Feathered Entanglements: Human-Bird Relations in the Anthropocene

A reminder of the important history between humans and birds.

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. This book examines how 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. Through these examples, the authors reveal how we can learn 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 nonhuman lives. Feathered Entanglements embraces the connection between humans, birds, and our shared world.

Scott E. Simon is professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa and former visiting professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. He is the author of Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs; Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Culture; and Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa. Frédéric Laugrand is professor at Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and director of its Laboratoire d’anthropologie prospective. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including, 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.