The automatization and modernization of cattle raising transformed the sociocultural landscape in the interior of France, modifying the relationship between the cattle raiser and his livestock. This article aims to show how current techniques affect that relationship and what are their repercussions on the socio-political organization of cattle raisers. The herd has become one of the pillars of the economic activity, introducing the figure of the herd managers and thus breaking the bonds between the families and their livestock, which marked the traditional forms of cattle raising. Cattle raisers, organized into "local professional groups", use the herd as an anchor for positioning themselves in the regional socio-political game, alluding to divisions between them by refering to widespread socio-symbolic expressions such as "plains" and "mountains", for example. The cattle breed plays a key role as a fault line dividing the landscape of cattle raising in the Haute-Savoie.

The paper is based on research with regard to subgroups amidst the Katukina people of the Biá river, in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. Memories with respect to these groups are associated with diverse beings such as animals and human groups (Cocama, Kambeba and Miranha), which raises the question whether a logical continuity could be posited between such animals and these groups in the naming of the Katukina subgroups. The paper analyzes the stories told in regard to these groups and the ideas with which they are associated, as well as the river-based social organization of the present-day Katukina. It thereby identifies a link between the subgroup model and the fluvial model, which indicates in turn the diffuse presence of the qualitative logics amidst Katukina social relations. The names permit the fluidification of the system and alert us to the asymmetry thereof, thence revealing a specifically Katukina take on a regional perspective.

In agriculture, mechanization and robotization are two terms that are generally associated with processes characteristic of a “Green Revolution”: industrialization, cost reduction and “rationalization”, increased output and modernization. In this article, I reflect on the relations implied in this evolutionary-style narrative through an ethnography of cattle breeders and dairy cows in Haute-Savoie, France. I will show that the technical transformation engendered by the implementation of a milking robot is, first and foremost, a reconfiguration of the relationships between humans and cows. I will analyse the effects of the milking robot for both humans and cows through the notion of ‘technical objects’ and their associated environment, which configure a transformation in the technical system linked to the process of domestication. I show that modifications in the rhythm, gestures and interactions with the animals also redefine how cows are made to produce milk, and that, furthermore, this does not necessarily constitute a virtualization, an objectification or distancing in relation to the animals. In brief, it lacks many of the defining features of ‘industrialization’.

Resenhas DESCOLA, Philippe (Org.). La fabrique des images: visions du monde et formes de la représentation. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/ SOMOGY-Éditions D'Art, 2010. 224 p.

No abstract