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This thesis is a sandwich thesis that explores youth participation in equestrian sport. Each of the three papers that comprise the substantive portion of this thesis are stand-alone papers. Each paper employs a mixed methodology which includes document analysis, media analysis, and semi-structured interviews. The goal of the thesis is to analyse and describe: (1) what, if anything, young female equestrians gain from participating in equestrian stables, (2) the form and function of “trust” in competitive youth equestrian sport, and, (3) the characteristics of the equine industry in Canada and how it has evolved since the introduction of the Canadian Pony Club in 1934. These three aspects of equestrian sport in Canada are examined using data from equine industry documents such as reports and program material, equine industry media including websites, online magazines, and blogs, and semi-structured interviews with current and former female equestrians who participated in equestrian sport during their youth. This thesis is a retrospective study. Interviewees were members of the Canadian Pony Club at some point during their youth. The thesis employs a range of sociological theories and perspectives, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, George Herbert Mead, Niklas Luhmann, and Donna Haraway. Theoretically and substantially, it provides a rigorous understanding of the equine industry in Canada, the human-horse relationship, and female youth participation in equestrian sport. It makes a contribution to sociology by providing an analysis of modernity and the current conditions of the risk society, arguing that the horse (and other animals) now occupy a unique position in society and may act as a means of dealing with the individuality and complexity of a risk society. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy

The Sami bear graves is an important source for archaeological research on the indigenous people of the Nordic countries. They bring stories of the past through the bones and through written sources from the 17th century. The mythological stories tell us about interactions between man and the holy creature that is the bear, and the buried bones have their own stories to tell. The aim of this study is to analyse the connection between the Sami and the bear and search for a thicker understanding about the reasons for this animal to be buried in own graves. By close readings of archaeological reports, analyses of the Sami culture and religious practices where the bear is present, and, not the least, thoughts about the fluid borders between human and animal agents, a bigger picture will emerge that explains why the bear were of such importance. This paper will thus be a contribution to the knowledge of the Sami culture and the archaeological research that has emerged over the last century.

In this thesis I explore human-animal relations amongst the Bebelibe of the Commune of Cobly, in the northwest of the Republic of Benin, West Africa, with a focus on how they relate to their tikedimɔmɔnte (true totem(s), literally “interdict(s)-true”). I start with an historical review of totemism, the debates it generated and how these contributed to the recent ontological turn in anthropology. I then explore the theoretical ideas I use for my analysis, which include “presencing” and the “ontological penumbra” (J. Merz 2017b; J. Merz and S. Merz 2017). Presencing builds on semiotics by explaining how people make meaning present through their engagement in and with the world around them, whilst ontological penumbras are the shadowy spaces of limbo that affect our whole being and that people need to negotiate as part of making sense of their engagement with the world. As part of these theoretical frameworks, I examine the “onton”, as introduced by Johannes Merz (2017b). Ontons are experiential, agentive and relational entities that are the result of presencing processes. Ontons, however, cannot be divided into representations (signifiers) and represented (signified) as signs can. An engagement in the world between different entities in an ontonic and thus nonrepresentational sense necessitates my introducing further notions including shared “ontonity” (instead of shared humanity) and “ontonhood” (rather than personhood). I demonstrate how these theoretical ideas work with reference to human-animal relations primarily amongst the Bebelibe in the Commune of Cobly. In order to do this, I provide an in-depth, “thick description” (Geertz 1973) ethnography that explores how people perceive and relate to animals through hunting, domestication, attitudes to eating meat, animal commodification, reincarnation, shapeshifting and totemism. As part of my analysis I also examine the impact of Christianity on human-animal relations by exploring several incidents involving Christians and their tikedimɔmɔnte.

Accredited US zoos aim to support wildlife conservation and educate and influence the public and create a conservation-minded community by curating immersive multispecies experiences. In this case study, I examine how zoos may practice conservation through the frameworks of biopolitics, spectacle, affect, and mainstream conservation paradigms. To conduct this research, I interviewed 10 zoo staff from the animal, education, development, and retail departments of a Midwestern zoo. Their rhetoric about zoos and how they practice conservation suggests that zoo staff aim to generate affective responses from guests by displaying animals in managed care. These affective responses that staff hope to generate have the potential to elicit behavioral changes in the public, such as making responsible consumer choices and donating to the zoo or to other conservation organizations. I conclude that these practices are examples of mainstream (neoliberalized) modes of conservation, which is conservation that is compatible with larger capitalist structures.

