Zahlavi

Pigdogging in Australia

Pigdogging in Australia

Fri Feb 19 12:17:57 CET 2021

Paul Keil’s new article based on his ethnographic fieldwork of pig hunting in Australia has just been released as part of a special issue entitled ‘Sense-making in a more-than-human world’.

Here is the link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/taja.12382.

Rank atmospheres: The more‐than‐human scentspace and aesthetic of a pigdogging hunt
Author: Paul Keil
Journal: The Australian Journal of Anthropology

Abstract
Pigdogging is a popular pastime in Australia, a form of recreational hunting whereby people collaborate with dogs to chase and catch wild pigs. This paper analyses the hunt as an interspecies event that unfolds through the sensual and sensory entanglements of human and nonhuman, with a particular focus on the perspectives of the hunters. The concept of ‘atmosphere’ will be employed to frame an ethnographic analysis of two facets of pigdogging. First, by hunting with a dog, humans augment their capacity to identify the presence of pigs through the canine's extraordinary sense of scent. Through this relationship, the world of scent is revealed as having atmospheric properties: an enveloping phenomenon which is known through the dog, yet also escapes the hunter's perceptual apprehension. Second, this paper will illustrate examples of how atmosphere develops through the sensual relations between human and nonhuman bodies during the hunt. An affectively charged interspecies encounter is composed and participated in by the hunter through this recreational practice, and affords the enactment of subjectivities central to an aesthetics of pigdogging. Hunting atmospheres in this paper emerge at the juncture of human and more‐than‐human bodies, perspectives and worlds.