Article ID: CBB008908465

The Camera and the Cattle: Bovine Photography and Technologies of "Improvement" in Colonial South India (October 2023)

unapi

Arnold, David (Author)


Technology and Culture
Volume: 64
Issue: 4
Pages: 1045-1070


Publication Date: October 2023
Edition Details: Special Issue: Bovine Regimes: When Animals Become Technologies
Language: English

Photography, also an innovative technology at the time, engaged with two interconnected bovine technologies in late nineteenth and early twentieth century India: cattle as the animal power behind other agrarian technologies and cattle breeding. The Ongole cattle of Nellore district in south India, ancestors of the internationally renowned zebu cattle, were famed for their beauty, their strength as haulage and tillage animals, and their milk yields. Along with other Indian breeds, they were systematically photographed, beginning with the 1865 Addanki cattle show. This article examines the role of bovine photography as an agent of technological change in relation to the transition from a local cattle-raising culture through provincial "improvement" schemes to a pantropical market for Ongoles. It reflects on the racial discourse of animal breeds and its intersection with colonial-era ideas of bovine "degeneration" and "improvement," while highlighting the importance of cattle fairs and experimental farms.

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Associated with

Article Tamar Novick (October 2023) Introducing Bovine Regimes: When Animals Become Technologies. Technology and Culture (pp. 1027-1043). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB008908465/

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Authors & Contributors
Derry, Margaret Elsinor
Theunissen, Bert
Berger, Rachel
Fleetwood, Lachlan
Monzote, Reinaldo Funes
Mukharji, Projit Bihari
Journals
Agricultural History
Technology and Culture
Business History Review
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of the History of Biology
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Publishers
Yale University
Bloomsbury Academic
Oxford University Press
University of Toronto Press
Books Heaven Publications
Concepts
Cattle
Breeding
Agriculture
Animals
Colonialism
Plague
People
Buchanan, Andrew
Kitasato, Shibasaburo
Koch, Robert
Griffith, William
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
21st century
Places
British India (British Raj)
India
Netherlands
North America
Great Britain
Germany
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