Paul Keil
@paulgkeil.bsky.social
220 followers 250 following 67 posts
Undisciplined ethnographer | Sorry academic Interested in human beings who are interested in nonhuman beings BOOK: The Presence of Elephants http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003402985 Research https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Keil
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
paulgkeil.bsky.social
from an article; not a reviewer!
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Its been about 2 years since we published our multidisciplinary edited volume on human-elephant relations. I'm still impressed with its rich, diverse set of chapters, and the choice to publish OA with IRD

Link to book here -- horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/plei...
Reposted by Paul Keil
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Looking forward to opening up the new academic year with a talk by Fenna Smits

Register (in person or online) here:

forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Instead of live rabbits that were "too expensive and time consuming" there are now fluffy toys in a glass box that emits heat and smell that mimics a rabbit
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Looking forward to opening up the new academic year with a talk by Fenna Smits

Register (in person or online) here:

forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Which also prompted me to listen for the first time to this podcast which I recorded 5 months ago now, speaking about my book.

Was surprised I didn't sound like the disastrous mess I imagined myself to be (despite getting a tiny bit lost half way through)

open.spotify.com/episode/4DpR...
Paul G. Keil, "The Presence of Elephants: Shared Lives and Landscapes in Assam" (Routledge, 2024)
New Books in Animal Studies · Episode
open.spotify.com
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Was pretty happy a few weeks back, to come across the first review of my book - 'a moving and unsettling depiction of marginalised ways of life' - by Katherine Fletcher in the Australian Journal Of Anthropology

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The presence of elephants: Sharing lives and landscapes in Assam By Paul G. Keil, London: Routledge. 2024. pp. viii + 173. ISBN: 978‐1‐003‐40298‐5
Click on the article title to read more.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
paulgkeil.bsky.social
The biggest take away of this article for me is the need to push back against absolute perspectives on subjects like hunters & feral pigs by rendering them more fairly & keeping their potentialities uncertain. You can read the article here in PDF or html here

humanimalia.org/article/view...
The Feral at Home: The Rogue Trajectory and Unexpected Relations of a “Feral Pig” | Humanimalia
Humanimalia
humanimalia.org
paulgkeil.bsky.social
While Pig-pig eluded the common trajectory of feral pigs in Aust. living in this unauthorised multispecies home, she eventually could not escape the dominant concept of her kind's killability.

The story has an unfortunate and ambivalent ending. The whole article is ambivalent, I guess.
paulgkeil.bsky.social
She forged a curious set of multispecies relations in this home, relations the hunter was obligated to respect (but also from a storytelling perspective, worth retelling for the sake of it!).

To a degree Pig-pig escaped his power to dictate, and partly why she hadn't yet been made into dinner
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Their relationship continuously eluded my narrow concepts of hunters and feral pigs, about who they are and who could be & be with. A feral relationship in a domestic space!

Pig-pig was also a charismatic and surprising character that charmed even the hunter despite his best intentions.
paulgkeil.bsky.social
Writing this paper was partly the need to make sense of the contradictions of a pig hunter living with a feral-looking pig

It was also about making sense of the fact that she existed and was given the space to become Pig-pig, where in Australia most human-feral pig relations end in her kind's death
paulgkeil.bsky.social
The backbone of my article is a series of interviews with a hunter and an encounter with a young sow who lived with the man (captured as a wild living piglet). She was named Pig-pig and was (is? looks like?) a feral pig

There is a picture of Pig-pig below taking a bath
paulgkeil.bsky.social
I had a paper published in Humanimalia last week, called the "Feral at Home". I'm chuffed about the timing because it joins a great selection of other papers

I'll add a few more details about the paper below, but shoutout to all the great & hard work of the journal editors. And for keeping it OA
humanimalia.bsky.social
Out Now: Humanimalia 15.2!
Featuring timely essays on human–animal entanglements, including 🐴 a taxidermied horse in London, 🐗 a feral pig in Australia, 🐐 “happy” goats in Italy, 🐾 robot dogs in Gaza, 🐦 pheasants in NL, and 🐑 sheepdogs in the UK.
🔓 OA here: humanimalia.org/issue/view/1...
Reposted by Paul Keil
monicavasile.bsky.social
1/ Happy to share that my article “Beyond Homecoming: The Reintroduction of Seven Przewalski’s Mares in the Gobi Desert” has been published in Environmental Humanities.

It is the story of seven mares flown from Australian zoos to Mongolia’s Gobi Desert in the 1990s
doi.org/10.1215/2201... #envhist
Reintroduction of Przewalski's horses in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, 1990s. Transported by aircraft, arriving in crates. Photo by ITG, Ruth Baumgartner.
Reposted by Paul Keil
ellieb65.bsky.social
I don't agree with everything in this article, but I do agree with this:
"The act of writing the thing is the same thing as the thinking of it. If you can’t write it, you haven’t actually thought it." And AI allows us to 'not' think.
engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-war...

#academicsky #ai #teaching
A warning to the young: just say no to AI
The substitution of Large Language Models for genuine thinking is a generational threat. At stake is no less than the life of the mind.
engelsbergideas.com
Reposted by Paul Keil
humanimalia.bsky.social
Out Now: Humanimalia 15.2!
Featuring timely essays on human–animal entanglements, including 🐴 a taxidermied horse in London, 🐗 a feral pig in Australia, 🐐 “happy” goats in Italy, 🐾 robot dogs in Gaza, 🐦 pheasants in NL, and 🐑 sheepdogs in the UK.
🔓 OA here: humanimalia.org/issue/view/1...