Relatedness, trans-species knots and yak personhood in the Bhutan highlands
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20061171 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jelle J P Wouters (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Pages | 27-42 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003144113-3 |
| OpenAlex | W3152597853 |
| ISBN | 9781003144113 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
Over the past centuries, yaks have co-dwelled, co-evolved and co-shaped with pastoralists, deities and grassland ecosystems in the Bhutan highlands. Drawing on ethnography, this chapter argues that in understanding life in the Bhutan highlands, it is impossible to draw a clear ontological distinction between herders, on the one hand, and yaks, deities and the environment on the other; to do otherwise results in an epistemological cul-de-sac, that is, of apprehending the physical, social and cosmological environment as independently constituted and functioning according to their own autonomous laws, categories and registers of existence. Per contra, drawing on Descola (2005), this chapter approaches highland life as unfolding within a single social sphere, as interconnected in an encompassing social continuum, and thus as conjuring a complex, integrated and layered regime of sociability in which herders, yaks, deities and the environment are constituted relationally through a dense network of intersubjectivity. Within this ontological field, this chapter asks what it means for both herders and yaks to live a life that is deeply intertwined, entangled, knotted and ultimately co-constituted with one another. This chapter particularly explores how these entanglements and knots produce a schema and sense of “relatedness” (Carsten 2000) and “mutuality of being” (Sahlins 2011) that emerges through social practices of interspecies kin-making
Animal science · Biology · Epistemology · Geography · Personhood · YAK · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
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| Citations per year | 3.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |