Indifference

“Naisargi N. Davé is one of the most sophisticated, imaginative, and interdisciplinarily literate scholars of animality, activism on behalf of animals, animal slaughter, queerness, and postcolonial South Asia that I know. There is practically no one else to whom she can be compared for the counterintuitive turns of her thought and the spellbinding character of her ethnography. Not surprisingly, then, Indifference is a work of considerable consequence.” - Parama Roy, author of Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial

“Naisargi N. Davé offers a deeply moving exploration of the vital political work of ‘indifference’ as a mobilizing dehumanist force in this world. Davé brings us through animal activism and sacrifice with candor and extraordinary care. A riveting ethnography of immense beauty and force; I would follow her anywhere.” - Julietta Singh, author of Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements

"Davé calls for an ethic premised on 'not acquiring, not desiring, not in thrall, not hankering, not assimilating, not repairing, not consuming, not anthropologizing, not staring,' an ethic premised on living 'side by side, rather than face to face.' ... [Her] book is a provocative intervention in the anthropology of ethics, moving beyond critiques of care, to what might be possible once we are able to live without a will for difference; to live side by side, rather than face to face." 

"Davé (Univ. of Toronto, Canada) offers an original, constructively critical, and well-referenced view on the intricacies of human-animal relationships, or lack thereof, in India. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." - J-B. Leca, Choice

"Reading Indifference feels like participating in a conversation that entertains, inspires, yet also provokes and challenges. In other words, it’s good company." - Eimear Mc Loughlin, Ethnos

"Indifference is widely researched and excitingly eclectic. . . . A work of incisive commentary, Indifference is both a theoretical bulwark against liberal and right-wing anthropocentrism in India and a community- crafting book of animalist commitment." - Dominic O’Key, Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

". . . Indifference stands as a significant contribution to ordinary ethics and critical animal studies. In contemporary South Asian studies, in which animals are largely overlooked, Davé adeptly demonstrates how ethnography can provoke essential ethical inquiries. Indifference will be of interest to any anthropologist concerned with the study of animal ethics, anthropology of ethics, multispecies studies, activism, and animal politics in India. The book’s peripatetic nature, both conceptually and geographically, offers a compelling initiation into the layered complexities surrounding the theorization and practice of interspecies ethics in postcolonial India." - Susan Harris, American Ethnologist