Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the changing social and cultural relationships between humans and Connemara ponies in Western Ireland, and explores the movement, morphology, and behavior of ponies as relative to human cultural processes.

Paper long abstract:

This paper appropriates the conceptual and methodological attributes of the emerging field of multispecies ethnography to explore the mutually constitutive livelihoods of humans and Connemara ponies in Western Ireland. Over the last forty years relations to the Connemara pony changed from primarily that of an agricultural tool to a riding and breeding animal. Increasing mechanization and decentralization of farming from the family unit altered agricultural practice in Ireland in the mid-twentieth century, making the Connemara pony obsolete as a working animal. Humans now work to carefully construct bloodlines that will create animal morphologies which reflect the sturdy, "bone" heavy agricultural pony of the past, while simultaneously meeting the demand for breeding stock or riding ponies. Changes in human-pony relations have transformed the formerly hardy farming pony into overweight "beauty contest" show ponies or athletic performance jumpers. Based on five consecutive summers working on a breeding and riding farm, attending shows and sales, and interviewing local breeders, trainers and owners in Clifden, County Galway, this paper examines these biological changes in tandem with the social and cultural changes in pony use. My analysis appropriates this fieldwork experience into a physically and interactively mediated anthropological gaze, which examines the pony as a being in its own right, rather than as a lens through which to observe change in human social processes. This paper ultimately approaches human-animal relationships through visceral rather than verbal processes, reading the movement, morphology, and behavior of ponies as relative to cultural processes.