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Feathered Entanglements

Feathered Entanglements

Human-Bird Relations in the Anthropocene

Edited by Scott E. Simon and Frédéric Laugrand

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

348 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 34 b&w photos, 11 tables, 8 charts, 4 maps

Paperback
9780774870016
Published: July 2025

£28.99

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Hardcover
9780774870009
Published: October 2024

£79.00

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Description
Contents
Authors

As they migrated across great distances, ancient humans may have used birdsong and bird sightings to find food and water in unseen territory. Today, attending to birds helps scientists track not only avian migration but also environmental change. Birds remain our sentinels.

Feathered Entanglements offers a rich tapestry of human-bird relations across the Indo-Pacific. In this era of uncontrolled industrialization, we have grown increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The ways in which birds feature in the daily life, symbolic systems, and material culture of humans, from pigeon keeping on the rooftops of Amman to the rituals of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, can teach us how to live with other species amid the challenges of the Anthropocene.

In a time of intensifying ecological crisis, we need, more than ever, to protect and appreciate non-human lives. Feathered Entanglements embraces the connection between humans, birds, and our shared world.

Preface

Introduction: Humans and Birds in the Anthropocene / Frédéric Laugrand and Scott E. Simon

Part 1: Birds Are Good to Be With (Birds as Partners)

1 Multiple Joining Methods among Fish, Birds, and Fishers: A Regional Case Study of Chinese Cormorant Fishing / Shuhei Uda

2 Bird-Singing Contests Rules and Communication Frames for Animals and Men: Sonorous Ethnography with the Bulbul Breeders of Southern Thailand / Etienne Dalemans

3 The Rooftop of the City: Pigeon-Keeping Practices and the Construction of Masculinities in Amman, Jordan / Perrine Lachenal

4 From the Ground to the Canopy: An Introduction to the Tarkine Forest through Its Birds / Aïko Cappe and Colin Schildhauer

5 Entangled Lives: Toward a Phenomenology of Amateur Birding in Modern Japan / Scott E. Simon

Part 2: Birds Are Good to Think With (Birds in Symbolic Systems)

6 Three Birds, the Emotions, and Cycles of Time in the Central Himalayas / John Leavitt

7 Time, Space, and Typhoons in Ibaloy Birdlore (Philippines Cordillera) / Frédéric Laugrand, Antoine Laugrand, Jazil Tamang, and Gliseria Magapin

8 Birds as Metaphors and More in a Changing Indonesian Community / Gregory Forth

Part 3: Birds Are Good to Craft With (Birds in Material Culture)

9 From Good to Eat to Good to Make: Ethnographical Archaeology of Bird Representations in Ancient Japan / Atsushi Nobayashi

10 Birds as Figurative Patterns and Artifacts as Efficient Agents: Agency and Ritual Behaviour among the Mentawaians of Bat Rereiket (Siberut, Indonesia) / Lionel Simon and Syarul Sakaliou

11 Environmental Shift and Entangled Landscapes: Use of Birds in Amis Ritual Practices of Taiwan / Yi-tze Lee

12 Epilogue: The Emergence of Ethno-Ornithology / Andrew G. Gosler

Index

Scott E. Simon is a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa and began studying human-bird relations as a visiting professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. Among his publications are four ethnographies of Taiwan: Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs; Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Culture; Sadyaq Balae! L'autochtonie formosane dans tous ses états; and Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa.

Frédéric Laugrand is a professor at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium and director of its Laboratoire d'anthropologie prospective (LAAP). He is the author and editor of numerous books, most recently co-authoring, with Antoine Laugrand, Des voies de l'ombre: Quand les chauves-souris sèment le trouble; with Cunera Buijs and Kim Van Dam, Picturing Places, People, and Practices in the Arctic: Anthropological Perspectives on Representation; and, with Jarich G. Oosten, Inuit, Oblate Missionaries, and Grey Nuns in the Keewatin, 1865–1965.

Contributors: Aiko Cappe, Étienne Dalemans, Gregory Forth, Andrew G. Gosler, Perrine Lachenal, Antoine Laugrand, John Leavitt, Yi-tze Lee, Gliseria Magapin, Atsushi Nobayashi, Syarul Sakaliou, Colin Schildhauer, Lionel Simon, Jazil Tamang, and Shuhei Uda.