The Code of Pangolins
Interspecies Ethics in the Face of Sars-CoV-2
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2228595 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Miho Ishii (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 641-646 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Current Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/716762 |
| OpenAlex | W3201589822 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
More than two decades ago, Lévi-Strauss argued that bovine spongiform encephalopathy was the result of forced cannibalism among cattle. He pointed out that not only the consumption of cattle organs by cattle but also the eating of beef by humans is a kind of cannibalism among animals. His argument highlighted the negative aspects of connection and assimilation in the act of eating. Today, several anthropological responses have been evoked to address the social, (bio)political, and economic problems caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Although this article is part of that wider corpus, it focuses not on the novel aspects of the phenomenon but on relatively familiar aspects using "classic" anthropological ideas such as substance code, dividual personhood, and taboo. By comparing the circulation of viruses within and beyond species boundaries with the circulation of substance codes observed in South Asian societies, I point out the imaginariness not of dividual personhood but of our existence as individuals. These examinations raise the significance of the anthropological understanding of people's practices regarding boundary making and unmaking between the human and the wild to consider the problem of zoonoses originating from wild animals
Argument (complex analysis · Biology · Cannibalism · Consciousness · Disease · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnology · Kuru · Linguistics · Personhood · Phenomenon · Political science · Politics · Predation · Sociology · Taboo · Vagueness · Anthropology · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Zoonotic diseases and public health
The poison in the gift
A Symbiotic View of Life
Transaction and meaning
Fluid Signs
Ordinary Ethics
African Worlds. (Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples)
Knowledge and attitudes about the use of pangolin scale products in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) within China
Implicit Meanings
Staying with the Trouble
Modernity and Spirit Worship in India
We Are All Cannibals and Other Essays
Baby pangolins on my plate
The Gift and Its Forms of Life in Contemporary India
The Gender of the Gift
Animals in Lele Religious Symbolism
Wild Sacredness and the Poiesis of Transactional Networks Relational Divinity and Spirit Possession in the 'Būta' Ritual of South India
Civet Cats, Fried Grasshoppers, and David Beckham's Pajamas
Substance and Relationality
The Anthropology of Ethics and Morality
Holobionts, Multispecies Ecologies, and the Biopolitics of Care
Hookworms Make Us Human
A Genealogy of Animal Diseases and Social Anthropology (1870-2000)
A free gift makes no friends
Caring for Divine Infrastructures
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |