Abstract

This introduction outlines how the essays in this special section contribute to scholarship on cow protection in India. It argues that they disrupt three powerful framing binaries—religion/economy, legality/illegality and cow-lover/cow-killer—that have tended to dominate the literature on cow protection. Making tangible the analytical limits of these categories, the essays find new critical leverage in the everyday situated relationships between humans, bovines and the state. The essays are distinguished by their attention to bovines as creative and productive forces that are not mere symbols for human politics, but materially embodied and agentive beings that play a significant role in shaping the social and political worlds which emerge around them.

摘要

引言概述了本节中的论文如何为印度的牛保护研究做出贡献。它认为，它们破坏了三个强大的框架二进制文件-宗教/经济，合法性/非法性和奶牛爱好者/杀牛者-倾向于主导关于牛保护的文献。通过对这些类别的分析界限进行具体分析，论文发现了人类，牛与国家之间日常关系的新关键杠杆。这些论文的特点是，他们重视牛的创造力和生产力，它们不仅是人类政治的象征，而且是物质体现和代理的存在，它们在塑造周围出现的社会和政治世界方面发挥着重要作用。