Poultry Science, Chicken Culture: A Partial Alphabet

270 Pages·2011·2.12 MB·English

by  Susan M Squier

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