The Centre for Biosocial Inquiries (BiosInq), the Centre for Food and Culture Studies (FOCUS) and the Centre for Environmental Humanities (CEH), in collaboration with Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), will welcome Dr Catie Gressier to present her research, ‘Blood Ties: Loving, Kinning, and Killing on Australian Heritage Breed Farms’ in a hybrid seminar that will be hosted at AIAS.

Catie Gressier is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia. In this seminar, Gressier examines the complexities of the cycles of life and death on heritage breed farms, and the role of kinning and killing in endangered breed conservation.

Blood Ties: Loving, Kinning and Killing on Australian Heritage Breed Farms

The livestock industry’s favouring of a small number of high-yielding commercial breeds has resulted in the extinction of almost 10 per cent of domestic animal breeds globally, with at least 1000 more at risk (IPBES 2019). Across Australia, a passionate subset of farmers is working hard to preserve the remaining heritage breeds, whose bloodlines and histories are enmeshed with their own. Living interdependently with livestock results in strong emotional ties with animals, who heritage breed farmers often consider family, even while they instrumentalise animal bodies, including through killing, to make a living. Interspecies relatedness is evident in the mutual benefit and burden experienced by animals and farmers; it is enacted through daily acts of nourishment and care; it manifests in shared substance, from blood and milk to pathogens; and it endures across generations.

In this seminar, I explore the complexities of the cycles of life and death on heritage breed farms, and the role of kinning and killing in endangered breed conservation. I suggest that interspecies relatedness on heritage farms offers a convivial and mutualistic alternative to the unidimensional commodification of animals underpinning intensive livestock production.

Bio

Catie Gressier is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia. A cultural anthropologist with regional expertise in Australia and southern Africa, her research explores foodways, interspecies relations, tourism, and health and illness.

Her first book, At Home in the Okavango, examines emplacement and belonging among the white citizens of northwest Botswana, while her second book, Illness, Identity and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters, explores the body as a site through which neoliberal policies and practices are played out and contested. Catie’s third book, Saving Heritage Breeds: A Love Story will be released in March and examines heritage breed livestock farming in the climate change era.

She is a Director of the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, an Editorial Board Member of Anthropological Forum, and the Coordinator of the Ecology, People, Place research network.

Want to participate?

Sign up via the link here. If you are joining online, a Zoom link will be sent to you before the talk; therefore, registration is still necessary.

Contact

Jens Seeberg, AIAS-PIREAU Fellow and Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University 
jseeberg@cas.au.dk