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Rank atmospheres: The more‐than‐human scentspace and aesthetic of a pigdogging hunt
Author(s) -
Keil Paul G.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/taja.12382
Subject(s) - apprehension , atmosphere (unit) , recreation , aesthetics , ethnography , perception , sociology , frame (networking) , rank (graph theory) , history , environmental ethics , epistemology , ecology , art , anthropology , geography , philosophy , biology , computer science , mathematics , combinatorics , telecommunications , meteorology
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.