Grup d’Estudis sobre Reciprocitat (GER) Seminar: The social life of the Iberian pig
The Grup d’Estudis sobre Reciprocitat (Group of Studies on Reciprocity – GER), invites you to the next hybrid seminar, which will be held on April 23, 2025, in the Anthropology Seminar Room, Faculty of Geography and History, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
In this session, Lorenzo Cañás Bottos, will present his project “The making of pasturing pigs” and screen the documentary “The Opening of the Ham.”
Multimedia Seminar: The social life of the Iberian pig
The making of pasturing pigs
Project by Jan Ketil Simonsen and Lorenzo Cañás Bottos. NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Presentation: Lorenzo Cañás Bottos
This project aims to explore the cultural world of the Iberian pig in Extremadura through visual anthropology. On the one hand, we combine the analysis of secondary sources with ethnographic fieldwork to establish a cultural history of the free range pasture environment (Dehesa) and the Iberian pig. This film reveals a complex interweaving of relationships between landscape, humans, fauna, flora, and abiotic factors that problematizes the boundary between nature and culture. Through audiovisual media, we explore the production of Iberian pork, from its conception to final consumption. The ethnographic film “The Opening of the Ham” compares Iberian pork production among two small-scale producers: one uses “traditional” methods and family labour, while the other uses modern methods and wage workers. It also compares the life cycle of a pig killed in a factory and in a traditional slaughterhouse. In this way, the film invites us to discuss different topics of economic anthropology.
The film: The Opening of the Ham (2023) by Jan Ketil Simonsen and Lorenzo Cañás Bottos will be screened and presented.
Warning: the film contains images of animal butchering.
Project Publications:
Cañás Bottos, L. Simonsen, JK (2024) “Un triángulo de cerdos, encinas y humanos: La emergencia del cerdo ibérico en la España Moderna” pps 225-244. In Montero Cruzada, Santiago and Olatz González-Abrisketa (eds.) Animales y Antropología: Etnografías más que humanas en España. Madrid: Editorial del CSIC.
Cañás Bottos, L. 2019 Race and Process: Certifying Iberian Pigs and Invisibilising Humans. Norsk Antropologiske Tidskrift, 30(3-4), 258-273. doi:10.18261/issn.1504-2898-2019-03-04-06
Biography
Lorenzo Cañás Bottos is Professor of Anthropology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He was previously a founding Professor of the Department of Sociocultural Anthropology at Tallinn University (Estonia). He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Argentina, Bolivia, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Spain. He has addressed topics ranging from religious conflict, globalization, and nationalism, to food provisioning and interspecies relations. His publications include Old Colony Mennonites in Argentina and Bolivia: Nation Making, Religious Conflict and Imagination of the Future (Brill, 2008), Christenvolk: Historia y Etnografía de una Colonia Mennonita (Antropofagia, 2005) and (as co-editor) Cosmopolitan Networks-Networking Cosmopolitans (Special Issue of Anthropological Forum, 2024) and Political Transformation and National Identity Change (Routledge, 2008).
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