Radhika Govindrajan’s book Animal Intimacies portrays a world of people whose lives are closely linked to animals (wild, semi-wild, domesticated) in India’s Central Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. The entangled lives of humans and animals unfolds in a series of six chapters. Each chapter focusses on a particular animal/s (sacrificial goats, holy and jersey cows, rowdy monkeys, wild/non-wild pigs, bears, and about leopard-dog conflicts). Radhika Govindrajan demonstrates the multiple ways through which people’s lives are interconnected with the lives of animals who share food, myths, and landscape, highlighting conflicts, cooperation and concern of the people towards animals. Her book is rich in ethnographic accounts that bring out the emotional connection between people and the animals they rear. For example, Munni, a widow who refused to leave the sick jersey cow; Radha who insisted on staying in the ruined shed after a heavy monsoon night, to protect the cow from a leopard attack. There are many such examples spread across all chapters about overlapping of emotions, love and care exhibited, not only by local residents towards animals but also between individual animals. Govindrajan asks what it means to live a life that is densely knotted with the non-human entities. The goal in this book is not just speaking about animals as symbols and keeping animals on the periphery of human stories, but to highlight a deep sense of relatedness between humans and non-humans. By drawing on concepts such as relatedness from Carsten (2000) and Harraway’s ideas on companion species (2003), this author extends kin-making beyond the human. Govindrajan pushes the definition of relatedness to non-humans, not just through the notions of care and love but also as being indifferent, as a form of disgust or hostility. The book adequately demonstrates the daily intimacy of care, the notion of inclusion/exclusion, a sense of belonging, identity, and affective labour that help the readers in understanding multispecies relatedness. In the chapter on goats, interestingly titled, ‘The goat who died for the family: Sacrificial ethics and kinship’ Govindrajan writes about the everyday forms of connections and interactions between humans and goats, as these animals become sacrificial offerings to Gods. In Uttarakhand, goats are precious animals raised with care and labour, and this contradictory relatedness is tied to the notion of devotion of humans to devi-dyavta (God and Goddess). Through the lives of women carers, the chapter shows how goats become a medium to strengthen their bond with the deity in the form of what the author calls ‘sacrifice as relatedness’ (pg. 37). While the sacrifice is seen as a ritual activity by some, it has become a point of contestation between the villagers and urban dwellers, who feel that this ‘sacred’ sacrifice is a barbaric act and a ‘backward’ practice. For the women who raised the goats, the animals are like their children nurtured with care, gendered labour and mamata (maternal love) but, these sentiments are not shared by those who visit their ancestral villages from towns and other non-rural settings. The objections to animal sacrifice also come from the animal rights activists and Hindu-right wing groups. The following chapter ‘The cow herself has changed: Hindu Nationalism, cow protection and Bovine materiality’ carries an exciting account of the attempts by the Hindu Nationalist party to unify all Hindus in the name of cow protection using the symbol of the holy mother cow. As an exclusionary project against Muslims, Dalits, and Christians, sacredness attached to cow become a coercive way in which the Hindu reformist groups try to impose kinship between humans and cows. These impositions were not taken well by the native residents because the metaphor of cow mother (gau-mata) of the Hindu nationalists is unable to address the different degrees of ritual significance attached to cow breeds by the local villagers. Jersey cows are not considered as ritually powerful as compared to the pahari cows because they are not of the mountains and are foreign cows. Similarly, the arrival of monkeys from the city causes considerable damage to the villagers. The politics of belonging played out leading to discussions on insider/outsider debate through the narratives highlights the monkey problem. The chapter ‘Outsider monkey, insider monkey: On the politics of exclusion and belonging’ offers great insights into how certain beings are claimed as kin, while others are branded as ‘enemies’ or ‘criminals’. Keeping the focus on monkeys, the chapter analyses how questions of who belongs to a community or a nation are framed, as villagers claim kinship with pahari monkeys but the ‘outsider’ monkeys are seen as thieves. The ‘outsider’ monkeys become metaphors about anxieties of displacement and claiming of resources by people from the plains. The idea of wildness is effectively explored in the story of the runaway sow focussing on the debates about wildness, a concept that is crucial in the conservation of wildlife in India. These spaces are imagined as pristine, empty, and non-human landscapes and animals inhabiting these spaces known to carry degrees of wildness. The chapter ‘Pig gone wild: Colonialism, conservation, and the other wild’ is a commentary on the state’s obsession with the specific spaces, certain animals Book review

