Pigeon trouble

de Hoon Song

"This spectacular account of a remarkable event opens into a larger philosophical consideration of mass cultural identity production. Hoon Song reveals how the animal-based rhetoric of a pigeon shoot connects it to discourses with broad cultural significance. I know of no other book that combines so effectively the elements of ethnography, cultural studies, media event analysis, and contemporary discourse on animals."ùJohn Dorst, University of Wyoming -- Pigeon Trouble chronicles a foreign-born, birdphobic anthropologist's venture into the occult craft of pigeon shooting in the depths of Pennsylvania's anthracite coal country. Though initially drawn by a widely publicized pigeon-shoot protest by animal rights activists, the author quickly finds himself traversing a territory much stranger than clashing viewpointsùan uncanny world saturated with pigeon matters, both figuratively and literally. -- What transpires is a sustained meditation on self-reflexivity as the author teeters at the limit of his investigationùhis own fear of birds. The result is an intimate portrayal of the miners' world of conspiracy theory, anti-Semitism, and whiteness, all inscribed one way or another by pigeon matters and seen through the anguished eyes of a birdphobe. This bestiary experiment through a phobic gaze concludes with a critique on the visual trope in anthropology's self-reflexive turn. -- An ethnographer with a taste for philosophy, Hoon Song writes in a distinctive descriptive and analytical style, obsessed with his locale and its inhabitants, constantly monitoring his own reactions and his impact on others, and always teasing out larger implications of his subject. --Book Jacket.