Kockelman, Paul. Chaper 2 A Mayan Ontology of Po Essays - Pteropus

Kockelman, Paul. "Chaper 2: A Mayan Ontology of Poultry." In The chicken and the quetzal: incommensurate ontologies and portable values in Guatemala's cloud forest, 49-85. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Rose, Deborah Bird. "Flying Fox: Kin, Keystone, Kontaminant." Manoa 22, no. 2 (2010): 175-190. Flying Fox Foxes are keystone species Australia Based on findings by Donna Harway "we and others are entangled in knots of species who are co-shaping each other in layers of reciprocating complexity" pg 175 "In the Anthropocene there is no way out of entanglements within multispecies communities. Rather than seeking to erect more impenetrable barriers against others, relational ethics for living and dying in the Anthropocene urge us to assume ever greater mutuality and accountability as intradependent members of the suffering family of life on Earth." Pg 175 Author learns about flying foxes from indigenous people Stories relate foxes to people, similarly to stories about other animals in different areas Co-evolution between flying foxes and Megachiropterans and flowing plants Seed-dispersal agents for these Orchardists see flying foxes as pests that eat their fruit Zero tolerance "this is an us' and them' boundary organized along an either-or axis: it offers no place for co-existence or mutuality" pg 181 Compares the mass murder of flying foxes to be terrorism "The battle against flying foxes has never involved equals and, in its orientation toward extermination, finds affinity with modernity's terrorism. Talk about comparing human and animal lives pg 185 The Chicken and the Quetzal Guatemala Ontology Q'eqchi' people and their relationship with chickens Language Chicken associated with femininity Rooster associated with masculinity Analyzes etymology Looks at ontological placement of chickens in various ways, including etymology, relationships between birds, lexical taxonomies, discursive disruptions Relation between women and chickens, chickens and other animals, and women and other identities Chickens and their parts circulating as items with use value and exchange value Social relations mediated through this "chickens mediated any number of social relations, thereby constituting a medium of exchange in the social economy" pg 66 Chickens slaughtered to feed groups and gods at ceremonies Selfhood Selfhood constituted by a kind of ontological reflexivity These reflexive relations are distinct from and a condition for other modes of self-reflectivity Selfhood can't be understood w/o reference to ontology "Flying Fox: Kin, Keystone, Kontaminant" is a paper written by Deborah Bird Rose in 2010 about the flying fox in Australia. She speaks with indigenous people to learn how flying foxes relate to people and analyzes the newly developed relationship between flying foxes and orchardists, who consider them to be pests. Although flying foxes are a keystone species and extremely important to the health of many ecosystems, because they are a pest to orchardists, we have attacked them with guns, electric nets, explosives, and biological weapons. There "is an us' and them' boundary organized along an either-or axis: it offers no place for co-existence or mutuality" (Rose, 181). Rose even goes as far as to compare our actions towards flying foxes to terrorism. She argues that conflicts like the one between orchardists and flying foxes are unavoidable and that we should "assume ever greater mutuality and accountability as intradependent members of the suffering family of life on Earth" (Rose, 17 5). In "The Chicken and the Quetzal," Paul Kockelman writes about the ontology of chickens among speakers of the Q'eqchi' language. He examines the ontological placement of chickens linguistically and symbolically, economically, and psychologically. This covers etymology, relationships between birds, lexical taxonomies, social relations, attributions of human characteristics to animals, and the relation between children and chicken (Kockelman, 52). The two readings this week are both contemporary pieces published in the past decade, unlike many of our previous readings. Rose writes about the flying fox as it relates to both indigenous people and orchardists, whereas Kockelman describes the ontology of the chicken for Q'eqchi' speakers. Rose argues that we should assume more accountability and try to live alongside other species rather than take an us vs them mentality and remove them from our lives. She mentions the problem of equating animal and human lives. She says that we can address the issue of comparison "without cheapening anyone's life or death" and claims that if we treat human and nonhuman deaths as separate events, we make it impossible to understand "the complexities of anthropogenic deathscapes and have difficulty considering our entangled responsibilities and accountabilities (Rose, 185). I agree that treating human and nonhuman deaths separately