“That-which-must-not-be-named”: hunting, secrecy, and the ontology of meat in northeast China

Abstract

In this paper, I describe the practice of sharing and eating wild meat amongst the Orochen in northeast China, a community of hunters who are no longer allowed to hunt due to state conservation policies. I show how for Orochen meat is the material intermediary between the human and nonhuman worlds, offered to the fire before meals and to animal spirit-masters during hunting. I suggest this demands reflection of what we might call the ontology of meat: that is, how it is experienced as an extra-ordinary and relational substance with the ‘lived’ capacity to act. I show how this contrasts with the Chinese state, which sees wild meat as a material substance only and, in the context of conservation, as something to be measured and controlled through the protection of wild animals. I suggest that, for the Orochen, to eat and share wild meat is an act of everyday resistance embedded in secrecy, as well as a way of rendering into action their ontology of relational existence and participation in the wider sociocosmic economy of sharing.