This dissertation is a contribution to the ethnography of contemporary indigenous reindeer pastoralism in Norway: specifically, to the study of the neglected fields of reindeer killing and slaughtering practice. Its central contention is that in recent decades, the proliferation of human powers vested in the conduct of reindeer slaughter has created new conditions for practice, placing the identities of reindeer and herders at stake in new and still only dimly conceptualized ways. By exploring these, the dissertation aims to broaden existing debates concerning the so-called modernization of pastoral practice in Norway, drawing attention to some of its neglected aspects and inscribing them in a new register. Two principal strands inform the theoretical framework: one, approaches to the social study of knowledge that emphasise its practical, non-verbal and material aspects; and two, Foucauldian concepts of biopower as these may or may not be applicable to the human management of animal life. Individual chapters examine, in turn: the local politics of space on the Varanger peninsula, focusing particularly on links between the spatial management and the killing of reindeer; the practices and social relations of slaughter as it is conducted at the round-up corral; the social effects of the introduction of slaughterhouses, and of the regime of which they form a part; controversies surrounding specific slaughtering techniques and instruments, particularly the curved knife; and the politics of animal welfare discourse and practices in their application to reindeer herding. Finally, using the figure of animal sacrifice as a guiding trope, the concluding chapter attempts to situate some key aspects of the modernization of reindeer slaughter in relation to the operation of broader sacrificial economies that regulate the destruction of life at aggregate or populational levels.

This thesis examines how the ethics of caring for pedigree dogs differ in the contexts of dog showing and veterinary practice. By highlighting conflicts around the shared use of ‘ordinary language’, I show how tensions between show‐world and veterinary perspectives relate to divergent understandings of ‘health’. Canine bodies speak to vets and breeders in conceptually different ways, so much so that breed‐specific features can be considered ‘perfect’ in the show‐ring yet ‘pathological’ in the veterinary clinic. Developing the emergent anthropological perspective that care is both a moral and an embodied practice, I argue that the qualities of moral virtue and aesthetic virtu are inextricably linked in the care practices by which breeders aim to produce and sustain canine bodies in their idealised forms. Also fundamental to show‐world notions of care is the understanding that care for dog and care for breed are one and the same. In sharp contrast, veterinary practice attends to dogs as individuals rather than members of breeds. Here, I examine how breeders and vets respond to the multiple and conflicting demands of caring for pedigree dogs in the course of encounters often fraught with unresolved tension. Asking how seemingly irreconcilable notions of what counts as good health play out in these negotiations, I argue that care can depend on the ability to transcend – or at least overlook – different ethical orientations. In practice, I argue that negotiations between breeders and vets are often non‐verbal and based on a mutual understanding that the ability to work together in performing care relies not only on clear communication but, at times, on a knowing silence. Under ever‐increasing pressure to engage with veterinary notions of health, many show‐breeders now deem ignorance of veterinary knowledge – and silence in the face of disease – ethically virtuous. I therefore conclude that deliberate silence and selective ignorance enable breeders and vets to temporarily reconcile their different understandings of what is good, thus allowing both parties to meet their respective responsibilities of care.

This dissertation explores the ways in which practices of killing animals in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada shaped humans’ perceptions of self and place. Analyzing the multivalent meanings of animal death in wild animal stories, sport hunting, photography, taxidermy, and meat eating, I argue that killing animals was integral to the expansion of settler colonialism in the dominion, materially facilitating the extension of agriculture and industry, and rhetorically legitimizing claims to conquest over indigenous peoples and wild landscapes. But humans’ self-definitions through animal death were not straightforward tales of mastery. Increasingly aware of the disappearance of wildlife from the dominion’s forests, less dependent upon wildlife for subsistence, women and men attributed greater cultural, political, and economic value to the nation’s animals, empathizing with animals and condemning animal extinction. Expressing a sense of guilt over human culpability in the vanishing of wild species, then, humans sought ways of defeating the ravages of modernity by preserving traces of animals in material, representational forms, using encounters with animals as means of defining a sense of self and nation. Fictional stories of animals proliferated, sport hunting soared in popularity, and taxidermied animals adorned many walls. Contemporaries killed animals as a means of legitimizing colonial occupation of newly settled land and asserting mastery over nature, then, but they also regretted their role in precipitating the disappearance of animals from nature. In reconciling this paradox, human and animal engaged in an ongoing process of co-constitution, defining and redefining shifting boundaries of kinship and otherness in a myriad of ways. Such paradoxical meanings of animal death emerged when humans were no longer reliant upon wild animals for survival. As such, I conclude this study by analyzing an important counterpart to wild animal death—the slaughtering of domestic animals as meat. Eating commercially produced meat increasingly defined one’s status as a modern subject within a technologically advanced and civilized nation, the transition from eating wild animals to domestic animals symbolizing a sense of success in overcoming the challenges of settlement in a colonial landscape.

