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Paper short abstract:

The poster offers insights into the entanglement between pigeons and human beings from an anthropological perspective and invites interdisciplinary reflections on the blurring line between nature and culture.

Paper long abstract:

Starting with a historical review of pigeon racing as a folk sport in late-eighteenth-century Belgium, the poster draws attention to the entanglement between pigeons and human beings from an anthropological perspective. Crafted by the arts of noticing, anthropology is distinguished by its way of working: thinking and learning through correspondence with other lives, not only of human beings but also of non-human beings. Aligned with this methodology, my anthropological study with Belgian pigeon fanciers, and consequently with pigeons, offers insights into the stories they tell about nature and culture. An ethnographic journey into the industry of pigeon racing, the study reveals the discourse on the particularly prized racing pigeon that prevailed in the field, which is fundamentally established on the anthropocentric separation between racing pigeons and feral pigeons, between culture and nature. While naming and the records of bloodlines mark every single racing pigeon out as a proper agent in the accounts of history, feral pigeons are grasped in the general singular, leaving no remarkable traces. However, a case of a boundary-crossing pigeon, a racing pigeon on the run interacting with feral pigeons on the street, may challenge received opinion and invite interdisciplinary reflections on the blurring line between nature and culture.