A talk by Yamini Narayanan, Associate Professor of International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne, based on her new book, Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India, a multispecies ethnography that frames animals as key political subjects rather than as mere objects of analysis.
Event moderated by Sai Balakrishnan, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning, in a joint appointment with DCRP and GMS (Global Metropolitan Studies)
DATE: Wed, Feb 21, 2024
TIME: 12-1:30 pm Berkeley | Calculate Your Local Time
REGISTER: On Zoom HERE
LIVESTREAM: On FB at ISASatUCBerkeley
Abstract: India criminalises cow slaughter, based on Hindus’ reverence of cows as sacred and a Hindu nationalist imagination of the cow as a Hindu nation. Simultaneously, India is a leading beef producer. This talk addresses this puzzle by demonstrating how the cow-worshipping, aspirational Hindu state obscures the role of dairying in enabling an industrial scale of underground cow slaughter in India. Specifically, it highlights the illicit transportation of unwanted dairy cows to slaughterhouses as a key terrain of Hindutva ultranationalism, exploiting the clashing vulnerabilities of the racialized/Hinduised cows used as economic and political capital, and the Dalits and Muslims performing the risky, racialized labour of slaughtering cows. It envisions a post-dairy society, based on an anti-caste, anti-anthropocentric, anti-Hindutva resistance.
About the Speaker: Yamini Narayanan is an Associate Professor of International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her work explores the ways in which animals are instrumentalised in ideological and developmental politics. Her new book Mother Cow, Mother India was published in 2023 by Stanford University Press. Her work is supported by three Australian Research Council grants, including a Future Fellowship (2025-29) on “Animals and geopolitics in South Asian borderlands.” Yamini is currently researching animals in enforced and coercive labour in India’s brick kilns, exploring an anti-anthropocentric politics of poverty. Yamini is founding convenor of the Deakin Critical Animal Studies Network. She is a lifelong Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, an honour that is conferred through nomination or invitation only.
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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.
