Labors of Love: On the Political Economies and Ethics of Bovine Politics in Himalayan India

This essay asks how conceptualizing love as work might provide a fresh perspective on love’s politics. In offering an ethnographic account of for Gau-Mata, the Cow-Mother idealized Hindu nation, fuels right-wing nationalist politics cow-protection in India’s central Himalayan state Uttarakhand, I suggest that specific arrangements labor through which affective attachments are organized critically shape ethics and love. More specifically, depict different kinds situated produced varied conjoined social worlds gau-rakshaks (cow-protectionists) rural women dairy farmers Uttarakhand. For these actors, genuine cow manifested willingness to her. Yet their understandings what this loving entailed differed starkly. article examines three distinct work—protection, service, care-labor—that actors variously undertook out cow. It traces labors set relationships, affiliations, obligations crucially shaped Ultimately, show, attending reveals can condition variety often conflicting political ethical possibilities, working simultaneously force transcendence, fascist violence, repair.