Hevonen vieraalla maalla : ekonationalismi, relationaalisuus ja eläimen kulttuurinen pääoma

Abstract

In eco-nationalist discourses, animal breeds are constructed as representations of certain areas and groups of people and as native or national. Domestic animals carry the culture of their country of origin with them in their training and life history. For the animal, knowledge and skills concerning everyday practices with humans become cultural capital, visible when the animal is taken to new surroundings. In this article, I scrutinize eco-nationalistic images of the Andalusian horse and embodied interpretations of its cultural capital in the context of the international horse trade. In this context, breed becomes the main characteristic of the horse, as well as the basis for constructing the horse as national. In the new surroundings, the eco-nationalist discourse is involved in defining the horse as “different”. The cultural capital of the horse is interpreted locally and relationally in embodied encounters with the horse, resulting in a new, individual identity for the animal.