This dissertation explores the ways in which practices of killing animals in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada shaped humans’ perceptions of self and place. Analyzing the multivalent meanings of animal death in wild animal stories, sport hunting, photography, taxidermy, and meat eating, I argue that killing animals was integral to the expansion of settler colonialism in the dominion, materially facilitating the extension of agriculture and industry, and rhetorically legitimizing claims to conquest over indigenous peoples and wild landscapes. But humans’ self-definitions through animal death were not straightforward tales of mastery. Increasingly aware of the disappearance of wildlife from the dominion’s forests, less dependent upon wildlife for subsistence, women and men attributed greater cultural, political, and economic value to the nation’s animals, empathizing with animals and condemning animal extinction. Expressing a sense of guilt over human culpability in the vanishing of wild species, then, humans sought ways of defeating the ravages of modernity by preserving traces of animals in material, representational forms, using encounters with animals as means of defining a sense of self and nation. Fictional stories of animals proliferated, sport hunting soared in popularity, and taxidermied animals adorned many walls. Contemporaries killed animals as a means of legitimizing colonial occupation of newly settled land and asserting mastery over nature, then, but they also regretted their role in precipitating the disappearance of animals from nature. In reconciling this paradox, human and animal engaged in an ongoing process of co-constitution, defining and redefining shifting boundaries of kinship and otherness in a myriad of ways. Such paradoxical meanings of animal death emerged when humans were no longer reliant upon wild animals for survival. As such, I conclude this study by analyzing an important counterpart to wild animal death—the slaughtering of domestic animals as meat. Eating commercially produced meat increasingly defined one’s status as a modern subject within a technologically advanced and civilized nation, the transition from eating wild animals to domestic animals symbolizing a sense of success in overcoming the challenges of settlement in a colonial landscape.

Being treated as a piece of meat has long been an issue around which feminist concerns regarding the representation of women and practices of cultural consumption coalesce. However, as the Humanities undergo a paradigm shift away from intrinsically privileging the human subject, this demands new consideration of how cultural figurations of meat can work to challenge the terms of the species border. This thesis offers close readings of contemporary film, literature, visual art, music and live performance produced between the late 1980s and the present day that stage carnal encounters with meat. I unite these figurations under the term ‘meaty bodies’, exploring how they question the supposedly self-evident line between the flesh that we are and the flesh that we may eat. Situating its theoretical approach within the tension between psychoanalytic and cultural theories of taboo and abjection and emerging ‘new materialist’ conceptualisations of matter, this thesis contributes to the project of disrupting the primacy of ‘the human’ and the workings of the species divide. The thesis begins by examining three cultural productions that humanise meat by using it to speak to themes of vulnerability, trauma and sexual desire respectively. The photographic series Perishables (Yolaçan, 2002–04), the live art performance My New York (Zhang, 2002) and the pornographic novella The Butcher (Reyes, 1988) utilise meat to speak to issues surrounding human embodiment. However, I suggest that this typically decouples meat from the animal body from which it derives. The thesis subsequently turns to four cultural productions that more directly engage with the violence inherent in the naturalisation of meat as animal body. Analysing the experimental text Diary of a Steak (Levy, 1997), the concept album One Pig (Herbert, 2011), the live art performance inthewrongplaceness (O’Reilly, 2004–09) and the feature film Beasts of the Southern Wild (Zeitlin, 2012), the thesis positions these cultural productions as a challenge to the species border through their attentiveness to contemporary issues surrounding meat consumption and production, including discussion of ‘meat panics’ such as the 1980s/1990s BSE crisis, the development of tissue-cultured meat and impending food scarcity. These close readings show that what I term a ‘carnal equivalence’ between human and animal flesh can be a powerful means of questioning the terms of the species border. Yet, in rendering their encounters with meat frequently difficult and strained, these cultural productions stage and generate ambivalence as integral to our relations with meat consumption and production in the contemporary moment. The thesis suggests that this uncertainty is indicative of a wider impasse within the Humanities, as the field seeks to decentralise ‘the human’ and the discourses that are invested in the continued dominance of this category, yet is still shaped by attachments and anxieties that render this move more difficult than may otherwise be supposed.