Faces of the wolf : managing the human, non-human boundary in Mongolia / by Bernard Charlier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Charlier, Bernard.

Series:

Inner Asia book series ; no. 10.

Inner Asia book series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human-animal relationships--Mongolia.

Wolves--Mongolia--Psychological aspects.

Human ecology--Mongolia.

Herders--Mongolia--Psychology.

Herders.

Psychology.

Human ecology.

Wolves.

Psychological aspects.

Human-animal relationships.

Mongolia.

Physical Description:

xii, 188 pages : color illustrations, color map ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2015]

Summary:

In his study of the human, non-human relationships to Mongolia, Bernard Charlier explores the role of the wolf in the ways nomadic herders, relate to their natural environment and to themselves. The wolf, as the enemy of the herds and a prestigious prey, is at the core of two technical relationships, herding and hunting, endowed with particular cosmological ideas. The study of these relationships casts a new light on the ways herders perceive and relate to domestic and wild animals. It convincingly undermines any attempt to consider humans and non-humans as entities belonging a priori to autonomous spheres of existence, which would reify the nature-society boundary into a phenomenal order of things and so justify the identity of western epistemology. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : The wolf at the margins

From victim to giver : interpreting wolf attacks and revealing a morality

Hunting the wolf for 'wind horses' and revealing the individual

"Everything and its contrary" : between morality and ethics, equilibrium and excess, humanity and animality, what is a wolf?

Extending bodies : concealing and revealing persons through wolf's ankle bones and other objects kept near the body

Between surfaces and depths, actions and transformations, contours and tensions : no homeland for the wolf

Concluding remarks : Between differences, encompassments and repetitions : "who holds the strings of the wind?".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-184) and index.

ISBN:

9789004271128

9004271120

OCLC:

907948255