The Multispecies Triad of Cattle Ranching: A Horseback Ethnography

This book explores the multispecies triad of cattle ranching, focusing on how humans, horses and cattle meet, interact and shape a common multispecies culture. Based on a year of horseback ethnography in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, it provides a detailed account of the everyday lives of cowboys, cowgirls and ranchers as well as of horses and cattle. It highlights the different ways that humans, horses and cattle come together on working ranches and in settings such as rodeos and tourist operations. By focusing, empirically and conceptually, on the multispecies triad the author moves beyond binary human-animal approaches and develops the idea of multispecies intersectionality. In particular they bring a gender perspective to the kinds of interactions that the various seasons in the Rockies require. The chapters also feature ethnographic poetry including rhyming field notes as well as field drawings and analytical drawings. With this, the book showcases use of sensory data collection and creative and artful methodologies that allow for the capture of what lies beyond human language in multispecies interactions. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of multispecies ethnography and human-animal relations.