Guest Talk Tim Pöhlmann

Tim Pöhlmann, M.Sc. (University of Cambridge):

Men Who Shout at Goats:
Slaughter and the Cultivation of 'Lost' Land in São Jorge Island

This talk focuses on forms of excess violence against nonhumans. Among (male) Azorean islanders, practices of fishing or slaughtering goats often comprise insulting and deriding the animals involved. Understanding this surplus of force means con-sidering various ways of relating to nature (natureza) as shaped by ideas of mascu-linity, fear of decline, and conceptions of the household. In Fajã, the site of my fieldwork, most villagers are deeply concerned with local depopulation, a predica-ment primarily articulated in terms of changing environment. They speak of increas-ingly overgrown land plots as “lost” (perdido) and perceive the sight and feel of van-ishing property as fundamentally distressing. In this context of demographic decline and poverty, the morally overloaded notion of making an agrarian livelihood affects the concept of natureza. I argue that the skilled male labour of converting entities understood as “natural” into valuable products of the household, is both a process of generating men’s sense of self-worth and a site where male destructive potential can come to the fore.

When?     Monday, June 13, 18:00
Where?    Institut für Ethnologie, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538 München
                Room L155

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Für die Veranstaltungsreihe hat  Prof. Dr. Frank Heidemann in diesem Semester ein vielseitiges  Programm (140 KB) mit interessanten Themen und ReferentInnen zusammengestellt. Mehr Informationen über ehemalige Vorträge am Institut für Ethnologie finden Sie im Veranstaltungsarchiv.