Introduction --
Decolonising passions --
Living with pigeons: rooftop intimacies --
The seduction of cockfighting: forbidden dangers --
The spectacle of dogfighting: amplified masculinity --
A life with Shauqeen: familial relations in a multi-species household --
Threats to genuine Shauq --
Epilogue: life beyond cage and leash.

Animal Enthusiasms explores how human-animal relationships are conceived, developed, and carried out in rural Pakistani Muslim society through an examination of practices such as pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork carried between 2008-2018 in rural South Punjab, the book examines the crucial cultural concept of shauq (enthusiasm) and provides critical insight into changing ways of life in contemporary Pakistan. It tracks the relationship between men mediated by non-human animals, and discusses how such relationship in rural areas is coded in complex ways. The chapters draw on debates around transformations of animal activities over time, the changing forms of human-animal intimacy and their impact on familial relationships, and rural Punjabi values attached to the performance of masculine honour. The book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, multispecies ethnography, gender and masculinity studies, and South Asian studies"--