Ghost herds : rescuing horses and horse people in Bluegrass Kentucky
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Anthropology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: McKee, Tamar V.S.
issued: 2014-08-19T15:30:56Z
issued: 2014
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This dissertation examines the cultural and historical dimensions of why certain communities in the United States are compelled to rescue animals from abuse, neglect, or death. In particular, it engages with the debate over sending “unwanted” horses to slaughter, touching upon not just the history of cultural taboo over the consumption of horsemeat and concerns about the cruelty and food safety of industrialized animal slaughter, but also what happens to such horses when they are rescued from slaughter. As such, this dissertation fundamentally asks: what makes a horse save-able and re-wanted again? What kind of lives do they go on to live and why? And how are the decisions to “rescue” certain horses and provide them with “second chances” distinctly cultural and worthy of anthropological analysis? Based on the emerging field of multispecies ethnography, this dissertation thus examines how and why a certain population of the so-called unwanted horses, Thoroughbred ex-racehorses, are rescued from slaughter and how this practice is made culturally meaningful by the “horse people” in the self-proclaimed “horse capital of world,” the Lexington / Bluegrass region of Kentucky, U.S.A. My analysis stems from ten months of fieldwork in the Bluegrass where I conducted ethnographic research at two specific rescue operations for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses: one an equine re-training and adoption facility based at the Kentucky Horse Park called the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, and the other a vocational horse care program for male inmates at Blackburn Correctional Complex called the Second Chances / Groom Elite program. Based on my research at these two sites as they are situated within a larger, regional culture intently focused on the production and glorification of horses, this dissertation concludes that the practice of animal rescue involves constant re-evaluation of the moral and economic worth of human and nonhuman animal lives that were previously marginalized to the po…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/50024
note: GHOST HERDS: RESCUING HORSES AND HORSE PEOPLE IN BLUEGRASS KENTUCKY by Tamar V.S. McKee B.A., Hamilton College, 2000 M.A., University of Colorado, 2004 M.S., University of Colorado, 2005 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2014 © Tamar V.S. McKee, 2014 ii Abstract This dissertation examines the cultural and historical dimensions of why certain communities in the United States are compelled to rescue animals from abuse, neglect, or death. In particular, it engages with the debate over sending “unwanted” horses to slaughter, touching upon not just the history of cultural taboo over the consumption of horsemeat and concerns about the cruelty and food safety of industrialized animal slaughter, but also what happens to such horses when they are rescued from slaughter. As such, this dissertation fundamentally asks: what makes a horse save-able and re-wanted again? What kind of lives do they go on to live and why? And how are the decisions to “rescue” certain horses and provide them with “second chances” distinctly cultural and worthy of anthropological analysis? Based on the emerging field of multispecies ethnography, this dissertation thus examines how and why a certain population of the so-called unwanted horses, Thoroughbred ex-racehorses, are rescued from slaughter and how this practice is made culturally meaningful by the “horse people” in the self-proclaimed “horse capital of world,” the Lexington / Bluegrass region of Kentucky, U.S.A. My analysis stems from ten months of fieldwork in the Bluegrass where I conducted ethnographic research at two specific rescue operations for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses: one an equine re-training and adoption facility based at the Kentucky Horse Park called the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, and the other a vocational horse care program for male inma…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2014-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0165956
language: eng
degree discipline: Anthropology
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50024