Bonus: Mother with Yamini Narayanan

The Animal Turn

Yamini Narayanan is back on the show, this time to talk to Claudia about her book Mother Cow, Mother India. They focus their discussion on the concept of “Mother” and what it means for cows in India. They touch on the implications of cows being sacralised as mothers of the Hindu nation and what cows’ daily lives, as mothers, are like.

Date Recorded: 25 April 2023.

Yamini Narayanan is an Associate Professor of International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her new book Mother Cow, Mother India explores the nexus between dairying and right-wing authoritarianism that underpins India’s cow protection politics. Her work is supported by two Australian Research Council grants. Yamini is currently researching animals in enforced and coercive labour in India’s brick kilns, exploring an anti-anthropocentric politics of poverty. She is a lifelong Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, an honour that is conferred through nomination or invitation only. Find out more about Yamini on Deakin University’ website and connect with her on Twitter.

Featured:

Mother Cow, Mother India by Yamini Narayanan, The afterlives of the lively commodity by Kathryn Gillespie; The War Against Animals, by Dinesh Wadiwel; Every Twelve Seconds by Timothy Pachirat; Objectification by Martha Nussbaum; Life for Sale, by Rosemary Collard.

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, and Jeremy John for the logo. This episode wa

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Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Welcome (00:03:47)

3. Cow Protectionism and Animal Rights (00:09:50)

4. Caste Systems, Hierarchy, and Labour (00:15:30)

5. The Variability of Mother (00:21:57)

6. The Sacred Cow Mother (00:27:50)

7. The Politics of Identification (00:32:10)

8. Dehumanization and Debovinization (00:35:29)

9. Being a Cow Mother (00:41:00)

10. Ethnographic Research and Access (00:52:29)

11. Quote (00:59:18)

12. What are you currently working on? (01:01:34)