Paper short abstract:

This paper is about ethnographic exploration of Punjabi society in Pakistan through the lens of human-animal relationship.

Paper long abstract:

In this talk, I analyse the emotional and experiential aspects of pigeon flying in Pakistan, and examine the flyers' ideology and social identity. I focus on their practical attachment to their pigeons, and the complexity of their commitment to this activity, often viewed with disdain by wider society. I argue that pigeon flying is a practice that enables the cultivation of the self, achieved through the culturally constituted notion of shauq. The Hindi/Urdu word shauq is usually glossed as personal inclination, passionate predilection, or enthusiasm, and used for different sociable activities of everyday cultural importance. Conceptualising the cultural idiom of shauq and contextualising it within the world of pigeon flying, I suggest it is productive to think about an "anthropology of enthusiasm", an idea I try to develop throughout this talk. Furthermore, a critical investigation of enthusiasm (or shauq) can have methodological implications for establishing relations of trust and mutual respect with interlocutors, and documenting the "emic" experiences of the self and other. This paper draws on 10-months of ethnographic fieldwork with pigeon flyers, which I carried out in South Punjab. It is part of a wider research project analysing human-animal relations in Pakistan.