Biopower, genetics and livestock breeding: (re)constituting animal populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities

Genetic techniques have become increasingly prevalent in livestock breeding, associated with new types of knowledge-practice and changes in the institutional and geographical relationships related to animal husbandry. This paper examines the value of Foucault's concept of 'biopower' to theorising livestock breeding and the implications of the rise of genetic knowledge-practices in agriculture, developing the concept to apply to nonhuman animals and to situations where humans and nonhuman animals are co-constituted through particular knowledge-practices and corporeal meetings. It focuses on the idea of 'population' as a central component of biopower, and relates this to conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Reacting to the inherent humanism of Foucault's outlining of biopower, the paper argues for its relevance in relation to nonhuman populations, and for heterogeneous conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Drawing on research with UK beef cattle and sheep breed societies, the paper explores how, in practice, populations are constructed in relation to the production of particular sorts of truths concerning, and particular modes of intervention in, the lives of nonhuman animals. It explores how heterogeneous biosocial collectivities are constituted around these interventions. The emergence of genetic techniques is shown to transform the processes constituting populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities, and this is discussed in terms of a new inflection of agricultural biopower associated with novel interventions in the lives of livestock animals.     

Raising Practices of Neolithic Livestock Evidenced by Stable Isotope Analysis in the Wei River Valley,North China

Although a patchwork of projects shows a process of agriculture intensification in North China during the Neolithic, the impact of cereal farming on animal husbandry and their mutual interaction remain cloudy. This study reports bone collagen δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N of humans and animals from Wayaogou (ca 6.5–6.0 kyrs bp ) and Dongying (ca 5.9–5.6 kyrs bp , 4.6–4.0 kyrs bp ) to explore temporal trend of livestock raising and particularly the importance of millet fodder to stock raising practices in the Wei River valley, North China. The isotopic evidence overall shows that millet products increased in human and domestic animal diets during the mentioned chronological span. δ¹³C values of pigs and dogs at Dongying are higher than those at Wayaogou, implying that the importance of millet nutrients increased to animal husbandry diachronically. Interestingly, δ¹³C results of domestic cattle of Dongying late phase (−14.1 ± 1.1‰, N = 5) are more enriched than Wayaogou wild Bos (−17.8 ± 0.3‰, N = 3), indicating that millet fodder had taken a significant place in early cattle husbandry. Besides, differences between Bos species of the two periods also imply that δ¹³C values of bone collagen constitute a potential indicator for tracing the origin of cattle husbandry in North China. In addition, domestic sheep at Dongying produced similar isotope data to wild ovicaprid at Wayaogou, suggesting that they possibly had grazed for the most in grassland and therefore experienced a different lifestyle from cattle. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“They hate pigs,Chinese farmers … everything!” Beastly Racialization in Multiethnic Malaysia

Abstract: This paper details the construction of the pig and the pig industry in Malaysia. It argues that a pattern of “animal‐linked racialization” continually polices the boundary between the dominant, elite Malay‐Muslim hegemony and the comparatively less powerful Chinese pig farmers. Often subtle and implicit, such beastly racialization, drawing frequently from religious and nationalist tropes, renders visible the taboo subjects of race and racism in Malaysia. While a simplistic form of beastly racialization in relation to the pig industry is held by the political elites and non‐Chinese community, one cannot say that such a racialization has produced or sustained distinct racisms. Nonetheless, it is through the process of beastly racialization that we unravel the seemingly random acts of coercive policies that, taken in their entirety, threaten to stymie the future viability of the industry and continue to accentuate the visible social‐cultural disjuncture between the two biggest ethnic groups in Malaysia.     

Agricultural Development and Household Incomes in Central Asia: A Survey of Tajikistan, 2003-2008

Two noted specialists on the agricultural economies of the former Soviet Union examine the effects of land reform on agricultural production and the income of rural house-holds in Tajikistan. The authors utilize official government statistics to discern trends of agricultural output at the national level, and the results of three extensive surveys conducted in 2007-2008 (N > 2,000) and one in 2003 (N = 4,000 respondents) by international organizations (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank) to identify household-level changes. They also review the legislative framework for agrarian reform in the country; examine national-level trends in farm structure and organization, livestock production, farm productivity, and cropping patterns; and analyze shifts in size of land holdings and rural family incomes at the household level. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D130, O130, P320, Q150. 11 figures, 10 tables, 42 references.     

