Contents
Foreword by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Past Finding Around Harar
2 Lines of Reason for Hyenas
3 Between Different Relations
4 You Hyenas
5 The Legend of Ashura
6 On the Tail of a Hyena
7 Encounters with the Unseen
8 Reflections from a Hyena Playground
9 Death, Death, and Rhetoric
10 Blood of the Hyena
11 Across a Human/Hyena Boundary
12 A Host of Other Ideas
13 Returning to Other Hyenas
14 Talking Up Hyena Realities
15 Looking Through a Hyena Hole
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Marcus Baynes-Rock is a research associate with the University of Notre Dame. He divides his time between Indiana, Ethiopia, and northern New South Wales, where he lives with his wife and baby daughter.
“[This] book is nothing short of amazing.”—William Hageman Chicago
Tribune
“I shouldn’t say that I envy Marcus for his intimacy with hyenas,
because intimacy is the world’s best way of gaining knowledge of an
animal, and there’s no such thing as too much knowledge about
hyenas. Instead, I should acknowledge the deep gratitude I feel,
and that all of us should feel, about this work that he’s done and
the possibilities it offers. If we knew all animals as he knows
hyenas, we’d save the world.”—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
“Among the Bone Eaters is a fascinating read. Most readers will be
surprised to learn about the very close, reciprocal, and mutually
beneficial relationships that have evolved between resident
carnivorous spotted hyenas and people in Harar—and how overcoming
fear led to enduring friendships. This book touches on a very
timely topic, namely, human-animal relationships (anthrozoology) in
a human-dominated world in which these sorts of encounters are not
only inevitable but also essential to understanding.”—Marc
Bekoff,author of Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of
Compassion and Coexistence
“This is a compelling account of the intersecting worlds of humans
and hyenas in a shared architectural landscape. Baynes-Rock shares
with us his intimate experiences developing social relations with
hyenas as well as humans, thereby confounding distinctions between
ethology and ethnography. By extending anthropology’s
intersubjective approach to nonhumans, he explores the overlapping
dynamics of hyena and human lifeworlds, producing a work that will
undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the emerging field
of multispecies ethnography.”—Piers Locke,University of
Canterbury
“Through a rich narrative, filled with the people, events, sights,
and sounds of the distant city of Harar, we are invited to share
space, place, and time with the least likely compatriot for humans:
the spotted hyena. Marcus Baynes-Rock guides us into a world that
is simultaneously strange and familiar, and we leave transformed.
This book is great anthropology, a great story, and most
importantly—it will change the way you think about being human with
other animals.”—Agustín Fuentes,University of Notre Dame
“Among the Bone Eaters isn’t precisely a natural history of the
spotted hyena, nor is it precisely an ethnography of the Harari.
Instead, it’s an utterly remarkable combination of the two, a
portrait of a human community forging a working relationship with
Africa’s second-largest carnivore.”—Steve Donoghue Open Letters
Monthly
“Among the Bone Eaters is a probing look at the complex
relationship between humans and wild animals. . . . Baynes-Rock’s
immersive account is told with sharp-eyed, self-effacing prose, and
he leaves nothing out—Ethiopia’s sluggish bureaucracy, the town’s
maze-like geography, and even the Oromo woman he meets and
eventually marries. It’s as much a travelogue as it is a research
study.”—Chelsea Leu Sierra
“The important thing to remember is that this is not a book just
about hyenas or just about Hararis; it’s about both, all held
together with its greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts third element
of the curious and fascinating societal adaptations made by both
parties that has enabled the humans and hyenas of Harar to live in
balance together. Truly, it is a book quite unlike any other you’ve
likely ever read.”—John E. Riutta The Well-Read Naturalist
“Among the Bone Eaters will appeal to a general audience interested
in learning more about hyenas and the subtle aspects of their
interactions with humans as well as to professional anthropologists
and ethnographers.”—Choice
“Remarkable. . . . This is a delightful book, full of fascinating
portraits of humans and hyenas in a remote corner of the world
where ancient lines of animosity are blurred.”—Milbry C. Polk The
Explorers Journal
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