Veterinarization of Europe? Hunting for Wild Boar Futures in the Time of African Swine Fever

Project Information

BOAR

Grant agreement ID: 866350

DOI

10.3030/866350

Project closed

EC signature date 16 March 2020

Start date 1 July 2020

End date 30 June 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 875,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 875,00

Coordinated by

ETNOLOGICKY USTAV AKADEMIE VED CESKE REPUBLIKY VVI - INSTITUTE OF ETHNOLOGY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Czechia

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - BOAR (Veterinarization of Europe? Hunting for Wild Boar Futures in the Time of African Swine Fever)

Reporting period: 2025-01-01 to 2026-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The BOAR project was an anthropological study of veterinary knowledge and practice beyond animal health. It observed how due to the growing fears of pathogenic threats in contemporary world veterinary science increasingly mediates human-wildlife interactions and serves to structure and govern society through biosecurity measures. The project aimed at opening a new chapter in social scientific reflection and investigation regarding how the knowledge produced by veterinary medicine and the practices it subsumes can inform, format, structure and govern human existence in general, and in relation to non-human species in particular, in the early 21st century. Since anthropology previously paid little attention to veterinary medicine, the BOAR project worked towards closing such empirical and conceptual gap by strategically focusing on veterinary interventions in recreational hunting communities acting as stewards of wild pigs in the context of African Swine Fever advent in Europe and beyond. In doing so the project conducted an analytical double move of understanding hunting through veterinary medicine and veterinary medicine through hunting. Recognizing, simultaneously, that both are primarily arenas of multispecies coexistence, it further emphasised the wild pig (Sus scrofa) as its focus, both in its own right and as a powerful heuristic instrument. The project understood the wild pig as a history maker and a maker of cultural horizons, an animal who obliges humans to rethink their environmental, legal, political and epistemic prospects and categories (Broz et al. 2021). Consequently, the two main objectives of the project were:

1) to explore, analyse and theorize how porcine futures in Europe are intertwined with the future of European hunting, and what role does veterinary medicine play in shaping the outcomes;

2) to lay the conceptual and methodological groundwork for the development of veterinary anthropology.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In Year 1 (2020-1) we set up the project, co-convened a panel at an international conference, delivered a keynote speech and several other presentation plus we co-organised a cross-project webinar (‘Nonhuman Heroes and Villains’). The implementation of the project was nevertheless severely affected by COVID which led to fundamental lack of synchronisation in hiring BOAR researchers and conducting fieldwork in the years to come. In Year 2 (2021-2) most researchers joint the team, prepared for the fieldwork and/or started conducting it. The war on Ukraine affected our engagement. Further presentations were delivered and so was the first project publication. In Year 3 (2022-3) the last team member was hired, researchers continued to conduct fieldwork (including in Ukraine), deliver presentations and work on publications. A major international workshop was organized by the team. In Year 4 (2023-4) while continuing with fieldwork researchers continued publishing outputs in both scientific and public venues. A second major international workshop was organized by the team. In Year 5 (2024-5) the PI delivered a keynote lecture at FAO (Rome). In the Year six (2025-6), granted as the COVID extension of the project, researchers continued to work on publications and delivering presentations and outreach messages to various publics.

Fieldwork: The BOAR project has focused mainly on eight European countries (Spain, France, UK, Germany, Czechia, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine) and Australia.

Scientific output - presentations: The project team has organized two major international workshops, co-organized an international seminar and hosted six invited lectures by the team’s guests. Furthermore team members convened seven panels at major international conferences, gave 28 presentations of which three were keynote lectures and eight invited lectures at various universities and research institutes.

Scientific output - publications: Team members have published thirteen 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. Four chapters in an edited volume are in press and two journal articles are under review and in preparation respectively.

Team members co-edited two journal special issues (Frontiers in Veterinary Science, Medical Anthropology) and an edited volume is currently in press (Berghahn Books).

Four monographs by four team members are currently in preparation.

Knowledge transfer: Team members co-authored 5 reports/expert opinions on methods of knowledge production about African Swine Fever, spatial separation of wild animal populations, hunting bag data collection and prospects of wild animal population health surveillance and management.

Outreach activities: Team members (co-)authored six articles in popular magazines, gave public talks, participated in public debates, featured in media interviews and podcasts.

rootling.place – an outreach website developed by members of the BOAR team in collaboration with web designers Jaan Sarapuu and Sven Raju has received a special prize in the Golden Egg Awards in Estonia, in the category of “Design and craftsmenship: Websites”.

In 2027, several team members will participate in a major art exhibition in Rudolfinum Gallery Prague, for which they collaborate with internationally renowned visual artists to capture some aspects of their research.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our work (e.g. Broz et al. 2023, O’Mahony et al. 2026) have significantly contributed towards the establishment of the subdiscipline of veterinary anthropology. The proposed key concept of ‘veterinization’ worked as an invitation to other scholars to contribute to the momentum and draw attention to the understudied topic of animal diseases and of the role of veterinary expertise. This development is both scholarly fruitful and socially highly relevant as proved by our involvement with European Food Safety Authority.

The BOAR project also reshaped anthropological attention to hunting by closing the analytical gap between studies of indigenous subsistence hunting and ‘Western’ recreational and sanitary hunting (Gieser et al. In press). In doing so we laid the grounds for general anthropology of hunting that would provincialize EuroAmerica by treating its hunting worlds as one instantiation of lethal forms of asymmetrical human-animal relationality, rather than a standing out incommensurable phenomenon.

Arregui (2023) formulated an important revision of the multispecies scholarship that is likely to finetune the way it analytically treats the concept of the ‘species’.