A SOCIALITY OF BEING SNAGGED: CARE AND AWAKENING AMONG SALMON IN SOUTHWEST ALASKA.

In the Yupiaq village of Akiak, in Southwest Alaska, relations among human and piscine beings are central to understandings and practices of care. Anthropological theories of care concerned with human health have tended to focus on practices of care that are directed to and are for others. Figuring care in the image of “being snagged,” I flesh out a nonhierarchical mode of care in which the division between the cared-for and caregiver is ambiguous or absent. The mode of care I call “being snagged” is reminiscent of the experience of getting one’s fishing net stuck: knotted, tedious, ordinary, and a cause for struggling along with others. Central to understanding the affects and effects of being snagged is the Yup’ik concept of awakening (ellange-), which in this article operates as an organizing principle that demonstrates how moments of shared concern for salmon constitute the mutual recognition of life and loss through which care is conveyed. By focusing on practices that are concerned less with treating than with sustaining social relations that promote well-being, anthropologists can more carefully attend to why people make choices about care. Paying attention to nonhierarchical forms of care also stands as a necessary corrective to dominant conceptions of care that delegitimize or overlook life-giving relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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