Paper short abstract:

I examine the human/animal relationships found in folklore concerning 19th century cattle husbandry, and what those depictions mean for present-day ideas of female/male and animal/human. With a posthumanist approach to folklore records, I question the concept of an idealized interspecies bond.

Paper long abstract:

The nostalgic idea of a perfect, pre-industrial bond between animal and human is often viewed as belonging to an ideal world, long since forgotten. Cattle husbandry was traditionally women's work until the industrialization of farmwork brought the men into the barn. The "soft" female values were considered lost as soon as men and machines claimed the work, and this binary opposition of female/male and animal/human still shapes opinions about cattle care today.

In my research project I examine how life and work with, as well as caring for cows, is narrated in Finland-Swedish 19th century folk tradition, and more specifically how the interspecies relationship is expressed. The material used for this study consists of folklore records collected in 19th and early 20th century, Swedish-speaking parts of Finland.

Leaning primarily on posthumanist concepts of companion species, I question the idea of a non-problematic interspecies relationship in the female-dominated barn. Companion species are not two (or more) species melting together in a perfect symbiosis, rather, the relations are ugly, fantastic, difficult, and rewarding. Because companion species are dependent on each other evolutionally and socially, they are not free of power structures, and should be viewed intersectionally, which I do using an critical ecofeminist perspective of binary categories, such as woman/man and animal/human. The gain of this study is a wider understanding of not only past practices and ideas of animal/human coexistance, but also of the origin and meaning behind contemporary idea(l)s of cattle farming.