we might have a life outside of us?

1073
01:54:50,040 --> 01:54:56,580
I was thinking about what America was saying about law earlier, actually, and just who is who bears the brunt of the law.

1074
01:54:56,580 --> 01:54:59,700
And we know that politically, there are certain people who do bear that.

1075
01:54:59,700 --> 01:55:06,930
So how do we think maybe about the income instability of certain kinds of liberation projects?

1076
01:55:06,930 --> 01:55:10,320
Not necessarily forever, but in this moment?

1077
01:55:10,320 --> 01:55:15,390
And I don't I don't know if that's an answer, but it's something I'm struggling with, and I thought I'd put that out there.

1078
01:55:15,390 --> 01:55:18,720
Thank you. Thanks for putting it so well, because I mean,

1079
01:55:18,720 --> 01:55:23,130
I know this because I think this question of how we struggle with these different forms

1080
01:55:23,130 --> 01:55:27,180
of freedoms on freedoms is something that's really at the heart of my studies right now,

1081
01:55:27,180 --> 01:55:35,790
especially in this moment in South Asia. And you know, it's fantastic the way all of you are looking at it from sort of different angles.

1082
01:55:35,790 --> 01:55:44,550
Yeah. Cubbage, do you want to go next? Hey, yes, it's been a great learning experience overall this session.

1083
01:55:44,550 --> 01:55:53,840
So I would like to speak something about the dissemination point beyond articles and books as part of my next project.

1084
01:55:53,840 --> 01:56:04,940
Don't get to each other. Like some economic corridor, I plan to organise workshops with animal activists and CEOs and policymakers

1085
01:56:04,940 --> 01:56:10,850
to highlight how the decrease in the number of donkeys within Pakistan could

1086
01:56:10,850 --> 01:56:18,680
increase their prices and may result in the kind of difficulty for many poor

1087
01:56:18,680 --> 01:56:24,650
people whose life relies on donkeys and how it could cause problems for them.

1088
01:56:24,650 --> 01:56:36,270
And also as a broader point, I want to understand the aspect of sustainability as it has been described in literature since 1980s and 1990,

1089
01:56:36,270 --> 01:56:42,800
something that we are to achieve the needs of the present generation without

1090
01:56:42,800 --> 01:56:47,360
compromising the capability of future generation to accommodate their own needs.

1091
01:56:47,360 --> 01:56:51,050
Whether these deeds are environmental, economic and social.

1092
01:56:51,050 --> 01:56:58,070
And so I try to understand this concept and maybe realising this concept to be

1093
01:56:58,070 --> 01:57:02,720
to the concept of relational etude that exists between humans and other games,

1094
01:57:02,720 --> 01:57:11,960
including animals and plants, forest non-humans, spirits, others.

1095
01:57:11,960 --> 01:57:19,040
And this way to try to understand that well-being is not only to be understood at the moment of life,

1096
01:57:19,040 --> 01:57:25,980
but also to be understood at the moment of death that how the death of some creature or some of some animals,

1097
01:57:25,980 --> 01:57:33,200
plants, donkeys or being treated could result in understanding or understanding of sustainability

1098
01:57:33,200 --> 01:57:40,280
that how this relation is being affected and how it could lead us to for applied issues.

1099
01:57:40,280 --> 01:57:51,210
So dissemination, I think beyond academia is important and it can bring concrete applicable changes in this society.

1100
01:57:51,210 --> 01:57:54,120
Thanksgiving is a really important point, and, you know, actually,

1101
01:57:54,120 --> 01:57:59,010
it's so incredibly difficult to do it, I think, you know, because done it really well,

1102
01:57:59,010 --> 01:58:05,730
you know, in her in her book, but it's a very hard sort of balance to sort of,

1103
01:58:05,730 --> 01:58:10,410
yeah, but that's a really important point you're making, though dissemination. Thank you so much.

1104
01:58:10,410 --> 01:58:18,120
Do you want to have the last word? I hope we go to another question, but I'm afraid you will never take it because we're totally out of time.

1105
01:58:18,120 --> 01:58:25,830
So thank you so much. I think I I really like what I said.

1106
01:58:25,830 --> 01:58:27,540
What in common is terrible?

1107
01:58:27,540 --> 01:58:36,390
And, you know, I think there's a limit for to to kind of like, what is it that we can bear and how is it we can think about it together.

1108
01:58:36,390 --> 01:58:46,020
And the first pieces that I wrote on animals actually came out in non-academic pieces, one in school and one in in the front line.

1109
01:58:46,020 --> 01:58:51,150
And I think Radhika was very kind. She was one of the first researchers who reached out and said, You know,

1110
01:58:51,150 --> 01:58:57,990
it's making sense and I'm liking what I'm reading, and I never thought that, you know, academics would read.

1111
01:58:57,990 --> 01:59:03,120
I was just really mad at what was happening as I was writing for a very different audience rated

1112
01:59:03,120 --> 01:59:07,560
as really kind of like the people who were always telling iDevices and tried to indigenous that,

1113
01:59:07,560 --> 01:59:09,870
you know, you guys think, Oh, they're very different.

1114
01:59:09,870 --> 01:59:16,230
And so like, I really want to thank her for generosity and there in itself, I think it's this politics of solidarity.

