Grad Student Spotlight: Dissertation Research
Evelien Deelen, a PhD candidate from the Netherlands, was awarded fieldwork funding from both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner Gren Foundation.
Evelien moved from the Netherlands to Pullman in 2018 to study the anthropology of human-horse relationships. From 2018 to 2021, she researched bucking horse riding and breeding in American rodeo. Her dissertation project is on equine ethnoveterinary care in the Inland Northwest.
I am Evelien and I am a PhD student in the cultural stream. In 2018, I moved from the Netherlands to Pullman to study the anthropology of human-horse relationships. Until 2021, I researched bucking horse riding and breeding in American rodeo, and I am now working on my dissertation project on equine ethnoveterinary care in the Inland Northwest. I’ve recently received fieldwork funding from both NSF and the Wenner Gren Foundation, and I am super excited about their support.
I am deeply interested in human-animal interactions, and very curious to learn if how people think about animals affects how they treat them. With the bucking horses, for example, I found that rodeo people share this folk theory that explains why these animals buck the way they do. They believe that broncs have a special gene that makes them predisposed to bucking. This belief shapes how rodeo people train these horses, how often they interact with them, and what kinds of athletic expectations they have from the animals. At first, I thought this concept was something unique to rodeo, until I realized that all horse people, including myself, have folk theories about horse behavior, nature, and being that guide what we do with these animals. We just don’t think about it because it is such a subconscious, taken-for-granted aspect of our lives.
For my dissertation project, I’m hoping to develop new insights in the relationship between human culture and animal disease. My field site is in the greater Spokane area, where I’m working with settler-descendant horse owners to elicit the ethnozoological and ethnomedical theories that underlie the veterinary care they provide. I want to learn if Kleinman’s disease-illness distinction also applies to veterinary care, and if we can draw a theoretical parallel between animal sickness (as viewed and responded to by people) and the concept of culture-bound syndromes. I’m grateful that my advisor (Dr. Marsha Quinlan) and committee (Dr. Ed Hagen, Dr. Patricia Pendry) support my curiosity.