Food Security and Russia's 2010 Drought

An American specialist on Russia's agricultural sector examines the progression and impact of that country's 2010 drought (the worst in a half-century), leading to a grain harvest one-third smaller than originally forecast. A particular focus is on the country's grain reserves and the government's response to drought in such areas as grain export policy and maintaining the size of the domestic livestock herd, responses which the author argues are conditioned by the drive for food security, a concept that has dominated the political discourse in tandem with resurgent economic nationalism during the post-Soviet period.     

The Historical Geographies of Showing Livestock: a Case Study of the Perth Royal Show,Western Australia

This paper examines changes in the entries of livestock to competitions at the Perth Royal Show in the course of the twentieth century. It identifies trends in the showing of animals at the Show and explains these with reference to the wider geographies of state and national agricultural change in Western Australia (WA). In doing so, it provides a longitudinal perspective on the socioeconomic contexts of farming in WA and identifies some of the key cultural and economic drivers that have influenced livestock farming in that locality. In turn, these findings contribute to wider understandings of the global countryside and of the imagined ruralities that exist within and beyond the spaces of showgrounds.     

Food Rituals and Their Social Significance in the Mid‐Second Millennium BC in the Southern Levant: A View From Megiddo

Ceremonies involving intentional burial of animals with humans are acknowledged to bear religious, social and political connotations, and we explored both the ritual activity and the social trajectory of these activities. To date, these ceremonies have rarely been examined within the context of nearby daily activities. We studied faunal remains associated with intramural burials in comparison with contemporaneous daily life in the midsecond millennium bc at Tel Megiddo, as well as comparison with concomitant extramural burials and locations of public feasts. Our study highlights the human interaction with animals that are not often treated as bearing social meaning or having interrelationships with human, the livestock animals. We demonstrate that livestock animals in the second millennium bc had a significant social role as well as economic value. The choice of animals consumed and sacrificed in these rituals is strongly related to the animal's symbolic potency and is based on the desired social message that the population aims to convey. Finally, the form of luxury food that is found in the Megiddo funerary rituals supports the hypothesis regarding the intramural burials' role in creating and enhancing social family bonds. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

明代宁夏畜牧业的经营类型与地域分布

明代宁夏的畜牧业, 从经营方式上可分为官办监苑畜牧业、军卫畜牧业、藩王畜牧业、民间畜牧业 4种。军卫畜牧业和民间畜牧业在宁夏南、北皆有分布, 而官办监苑畜牧业和藩王畜牧业主要分布在宁夏南部, 且呈犬牙交错的状态。宁夏镇的畜牧业是以军事卫所畜牧业为主, 民间畜牧业为辅。而宁夏南部的畜牧业, 在明前期是以藩王畜牧业和官办监苑畜牧业为主, 民间畜牧业为辅; 至明后期, 则以藩王畜牧业为主, 民间畜牧业部分替代了官办监苑畜牧业的位置。     

Viewing animal bodies: truths,practical aesthetics and ethical considerability in UK livestock breeding

This paper focuses on the production of aesthetic ‘truths’ in UK livestock breeding, drawing on detailed qualitative research with breeders and breed societies. It extends emerging interest in the aesthetic in human geographical research, examining how aesthetic judgements about non-human animals depend, in part, on the agency of the animal and their inter-subjective relations with humans in specific places. Aesthetic evaluation further produces implicit judgements about animals' ethical considerability, at the same time obscuring the effects of such judgements on their framing and treatment. Aesthetic evaluation is thus related to sets of material and ethical interests. The paper develops a more-than-human reading of Foucault's biopower, which explores how truths about visual evaluations of animals become established. Two empirical perspectives explore, first, a ‘relational practical aesthetic’ for evaluating beef cattle and sheep, exploring the implications of the aesthetic framing of specific animals and, second, the tensions involved in looking at animals when different aesthetic truths conflict and when traditions of aesthetic evaluation encounter genetic modes of evaluation. The paper concludes by discussing the ethical implications of ongoing transformations of evaluative modes in livestock breeding, suggesting that shifts away from inter-subjective modes of aesthetic evaluation further diminish the ethical status of animals.     

“So bigge as bigge may be”: tracking size and shape change in domestic livestock in London (AD 1220–1900)

This study presents the analysis of 7966 individual cattle, sheep, pig and domestic hen bone measurements from 105 sites excavated in London dating to the period AD 1220–1900. Multiple episodes of size change are identified, although the speed and timing varies by species. The earliest evidence for size change in cattle and sheep occurs in the early 14th century and may be connected to the need to restock livestock populations following the outbreaks of murrain in the first half of that century. Subsequent size increases in livestock size may have occurred as a combined consequence of agricultural innovations in the wake of the Black Death, the increasing commercialisation of animal farming, as the meat requirements of an expanding London grew, and the rise of the ethic of improvement.