Going beyond the division of nature and society, this unique book explores human life as a process of biosocial becoming.

Becoming Salmon is the first ethnographic account of salmon aquaculture, the most recent turn in the human history of animal domestication. In this careful and nuanced study, Marianne Elisabeth Lien explores how the growth of marine domestication has blurred traditional distinctions between fish and animals, recasting farmed fish as sentient beings, capable of feeling pain and subject to animal-welfare legislation. Drawing on fieldwork on and off salmon farms, Lien follows farmed Atlantic salmon through contemporary industrial husbandry, exposing how salmon are bred to be hungry, globally mobile, and "alien" in their watersheds of origin. Attentive to both the economic context of industrial food production and the materiality of human-animal relations, this book highlights the fragile and contingent relational practices that constitute salmon aquaculture and the multiple ways of "becoming salmon" that emerge as a result.

This original, field-changing collection explores the plasticity and unfinishedness of human subjects and lifeworlds, advancing the conceptual terrain of an anthropology of becoming. People's becomings trouble and exceed ways of knowing and acting, producing new possibilities for research, methodology, and writing. The contributors creatively bridge ethnography and critical theory in a range of worlds on the edge, from war and its aftermath, economic transformation, racial inequality, and gun violence to religiosity, therapeutic markets, animal rights activism, and abrupt environmental change. Defying totalizing analytical schemes, these visionary essays articulate a human science of the uncertain and unknown and restore a sense of movement and possibility to ethics and political practice. Unfinished invites readers to consider the array of affects, ideas, forces, and objects that shape contemporary modes of existence and future horizons, opening new channels for critical thought and creative expression. Contributors. Lucas Bessire, João Biehl, Naisargi N. Dave, Elizabeth A. Davis, Michael M. J. Fischer, Angela Garcia, Peter Locke, Adriana Petryna, Bridget Purcell, Laurence Ralph, Lilia M. Schwarcz

Reflecting upon the changing human condition, Palsson addresses various conflated zones of life at particular times and scales. Engaging with topical issues on the public agenda, from personal genomics to human-animal relations to the global environment, the book sets out a compelling case for meaningful change.

The Meaning of Horses: Biosocial Encounters examines some of the engagements or entanglements that link the lived experiences of human and non-human animals. The contributors discuss horse-human relationships in multiple contexts, times and places, highlighting variations in the meaning of horses as well as universals of ‘horsiness’. They consider how horses are unlike other animals, and cover topics such as commodification, identity, communication and performance. This collection emphasises the agency of the horse and a need to move beyond anthropocentric studies, with a theoretical approach that features naturecultures, co-being and biosocial encounters as interactive forms of becoming. Rooted in anthropology and multispecies ethnography, this book introduces new questions and areas for consideration in the field of animals and society.