Turning away from “thick” description to “thin,” Hartigan moves toward a more observational form of study, focusing on behaviors over interpretations. This vivid approach provides new and important contributions to the study of animal behavior. Ultimately, he comes away with profound, penetrating insights into multispecies interactions and a strong alternative to humancentric ethnographic practices.
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Moveable Gardens explores how biodiversity and food can counter the alienation caused by displacement. By offering in-depth studies on a variety of regions, this volume carefully considers various forms of sanctuary making within communities, and seeks to address how carrying seeds, plants, and other traveling companions is an ongoing response to the grave conditions of displacement in today’s world. The destruction of homelands, fragmentation of habitats, and post-capitalist conditions of modernity are countered by thoughtful remembrance of tradition and the migration of seeds, which are embodied in gardening, cooking, and community building.
Moveable Gardens highlights itineraries and sanctuaries in an era of massive dislocation, addressing concerns about finding comforting and familiar refuges in the Anthropocene. The worlds of marginalized individuals who live in impoverished rural communities, many Indigenous peoples, and refugees are constantly under threat
rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and shave their manes and tails.
Shaving the Beasts is a firsthand account of how the horses experience this traumatic rite, producing a profound revelation about the durability of sociality in the face of violent domination. Deftly pushing against three-quarters of a century of ethnographic tradition, John Hartigan Jr. creates an earnest multispecies anthropology rich with methodological and theoretical promise. He decenters the human, entangles ethological and ethnographic method and first-person narrative, and invites us to imagine a truly multispecies social theory. The horses remain the focus amid the enticing and challenging assertions about how we could (should) be ‘doing’ anthropology with other-than-humans in the Anthropocene. Agustín Fuentes, Princeton University
John Hartigan Jr. will host a virtual event with Tufts University s School of Arts and Sciences on Friday, March 12 for a discussion of his new book, SHAVING THE BEASTS.