中文翻译：

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动物亲密关系：印度中部喜马拉雅山脉的种间关联性

拉迪卡·戈文德拉詹（Radhika Govindrajan）的书《动物亲密关系》描绘了一个生活世界，这些人的生活与印度中部喜马拉雅北阿坎德邦邦的动物（野生，半野生，驯养）息息相关。人与动物的纠缠生活由六个章节组成。每章重点介绍一种特定的动物（牺牲性山羊，圣牛和球衣牛，粗暴的猴子，野生/非野生猪，熊以及有关豹犬冲突的信息）。拉迪卡·戈文德拉扬（Radhika Govindrajan）展示了人们的生活与共享食物，神话和风景的动物的生活之间的多种联系方式，强调了人们对动物的冲突，合作和关注。她的书中有许多人种学记载，它们揭示了人与饲养的动物之间的情感联系。例如Munni，一位寡妇，拒绝离开患病的球衣牛；拉达（Radha）坚持在沉重的季风之夜后呆在废墟棚屋中，以保护母牛免受豹子袭击。在所有有关情感，爱与关怀重叠的章节中，都有许多这样的例子，不仅本地居民对动物表现出浓厚的兴趣，而且个体动物之间也表现出如此的实例。戈文德拉詹（Govindrajan）询问，生活在与非人类实体紧密相连的生活中意味着什么。本书的目标不仅是将动物作为象征，并将动物置于人类故事的外围，而且还强调人类与非人类之间的深刻联系。通过借鉴卡斯滕（Carsten，2000）的相关性和哈拉威（Harraway）的同伴物种（2003）的观念，该作者将亲属制造扩展到了人类之外。戈文德拉扬（Govindrajan）不仅通过关爱和关爱的概念，而且将与非人类相关的定义推向了冷漠，作为一种厌恶或敌对的形式。该书充分展示了日常护理的亲密关系，包含/排除的概念，归属感，身份和情感劳动，可帮助读者理解多物种之间的相关性。在有关山羊的章节中，有趣的标题是“为家庭而死的山羊：牺牲的伦理和血缘关系”，Govindrajan写到人类与山羊之间日常联系和互动的形式，因为这些动物成为了献给神的祭物。在北阿坎德邦，山羊是精心照料和劳作的珍贵动物，这种相互矛盾的关联性与人类对虔诚的观念（上帝和女神）有关。在女性护理人员的生活中，本章以作者所谓的“牺牲为亲缘关系”（第37页）的形式展示了山羊如何成为加强与神的联系的媒介。尽管某些人将牺牲视为一种仪式活动，但它已成为村民和城市居民之间争执的焦点，他们认为这种“神圣”的牺牲是野蛮行为和“落后”做法。对于饲养山羊的妇女来说，这些动物就像是在照顾，性别劳动和mamata（母爱）的养育下的孩子一样，但是，从城镇和其他非农村地区访问其祖先村庄的人们并不认同这些情感。对动物牺牲的反对也来自动物权利活动家和印度教右翼组织。下一章“母牛本人已经改变：印度民族主义，母牛保护和牛的物质性”令人振奋地说明了印度教民族主义者党以母牛保护的名义使用圣母牛的象征统一所有印度教徒的尝试。作为针对穆斯林，达利特人和基督徒的一项排他性项目，对牛的重视成为印度教改良主义者团体试图在人与牛之间建立亲属关系的一种强制方式。由于当地印度人对奶牛母亲（gau-mata）的比喻无法解决当地村民对奶牛品种所赋予的不同程度的仪式意义，因此当地居民对这些强加的态度并不满意。与pahari母牛相比，泽西母牛在仪式上不算强大，因为它们不在山区，而是外国母牛。同样，猴子从城里来的到来给村民造成了很大的破坏。归属政治的发挥导致通过叙事来讨论内部人/外部人辩论，这突出了猴子问题。“局外人，局内人：关于排斥和归属的政治”一章提供了关于某些人如何被称为亲戚而其他人被冠以“敌人”或“罪犯”的深刻见解。本章重点关注猴子，分析了如何界定谁属于某个社区或国家的问题，因为村民声称与pahari猴子有血缘关系，但“外来”的猴子被视为盗贼。“外来”的猴子变成了人们对流离失所的焦虑和来自平原地区人们对资源的索取的隐喻。在野猪的故事中，荒野的故事得到了有效的探索，重点放在有关荒野的辩论上，这一概念对于印度保护野生生物至关重要。这些空间被想象为原始，空旷且非人类的景观和动物，它们居住在这些具有野性程度的空间中。“猪变狂了：殖民主义，保护主义和其他野性”一章是对国家对特定空间，某些动物的痴迷的评论