As they migrated across great distances, ancient humans may have used birdsong and bird sightings to find food and water in unseen territory. Today, attending to birds helps scientists track not only avian migration but also environmental change. Birds remain our sentinels.

Feathered Entanglements offers a rich tapestry of human-bird relations across the Indo-Pacific. In this era of uncontrolled industrialization, we have grown increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The ways in which birds feature in the daily life, symbolic systems, and material culture of humans, from pigeon keeping on the rooftops of Amman to the rituals of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, can teach us how to live with other species amid the challenges of the Anthropocene.

In a time of intensifying ecological crisis, we need, more than ever, to protect and appreciate non-human lives. Feathered Entanglements embraces the connection between humans, birds, and our shared world.

About the Author

Scott E. Simon is a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa and began studying human-bird relations as a visiting professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. Among his publications are four ethnographies of Taiwan: Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs; Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Culture; Sadyaq Balae! L'autochtonie formosane dans tous ses etats; and Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa. Frederic Laugrand is a professor at Universite catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium and director of its Laboratoire d'anthropologie prospective (LAAP). He is the author and editor of numerous books, most recently co-authoring, with Antoine Laugrand, Des voies de l'ombre: Quand les chauves-souris sement le trouble; with Cunera Buijs and Kim Van Dam, Picturing Places, People, and Practices in the Arctic: Anthropological Perspectives on Representation; and, with Jarich G. Oosten, Inuit, Oblate Missionaries, and Grey Nuns in the Keewatin, 1865-1965.

Book Information
ISBN 9780774870009
Author Scott E. Simon
Format Hardback
Page Count 348
Imprint University of British Columbia Press
Publisher University of British Columbia Press