1115
01:59:16,230 --> 01:59:20,400
And how do we kind of how do we kind of invite one another?

1116
01:59:20,400 --> 01:59:24,150
I think we live in different continents. I live in. I work in Australia.

1117
01:59:24,150 --> 01:59:29,820
I do work in northeast India. And you know, North America is something really far away since I finished grad school.

1118
01:59:29,820 --> 01:59:35,910
So I really want to thank colleagues and, you know, we recognise that work.

1119
01:59:35,910 --> 01:59:44,550
I remember when I wrote Life in Dignity, it's a small monograph on sexual violence and and testimonies of rape survivors.

1120
01:59:44,550 --> 01:59:49,590
It's it's very well read and it is less than hundred pages.

1121
01:59:49,590 --> 01:59:54,360
It's read by many young people, by high schoolers, by college students.

1122
01:59:54,360 --> 01:59:58,020
But one of the constant complaint is that it's I think it's 50 rupees.

1123
01:59:58,020 --> 02:00:05,640
So there are write about where stories are cheap and and so in a sense, I think that such amazing that, you know,

1124
02:00:05,640 --> 02:00:11,430
they believe that it's a book that can put it inside their bag when they're waiting for a bus, when they're going to the next district.

1125
02:00:11,430 --> 02:00:17,970
And kind of it really, really makes my heart warm. So thanks, you know, for, you know, in a in a sense, I think talking about this admonition,

1126
02:00:17,970 --> 02:00:23,910
I also agree with all our friends that I think really looking at action based research is so important.

1127
02:00:23,910 --> 02:00:30,120
And so I think one way that I can do I see myself as a teacher and pedagogy becomes very important.

1128
02:00:30,120 --> 02:00:37,560
And so one of the ways that they do is that a lot of young journalism podcasters write to me and say, Oh, man, can you do this?

1129
02:00:37,560 --> 02:00:45,030
Can you do that? I always say, you know, call others, call others, call others, because I think I come from this.

1130
02:00:45,030 --> 02:00:49,920
How can I say I am where I am because of generosity? Because because someone else also opened up that space?

1131
02:00:49,920 --> 02:00:55,720
And I think it's so important to remember that because it's so easy to forget that as well.

1132
02:00:55,720 --> 02:01:01,770
And the thing about law and regulation is, I think, tied to what I think I said about, you know,

1133
02:01:01,770 --> 02:01:08,520
what is in common cerebral and one is actually Article 370 on air, which talks about, you know, not other people's custodianship.

1134
02:01:08,520 --> 02:01:14,520
The fifth schedule, the sixth schedule, which are giving rights and autonomy to the areas in the northeast.

1135
02:01:14,520 --> 02:01:18,300
But how do we understand corporations coming in in Nagaland?

1136
02:01:18,300 --> 02:01:26,640
How do we understand the custodianship of the tribal people versus the state was more reserved for animals and for animals centuries,

1137
02:01:26,640 --> 02:01:32,760
which I think people would be cast out? And you know, the state will take over in protecting really not compatible.

1138
02:01:32,760 --> 02:01:41,760
And the second thing that I have to see as my ending sentence is that as a feminist, as a tribal feminist, I cannot see my word in meat, right?

1139
02:01:41,760 --> 02:01:47,280
So for all the right places and for all the traditions that we may value in meat,

1140
02:01:47,280 --> 02:01:54,210
maybe it had a resonance with my ancestors, but not today that if five pigs is going to be non-ICU God's words.

1141
02:01:54,210 --> 02:01:59,400
And I think as tribal families, it's really going to ruffle feathers. But we need to see it as it is.

1142
02:01:59,400 --> 02:02:04,710
Maybe if my word is, you know, 10 percent of grapes, can I have agency to say that?

1143
02:02:04,710 --> 02:02:09,340
And I think that's fair. And. It has to go.

1144
02:02:09,340 --> 02:02:15,880
What a brilliant point to end, and that's the best sentence to end the ban on.

1145
02:02:15,880 --> 02:02:20,620
Well, over time. I know it's sort of early late. All sorts of things everywhere you are.

1146
02:02:20,620 --> 02:02:26,530
But thank you all so much time. You began this Rathgar coverage, dolly.

1147
02:02:26,530 --> 02:02:32,920
This was an amazing panel. I learnt so much more of you, and I'm so thrilled that we were able to get you on the same zoom.

1148
02:02:32,920 --> 02:02:36,700
I really hope in the future we can all be in the in real life.

1149
02:02:36,700 --> 02:02:44,740
And, you know, in 3-D, we can be in a room together and talk more on some of these themes, pick up some of them and work with them a bit more.

1150
02:02:44,740 --> 02:02:47,830
Thank you to everyone else who attended for the really great questions.

1151
02:02:47,830 --> 02:02:52,990
I'm really sorry we couldn't take all of them, but thank you so much for the questions.

1152
02:02:52,990 --> 02:02:57,370
We're going to be thinking about them subsequently. Great.

1153
02:02:57,370 --> 02:03:02,020
So I hope to see all elements of this one. Thank you all.

1154
02:03:02,020 --> 02:03:05,480
Good morning, etc. Thank you.

1155
02:03:05,480 --> 02:03:13,322
Thank you. Thank you. Kind of go by my my, my room, by everyone by.