Beyond Cage and Leash: Human-Animal Relations in Rural Pakistan
Creators: name: Kavesh, Muhammad Amjad
Publisher: name: Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University
Year: 2018
Subjects: shauq
Pakistan
human-animal relations
pigeon flying
cockfight
dogfight

description: This thesis is an ethnographic inquiry into human-animal relations through an examination of three types of activities: pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting. By explaining the life trajectories of the animal keepers, their personal experiences, and social stigmatisation, the thesis explores how human-animal relationships are conceived, developed, and carried out in South Punjab. As a multispecies ethnography, the thesis illustrates diverse modalities of inter-species intimacy, the social worlds of the animal keepers, and their symbolic expectations from the animals. I contend that these three animal activities are not unique and independent phenomena, but a lens through which one can understand different value systems and normative relations in rural Punjab. Developing the concepts of anthropology of life and more-than-human sociality, the thesis argues that those who engage in these animal activities regard their animals as a key for exploring, enhancing, and refining their own life needs and ambitions. As such, each pigeon in the flock, and a rooster or a canine, is considered an individual with a distinct personality, needs, and attitude. Through a close examination of how these men care for and conceive of their animals, I argue that this more-than-human relationship enables them to cultivate the self, gain pleasure, accumulate social capital, and engage in the production of masculinity. The rural South Punjabi men indulge in and adopt these three animal activities as their shauq. “Shauq” is the local term commonly used to emphasise any activity that is routinely carried out to fulfil a personal passion. The animal keepers’ shauq, they maintain, enables them to find great joy, freedom, fulfilment, and a sense of wellbeing to counteract the confines of everyday social and familial obligations. While explaining the different modalities of human-animal relationships, this thesis interrogates the notion of shauq, as an ideology and a practice, and one that transforms the men’s lives, re-defines their social relationships, informs their symbolic practice, and shapes their ideological orientation. By discussing socio-cultural and symbolic implications of human-animal relationships, the thesis raises multiple questions: how do rural men develop a deep attachment to their animals? What motivates the men to fly and fight their animals? How does such inter-species attachment shape and influence the men’s social relationships, including their ties with other enthusiasts, community members, and their own family? Finally, I also explore the symbolic meanings embedded in such activities, with regard to questions of honour and the cultural politics of masculinity in wider Pakistani society. The thesis is based on year-long ethnographic fieldwork in South Punjab, and draws on participant observation, interviews, and archival material to illuminate the concept of shauq and the different modalities of such human-animal relationship.