Randagi in India. Animali di strada, spazi pubblici, rabbia: etnografia multispecifica a New Delhi, Jaipur e Jodhpur.

This thesis analyses the causes, characteristics and key elements that contribute towards the striking presence of street animals (particularly cows, monkeys and dogs) in the public spaces of New Delhi and comparatively, Jaipur and Jodhpur as well. In other words, this zooanthropological research in an urban setting explores the phenomenon of straying, assessing ecological and socio-cultural elements through a multispecific and integrative approach which includes consideration of cohabitation, in the same natural-cultural co-produced niche, of the four (one human, three non-human) animal species analyzed in this study. In relation to the human element of this phenomenon, a decision was made to focus the ethnographic survey on the two factors which mainly shape it: the economical behaviours of two sections of the urban population (middle class and slum/pavement dwellers) and the religious beliefs, especially hindū, which determine the attitude towards street animals. Furthermore, regarding street animals, this research chiefly examines the encounters, clashes, negotiations, adaptations and mutual influences which bind every species, understood as a whole of active subjects, in relation to the other three. Finally, in the last chapter of this dissertation important consideration is devoted to the lethal rabies virus, in particular regarding its capability of crossing interspecies barriers in an agile and effective way and of remarkably affecting the behaviours of the species towards one another. With particular reference to the last two decades of its history, the capital city of New Delhi marked by economical liberation was given preference as main fieldwork due to its capacity to exemplify the attitude of class and species discrimination as shown in the behaviours and practices of the ruling class, supported by the growing middle class, which in its political agenda has the conversion of the Indian capital in a world class city. It is with this purpose in mind that a vast part of the less welcomed human and non-human citizens, such as slum dwellers, stray dogs and hawkers, have been hastily hidden, driven away, captured or removed from their place of origin. In other words, they have been arbitrarily uprooted from the social fabric in which they had a fundamental and specific role for the economical and ecological balance of the city. Through the analysis of this particular socio-cultural environment, and in further comparison with Jaipur and Jodhpur, it has been possible to observe, understand and define straying as a phenomenon that is primarily anthropic. From a methodological point of view, the multispecies ethnography carried out within the ten months of fieldwork made use of participant observation, photographic surveying, semi-structured interview and gathering of grey literature. Moreover, through a diversified and extended experience of personally undertaking voluntary work in veterinary hospitals and shelters for street animals, personal interactive experience of this fundamental feature of zooanthropology was gained, namely the one-to-one interaction with the non-human animal.