Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BOAR (Veterinarization of Europe? Hunting for Wild Boar Futures in the Time of African Swine Fever)
Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-12-31
The BOAR project is an anthropological study of veterinary knowledge and practice beyond animal health, examining how veterinary science increasingly mediates human-wildlife interactions, and serves to structure and govern society through biosecurity measures. As self-appointed stewards of wild boar, recreational hunting communities are key subjects for researching veterinary interventions, particularly in the context of African Swine Fever outbreaks in Europe. The BOAR project has been working towards innovative anthropological insights into hunting, the future of human-porcine relations, and the role of veterinary expertise in contemporary societies, thus contributing to the emerging subfield of 'veterinary anthropology'.
Over the last 3 periods, the project has focused on preparing and conducting research, analysing of produced data and working on outputs, such as presentations at various scientific events, preparing publications of both conceptual and empirical nature for various scientific outlets and engaging in outreach activities.
Fieldwork: The BOAR project has focused mainly on eight European countries and Australia, with long-term ethnographic fieldwork in each of these locations either completed or near completion.
Scientific output - presentations: The project team has organized two major international workshops, co-organized an international seminar and hosted four invited lectures by the team’s guests. Furthermore team members convened seven panels at major international conferences, presented fifteen papers at international conferences (of which two keynote lectures) and six invited lectures at various universities and research institutes.
Scientific output - publications: Team members have published ten peer-reviewed research papers in scientific journals, one chapter in an edited volume and one extended blogpost as part of an international project focusing on practice-based research and theoretical creativity. Another chapter is in press and four other chapters and a journal article are under review at the moment. They have also co-authored a research protocol and a report for the European Food Safety Authority.
Team members co-edited one journal special issue and another special issue and an edited volume are currently under review.
Outreach activities: Team members (co-)authored four articles in popular magazines, gave public talks, participated in public debates, featured in interviews and podcasts. In 2025 a public outreach website will be launched.
All information is available at the project web page: www.wildboar.cz
Fieldwork: The BOAR project has focused mainly on eight European countries and Australia, with long-term ethnographic fieldwork in each of these locations either completed or near completion.
Scientific output - presentations: The project team has organized two major international workshops, co-organized an international seminar and hosted four invited lectures by the team’s guests. Furthermore team members convened seven panels at major international conferences, presented fifteen papers at international conferences (of which two keynote lectures) and six invited lectures at various universities and research institutes.
Scientific output - publications: Team members have published ten peer-reviewed research papers in scientific journals, one chapter in an edited volume and one extended blogpost as part of an international project focusing on practice-based research and theoretical creativity. Another chapter is in press and four other chapters and a journal article are under review at the moment. They have also co-authored a research protocol and a report for the European Food Safety Authority.
Team members co-edited one journal special issue and another special issue and an edited volume are currently under review.
Outreach activities: Team members (co-)authored four articles in popular magazines, gave public talks, participated in public debates, featured in interviews and podcasts. In 2025 a public outreach website will be launched.
All information is available at the project web page: www.wildboar.cz
The Special issue of Frontiers in Veterinary Science, entitled ‘Veterinary Anthropology: Samples from an Emerging Field’ co-edited by the project’s PI – L. Broz reflects upon and further promotes the emerging field of veterinary anthropology beyond anthropological publication venues to a major veterinary journal. In this sense the publication significantly advances the idea of veterinary anthropology as an anthropology ‘of vets’ and ‘with vets’, one that in the future can translate into multi- and trans-disciplinary research outcomes.
The paper ‘Reversible Pigs’ published by A. Arregui in American Ethnologist proposes an innovative ‘infraspecies sensibility’ for following relations beyond the common threshold of the species. This article is an important conceptual and theoretical contribution to research exploring more finely-grained ethnographic approaches to ‘multi’ and ‘inter’-species difference.
Paper titled ‘The Many Boar Identities’ published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management co-authored by seven team members under the leadership of E. von Essen and K. O’Mahony demonstrates the power of in-depth comparative analysis based on the data from eight European countries provided by the team members.
An edited volume currently under review with Helsinki University Press (based on the international workshop organized by the BOAR team) addresses a significant gap within the discipline of anthropology by drawing together research into recreational hunting practices, sanitary culling and alike with classical debates about ‘native’ hunting cultures, thus inaugurating surprisingly missing general ‘anthropology of hunting’. (The volume is co-edited by T. Gieser, P. Keil, E. von Essen and L. Broz.)
Special issue of Medical Anthropology (co-edited by K. O’Mahony, M. Szczygielska and L. Broz) addresses the BOAR project’s original concept of ‘veterinarization of society’, which was first coined by the ‘Wild Boar Events’ paper (authored by L. Broz, K. O’Mahony and A. Arregui). This special issue will position the concept vis-à-vis the theoretical foundations of the subdiscipline of medical anthropology.
The BOAR project will continue to develop theoretically innovative and empirically grounded insights into the way veterinary expertise intervenes in hunting nature-cultures and everyday human-porcine relations across contemporary Europe and beyond. Apart from finalizing publications currently under review, the BOAR researchers are working on several more articles and especially three individual monographs and a collective popular book.
The paper ‘Reversible Pigs’ published by A. Arregui in American Ethnologist proposes an innovative ‘infraspecies sensibility’ for following relations beyond the common threshold of the species. This article is an important conceptual and theoretical contribution to research exploring more finely-grained ethnographic approaches to ‘multi’ and ‘inter’-species difference.
Paper titled ‘The Many Boar Identities’ published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management co-authored by seven team members under the leadership of E. von Essen and K. O’Mahony demonstrates the power of in-depth comparative analysis based on the data from eight European countries provided by the team members.
An edited volume currently under review with Helsinki University Press (based on the international workshop organized by the BOAR team) addresses a significant gap within the discipline of anthropology by drawing together research into recreational hunting practices, sanitary culling and alike with classical debates about ‘native’ hunting cultures, thus inaugurating surprisingly missing general ‘anthropology of hunting’. (The volume is co-edited by T. Gieser, P. Keil, E. von Essen and L. Broz.)
Special issue of Medical Anthropology (co-edited by K. O’Mahony, M. Szczygielska and L. Broz) addresses the BOAR project’s original concept of ‘veterinarization of society’, which was first coined by the ‘Wild Boar Events’ paper (authored by L. Broz, K. O’Mahony and A. Arregui). This special issue will position the concept vis-à-vis the theoretical foundations of the subdiscipline of medical anthropology.
The BOAR project will continue to develop theoretically innovative and empirically grounded insights into the way veterinary expertise intervenes in hunting nature-cultures and everyday human-porcine relations across contemporary Europe and beyond. Apart from finalizing publications currently under review, the BOAR researchers are working on several more articles and especially three individual monographs and a collective popular book.