Poultry Science, Chicken Culture bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Poultry Science, Chicken Culture A P A A artial lphabet SUSAN MERRILL SQUIER bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Squier, Susan Merrill. Poultry science, chicken culture : a partial alphabet / Susan Merrill Squier. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8135-4924-8(hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Chickens. 2. Chickens—Social aspects. 3. Animal culture—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. SF487.S74 2011 636.5—dc22 2010013765 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2011by Susan Merrill Squier All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America For Connie, who taught me to love chickens, and for Gowen, who has learned to love them CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Why Chickens? 1 1 Augury 19 2 Biology 34 3 Culture 53 4 Disability 75 5 Epidemic 97 6 Fellow-Feeling 119 7 Gender 138 8 Hybridity 156 9 Inauguration 178 Conclusion: Zen of the Hen 198 Notes 207 References 227 Index 241 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have far too many people to thank to name them all, but let me make a beginning in the hope that those I neglect to mention will nonetheless accept my sincere gratitude. I thank the following places for inviting me to give talks based on early versions of chapters: the “Finding Animals” conference spon- sored by the “Visualizing Animals” group at Penn State University, where I tried out “Hybridity”; York College, in York, Pennsylvania, whose Honors Program was a friendly host for early versions of “Biology” and “Inauguration”; the “Perfor- mativities Conference” sponsored by the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics, where I also presented a version of “Biology”; the Medical Museum at the University of Copenhagen and the Platform in Life-Science Gov- ernance at the University of Vienna, where I presented parts of “Disability”; the “Science Futures” conference of the Swiss STS, where I tried out a portion of “Hybridity”; the Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon, where I gave a portion of “Why Chickens?” as well as an early version of “Fellow-Feeling”; the Amsterdam meeting of the European Conference for the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, where I presented a version of “Auguries”; the conference “Who Owns Knowledge? A Symposium on Science and Technology in the Global Circuit” sponsored by George Mason University, where I tried out “Poultry Science, Chicken Culture”; and the Society for Litera- ture, Science, and the Arts, where I presented “A Manifesto for Agricultural Studies,” the first talk of this nascent research project. Once again I thank mem- bers of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts for being such great interlocutors and friends. Earlier versions of several chapters of this book appeared in the following publications: “Chicken Auguries,” Configurations 14 (2006): 69–86; “Liminal Livestock,” Signs35, no. 2(Winter 2010): 477–502; “The Sky Is Falling: Risk, Safety, and the Avian Flu” in The Rhetoric of Safety, ed. Lawrence R. Schehr, Special Issue, South Atlantic Quarterly 107, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 387–410; and “Fellow-Feeling,” in Animal Encounters, ed. Tom Tyler and Manuela Rossini, 173–196(Leiden: Brill, 2009). Sandra Stelts, curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Paterno Library of Penn State University, is top of my list to thank. One day I must have men- tioned to her that I was working on a book on chickens. Imagine my surprise ix
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