Shaping blood. System of kinship between horses in the Palio di Ronciglione
Abstract
Racehorses are the result of a thousand-year-old human domestication through breeding. These practices of selective reproduction are based on the creation and manipulation of non-human kinship, which is inscribed in the genetic history of thoroughbred and half-bred. The result of an intense period of fieldwork, this research methodologically refers to multi-species ethnography and genealogical models to identify and examine one of these kinship systems relating to the racehorses in the Palio of Ronciglione (Italy). The comparison between the kinship patterns of these horses demonstrates the influence of Italian (notably Sardinian) breeding practices. The cultural categories of ancestry and genealogy are fundamental to comprehending the bloodlines intertwining. However – as this Palio shows – this deep form of human control still remains unable to grasp an otherness so explicit yet so familiar.
Anuac is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence 4.0. With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author. It should be also mentioned that the work has been first published by the journal Anuac.
Having published these contributions for the first time, Anuac will have the right to publish them integrally or partially as reprints or possibly as part of a thematic issue, in both digital and printed format.
It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author or the journal.
Photographs and other images
Photographs and other images marked with the symbol Copyright © cannot be distributed. The readers of the journal or the users of the website can download photographs and other images that are not marked with the above mentioned symbol.
