EDCMA

Description

Big cats—tigers, leopards, and lions—that make prey of humans are commonly known as “man-eaters.” Anthropologist Nayanika Mathur reconceptualizes them as cats that have gone off the straight path to become “crooked.” Building upon fifteen years of research in India, this groundbreaking work moves beyond both colonial and conservationist accounts to place crooked cats at the center of the question of how we are to comprehend a planet in crisis.

There are many theories on why and how a big cat comes to prey on humans, with the ecological collapse emerging as a central explanatory factor. Yet, uncertainty over the precise cause of crookedness persists. Crooked Cats explores in vivid detail the many lived complexities that arise from this absence of certain knowledge to offer startling new insights into both the governance of nonhuman animals and their intimate entanglements with humans. Through creative ethnographic storytelling, Crooked Cats illuminates the Anthropocene in three critical ways: as method, as a way of reframing human-nonhuman relations on the planet, and as a political tool indicating the urgency of academic engagement. Weaving together “beastly tales” spun from encounters with big cats, Mathur deepens our understanding of the causes, consequences, and conceptualization of the climate crisis.

This in-person event, organised by the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology (EdCMA) is aimed at PhD students, members of the EdCMA health and environment network, of Edinburgh Environmental Humanities network, of One Health and Society network, and interested students/staff.

Professor Nayanika Mathur is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Nayanika is an Anthropologist of South Asia with wide-ranging research and teaching interests in the anthropology of politics, development, environment, law, human-animal studies, and research methods. She was educated at the Universities of Delhi (B.A. and M.A.) and Cambridge (MPhil and PhD). Before joining Oxford in October 2017 she held postdoctoral research fellowships awarded by the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy at the University of Cambridge.