Research Associate

Garry Marvin

Garry’s project will be an ethnographic exploration of differently configured relationships between people and wild boar in south-west rural Spain. He will focus on interested parties such as landowners, farmers with free-range Black Iberian pigs, hunters, wildlife managers, private and government vets, and wild boar themselves.

Garry Marvin is a social anthropologist and Professor of Human-Animal Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. His first research, for his PhD, was an ethnographic study of the bullfight in Andalusia (Spain). The focus was the nature of the constructions of the identities of men and bulls and the performance of those identities in the bullring.  While in Spain he also conducted research into cockfighting. His next major project (with Bob Mullan) was an anthropological and historical study of the social, cultural, and material constructions of zoos around the world. In 1986 he left the academic world and spent ten years working in television documentary production. During that time he was involved in the production of two films with human-animal relationships as major themes – Romance de Valentia (about bullfighting) and The Hunt (about English foxhunting). He returned to university life in 1996 and has published anthropological accounts of English foxhunting, trophy hunting, taxidermy, bullfighting, and a monograph on human-wolf relationships.

 

Education
1982 | PhD (Anthropology), University of Wales, University College Swansea
          La Corrida de Toros: An Anthropological Study of Animal and Human Nature in Andalusia
1974 | BA Hons, Social Sciences and History, University of East Anglia

 

Selected Publications

Books

  • Wolf, London: Reaktion Books, 2012.
  • Killing Animals (with S. Baker, J. Burt, D. Donald, E. Fudge, R. McKay, C. Palmer and C. Wilbert) University of Illinois Press, 2006.
  • Venice, The Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the World’s Most Touristed City (with Robert Davis) University of California Press, 2004.
  • Zoo Culture (with Bob Mullan), University of Illinois Press, 1999 (new edition).
  • Bullfight, University of Illinois Press, 1994 (new edition).

 

Articles

  • ‘El Estudio de las Relaciones Humano-Animales en la Actual “Encrucijada Ambiental”’ (Santiago M. Cruzado and Garry Marvin) Revista Andaluza de Antropología, April 2020 pp. 4 – 30.
  • ‘An Interdisciplinary Review of Current and Future Approaches to Improving Human-Predator Relations’, S. Pooley et.al. Conservation Biology, 2017, Vol. 31. No. 3, 513-523.
  •  ‘English Foxhunting: A Prohibited Practice’ in International Journal of Cultural Property, Vol. 14, No 3, pp. 339 360, 2007.
  • ‘Sensing Nature: Encountering the World in Hunting’ in Etnofoor XVIII (1) pp. 15 – 26, 2005.
  • ‘A Passionate Pursuit: Foxhunting as Performance’ in Sociological Review Vol. 52 No.1 pp. 46 – 60, 2003.
  • ‘Animal Encounters: Challenge and Contest in English Foxhunting’ in Ludica 9 pp. 140 – 151, 2003.
  • ‘Cultured Killers: Creating and Representing Foxhounds’ in Society and Animals, Vol. 9 No. 3 pp. 273 – 292, 2001.
  • ‘Natural Instincts and Cultural Passions: Transformations and Performances in Foxhunting’ Performance Research 5(2) 108:115, 2000.

 

Chapters

  • ‘Wolf: A Social and Cultural Creature’ in Sam George and Bill Hughes (eds) In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves and Wild Children, University of Manchester Press, 2020.
  • ‘Hunters’ Photographic Trophies: Memorialising Engagements and Experiences’ in Maurice Saß (ed.) Hunting Without Weapons: On the Pursuit of Images, Berlin/Boston: Walter De Gruyter GmbH (2017).
  • ‘The Art of Fierceness: The Performance of the Spanish Fighting Bull’ in Lourdes Orozco and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck (eds) Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices, Palgrave Macmillan (2015).
  • ‘The Bullfight in 21st Century Spain:  Polemics of Cultures, Arts and Ethics’ (with M.a Verónica De Haro De San Mateo) in Kaori Nagai et.al. Cosmopolitan Animals, Palgrave Macmillan (2015).
  • ‘Enlivened Through Memory: Hunters and Hunting Trophies’ in Sam Alberti (ed.) The Afterlives of Animals, University of Virginia Press (2011) pp. 202 -217.
  • ‘Challenging Animals: Purpose and Process in Hunting’ in Sarah Pilgrim and Jules Pretty (eds) Nature and Culture, London: Earthscan Books (2010) pp. 143 – 159.
  • ‘Wolves in Sheep’s and Other Clothing’ in Dorothee Brantz (ed.) Beastly Natures: Human-Animal Relations at the Intersection of Cultural and Environmental History, University of Virginia Press,(2010) pp. 59 – 78.
  • Bodies in a Landscape: Engagements, Contests and Performances in English Foxhunting’ in Simon Coleman and Tamara Kohn (eds) The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of ‘RecreationOxford: Berghahn Books, 2007.
  • ‘Wild Killing: Contesting the Animal in Hunting’ in Killing Animals (S. Baker, J. Burt, D. Donald, E. Fudge, R. McKay, G. Marvin, C. Palmer and C. Wilbert) University of Illinois Press, 2006.
  • ‘Disciplined Affections: The Making of an English Pack of Foxhounds’ in John Knight (ed.) Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human- Animal Intimacies, Oxford: Berg, 2005.
  • ‘A Passionate Pursuit: Foxhunting as Performance’ in Bronislaw Szersynski, Wallace Heim and Claire Waterton (eds) Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
  • ‘Unspeakability, Inedibility, and the Structures of Pursuit in the English Foxhunt’ in Nigel Rothfels (ed.) Representing Animals, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
  • ‘The Problem of Foxes: Legitimate and Illegitimate Killing in the English Countryside in J. Knight (ed.) Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflicts in Anthropological Perspective, London: Routledge, 2000.

 

Edited volumes

  • Human-Animal Studies: Global Perspectives (edited with Susan McHugh), 4 volumes, Routledge, 2018.
  • Handbook of Human-Animal Studies (edited with Susan McHugh), Routledge, 2014.