Feathered Entanglements
Feathered Entanglements
Human-Bird Relations in the Anthropocene
As they migrated across great distances, ancient humans may have used birdsong and bird sightings to find food and water in unseen territory. Today, attending to birds helps scientists track not only avian migration but also environmental change. Birds remain our sentinels.
Feathered Entanglements canvasses human-bird relations across the Indo-Pacific, exploring what birds teach us about how to live with other species amid the challenges of the Anthropocene. In an era of seemingly uncontrollable industrialization, we grow increasingly disconnected from the natural world, and bird-related beliefs and practices are being compromised by consumerism and climate change. Yet, as this fascinating book shows, birds are still, and have always been, featured in the daily life, symbolic systems, and material culture of humans, from pigeon keeping on the rooftops of Amman to the shamanic rituals of Indigenous Amis in Taiwan. Ancient Austronesian traditions include the use of birds to divine the outcome of the hunt or the arrival of typhoons. Fishers in contemporary China and Japan still work with cormorants to secure their catch. Every human society has woven birds into its myths, metaphors, and art.
In times of intensifying ecological crisis, we need, more than ever, to appreciate and protect non-human lives. Feathered Entanglements embraces the connection between birds, humans, and our shared world.
Scholars and graduate students of anthropology will want this collection on their shelves for the sophisticated, wide-ranging insights it offers on anthropological theory and its multi-species ethnographical approach to anthropology beyond the human. Birders and amateur ornithologists will also be drawn to its stories of human-bird interactions.
Written by well-experienced scholars, this book will set a new milestone in ethno-ornithology. It is rare to see a volume exclusively focusing on birds and providing sophisticated insights into anthropological theory. I am excited for this book!
Scott E. Simon is a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa and began studying human-bird relations as a visiting professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. Among his publications are four ethnographies of Taiwan: Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs; Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Culture; Sadyaq Balae! L’autochtonie formosane dans tous ses états; and Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa. Frédéric Laugrand is a professor at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium and director of its Laboratoire d’anthropologie prospective (LAAP). He is the author and editor of numerous books, most recently co-authoring, with Antoine Laugrand, Des voies de l’ombre: Quand les chauves-souris sèment le trouble; with Cunera Buijs and Kim Van Dam, Picturing Places, People, and Practices in the Arctic: Anthropological Perspectives on Representation; and, with Jarich G. Oosten, Inuit, Oblate Missionaries, and Grey Nuns in the Keewatin, 1865–1965.
Preface
Introduction: Humans and Birds in the Anthropocene / Frédéric Laugrand and Scott E. Simon
Part 1: Birds Are Good to Be With (Birds as Partners)
1 Multiple Joining Methods among Fish, Birds, and Fishers: A Regional Case Study of Chinese Cormorant Fishing / Shuhei Uda
2 Bird-Singing Contests Rules and Communication Frames for Animals and Men: Sonorous Ethnography with the Bulbul Breeders of Southern Thailand / Etienne Dalemans
3 The Rooftop of the City: Pigeon-Keeping Practices and the Construction of Masculinities in Amman, Jordan / Perrine Lachenal
4 From the Ground to the Canopy: An Introduction to the Tarkine Forest through Its Birds / Aïko Cappe and Colin Schildhauer
5 Entangled Lives: Toward a Phenomenology of Amateur Birding in Modern Japan / Scott E. Simon
Part 2: Birds Are Good to Think With (Birds in Symbolic Systems)
6 Three Birds, the Emotions, and Cycles of Time in the Central Himalayas / John Leavitt
7 Time, Space, and Typhoons in Ibaloy Birdlore (Philippines Cordillera) / Frédéric Laugrand, Antoine Laugrand, Jazil Tamang, and Gliseria Magapin
8 Birds as Metaphors and More in a Changing Indonesian Community / Gregory Forth
Part 3: Birds Are Good to Craft With (Birds in Material Culture)
9 From Good to Eat to Good to Make: Ethnographical Archaeology of Bird Representations in Ancient Japan / Atsushi Nobayashi
10 Birds as Figurative Patterns and Artifacts as Efficient Agents: Agency and Ritual Behaviour among the Mentawaians of Bat Rereiket (Siberut, Indonesia) / Lionel Simon and Syarul Sakaliou
11 Environmental Shift and Entangled Landscapes: Use of Birds in Amis Ritual Practices of Taiwan / Yi-tze Lee
12 Epilogue: The Emergence of Ethno-Ornithology / Andrew G. Gosler
Index
