S3E6: Informality with Yamini Narayanan
Claudia talks to Yamini Narayanan about the concept of informality and how it can be used to unpack, complicate and understand urban-animal relations. With a focus on urban-cow entanglements, they discuss how informality is related to urban infrastructure and mobilities that help to bur some of the often dichotomous ways we’ve come to understand not only intra-human relations, but inter-species relations too.
Yamini Narayanan is Senior Lecturer in International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her work explores the ways in which (other) animals are instrumentalised in sectarian, casteist and even fascist ideologies in India, and how animals are also actors and architects of informal urbanisms. Yamini’s research is supported by two Australian Research Council grants. Yamini’s work on animals, race, and development has been published in leading journals including Environment and Planning A and D, Geoforum, Hypatia, South Asia, Society and Animals, and Sustainable Development. With Kathryn Gillespie, she has co-edited a special edition of the Journal of Intercultural Studies on the theme “Animal nationalisms: Multispecies cultural politics, race, and nation un/building narratives” (2020) . In 2019, Yamini was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Mid-Career Research Excellence. In recognition of her work, she was made Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics (FOCAE), a distinguished honour that is conferred through nomination or invitation only. Connect with Yamini on Deakin University’s website or on Twitter (@YaminiNarayanan).
Mentioned:
Street dogs at the intersection of colonialism and informality: ‘Subaltern animism’ as a posthuman critique of Indian cities Yamini Narayanan;
Jugaad and informality as drivers of India’s cow slaughter economy Yamini Narayanan;
Animal nationalisms: Multispecies cultural politics, race, and nation un/building narratives by Yamini Narayanan; ‘Posthuman cosmopolitanism’ for the Anthropocene in India: Urbanism and human-snake relations in the Kali Yuga by Yamini Narayanan and Sumanth Bindumadhav;
Colonisation and Urbanisation by Clare Palmer;
The War on Animals by Dinesh Wadiwel.
"The deep red pottu smeared across the forehead of the small male Jersey calf had started to bleed in the rain, appearing as a premonition of a dark gash slicing his face. He stood still, patiently with three other males at the foot of the 1,000 steps that marked the ascent to one of the most venerated Hindu temples. Following a cramped ride in the backseat of an auto-rickshaw or even a long trek from a village in the peri-urban areas of the city, these newborn males from India’s dairy sector would be transformed, briefly, as gods, in being donated by their owners. Ribs protruded prominently from the sides of each emaciated bull-calf. One small calf caught scent of my extended hand and desperately suckled it for a couple of minutes before turning his small head away in disappointment; he did not even yet have teeth. At the end of each day, a transfer truck from a local animal shelter would take the orphaned Jersey calves away, the numbers increasingly daily. Up to 40 per cent of the youngest calves will die without their mother's colostrum and body warmth. These are the 'lucky' males. Until a few years ago, they were being ‘auctioned’ en masse by the temple on a weekly basis to intermediaries who would route them to slaughterhouses" - Yamini Narayanan, forthcoming.
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Sonic Arts Studio and the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory (SAPLab) for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John (Website) for the logo, and Hannah Hunter for the Animal Highlight