Communicating Social Identity: The Sensory Performance of Cattle Branding

Abstract

This thesis investigates the practice of cattle branding as a cultural performance, the sensory aspects of which contribute to the creation, maintenance, and communication of the social identity among cattle ranchers. This thesis used methods of sensory ethnography to generate sensory data to reveal how sensory knowledge permeates this cultural performance. The analysis is divided between five components of ritual activities used to study cultural performance: formalism, traditionalism, invariance of actions, rule-governance, and sacral symbolism (C. Bell 1997, 138). The main conclusion drawn from the analysis is that by using sensory ethnography in research on performance and identity new conceptual ground can be gained in communications and sociocultural studies by establishing a renewed focus on how sensory relations are social relations (Howes 2003, 55).