Sal/manteca/panela : ethnoveterinary practice in highland Ecuador.
- Arlington American Antropological Association 2000
En: American Anthropologist. -- Vol. 102 No. 2 (junio 2000), pp. 290-302. ISSN 00027294
In this essay, I analyze the feeding of salt, lard, and raw sugar balls to cattle, as practiced in the southern Ecuadorian highlands. These balls provide nutritional satisfaction for cattle and conceptual satisfaction for their owners. Domestic animals are understood to share many human characteristics, needs, and desires. The metaphoric extension of these traits to cattle responds to the quest not only for cognitive order, but also for the pragmatic purposes of management in an uncertain and precarious agrarian environment,