Abstract:This article takes as its starting point an encounter with a preserved blue bird-of-paradise skin. Though rare, the bird became wildly famous after it perched atop the head of Carrie Bradshaw during Sex and the City: The Movie. However, where in the movie the bird-skin acted as Carrie's something blue, I mobilize it in this article as a "telling example" of near-extinction. This is because the blue bird-of-paradise is but one of the millions of Paradisaea that were hunted, traded, shipped, and lusted after since their earliest forms of commodification. And as the theory of sexual selection confirms, biographical entitlement cannot be assigned to a singular agent in the blue bird-of-paradise's story, which is why this article will chart its biogeographies: from New Guinea rainforests to New York streets. Here, instead of tracing the blue bird-of-paradise's individual commodity biography, it becomes an act of tracing and placing the bird-skin within the life and death worlds of human-animal relations that produced, mobilized, and maintain(ed) it as a commodity over time and space. In doing so, the article makes two important contributions to the field of social history. First, by conceptually focusing on the relations that produce lives, things, and worlds, it challenges the certainty that anchors the narration of biographies to the singular and anthropocentric embodiment of "a life." Second, mapping the biogeographies of a "lively" commodity, such as a preserved bird-of-paradise, offers the opportunity of highlighting the significant role so-called natural species and histories can play in shaping human histories.

中文翻译：

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蓝色天堂鸟的生物地理学：从性选择到性与城市

摘要：本文以与保存完好的蓝色天堂鸟皮肤的邂逅为出发点。这只鸟虽然罕见，但在《欲望都市：电影》中它栖息在凯莉·布拉德肖的头顶上后广为人知。然而，在电影中鸟皮扮演嘉莉的蓝色东西的地方，我在这篇文章中将其作为濒临灭绝的“典型例子”。这是因为蓝色天堂鸟只是自它们最早的商品化形式以来就被猎杀、交易、运输和追求的数以百万计的天堂鸟之一。正如性选择理论所证实的那样，不能将传记权利分配给蓝色天堂鸟故事中的单一代理人，这就是本文将绘制其生物地理的原因：从新几内亚热带雨林到纽约街道。这里，它不是追踪蓝色天堂鸟的个体商品传记，而是一种追踪并将鸟皮置于人与动物关系的生死世界中的行为，人与动物关系产生、动员和维护（编辑）它作为一个商品随着时间和空间的变化。为此，本文对社会史领域做出了两项重要贡献。首先，通过在概念上关注产生生命、事物和世界的关系，它挑战了将传记叙述锚定为“生命”的单一和以人类为中心的体现的确定性。其次，绘制“活泼”商品的生物地理图，例如保存完好的天堂鸟，提供了强调所谓的自然物种和历史在塑造人类历史中可以发挥的重要作用的机会。