Date And Time
Fri, May 14, 2021
Noon – 1:30pm EDT/9:00 AM – 10:30 AM PDT
Register here for this free online event
A conversation with John Hartigan about his new book, a multi-species ethnographic study of a wild horse population in Spain.
About this Event
Join us for a conversation with the author of Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain (University of Minnesota Press, 2020):
Each summer in Galicia, Spain, a 500-year old ritual unfolds in which free-roaming horses are herded up and their manes and tails are systematically shaved. Initially, their band structure and social forms of interaction collapse during this traumatic 4-day event, only to emerge newly reconfigured by its end. John Hartigan’s account of this transformation combines ethological techniques with an ethnographic perspective in an overarching analysis of how horse sociality responds to this ritual form of population management. Hartigan uses Erving Goffman’s concepts of “face” and “civil inattention” to analyze their social performances and inverts Clifford Geertz’s analysis in the Balinese cockfight by regarding the horses as ethnographic subjects.
John Hartigan Jr. is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. His previous books include Aesop’s Anthropology: A Multispecies Approach (Minnesota 2014), which examines how model organisms circuit through labs and everyday life, and Care of the Species: Races of Corn and the Science of Plant Biodiversity, featuring maize genomics research in Mexico and botanists’ field surveys in Spain.
The virtual “coffee chat” series allows the Equine History Collective to build connections over common interests — sharing ideas and passions with a spirit of generosity and enthusiasm. Please save the date and look for more to come soon!