Thesis abstract:

This thesis contributes to the emerging field of veterinary anthropology through the lens of human-animal relationships in Bhutan, a Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom. As human-animal relationships change with modernity, so do veterinary systems or regimes. I draw on multi-species, multi-sited and interdisciplinary research methods in the ethnographic context of Bhutan’s State bio-veterinary systems and local traditional animal health networks. This research contributes fresh perspectives by analysing trans-cultural frameworks of human-animal relatedness in the context of health in a more-than-human world. It challenges the Euro-centric, anthropocentric, and institutional bio-veterinary bias of earlier humanities and veterinary anthropology research.

Bhutan’s unique animal ontologies and human-animal relatedness are complex, dynamic, and influenced by religious, social and environmental ecologies. Using ethnographic case studies, I demonstrate how modernity, particularly development, urbanisation, increased pet keeping, and the religious nationalism movements alter these relationships, thus forging unique Bhutanese forms of veterinary regimes and identities. I argue that veterinary anthropology should adopt a holistic animal health perspective by integrating diverse beliefs, practices, and practitioners distinct from those of bio-veterinary medicine. In an extended case study of Western Bhutan’s yak herder communities, I analyse their rich multi-species relationships of health and health-keeping activities. I depict a veterinary pluralism that moves beyond dichotomies between human and animal health to form an inclusive One Health ecology. This thesis studies modernity’s impact on Bhutan’s institutional and local veterinary regimes and how those regimes, in turn, transform the lived worlds of animals and humans. In doing so, it enriches our understanding of human-animal relationships of health in culturally complex contexts like Bhutan.