© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/15685306-12341253 Society & Animals �� (�0 �4) �35-�5 � brill.com/soan Herds and Hierarchies: Class, Nature, and the Social Construction of Horses in Equestrian Culture Kendra Coulter Brock University kcoulter@brocku.ca Abstract This study centers on equestrian show culture in Ontario, Canada, and examines how horses are entangled symbolically and materially in socially constructed hierarchies of value. After examining horse-show social relations and practices, the paper traces the connections among equestrian culture, class, and the social constructions of horses. Equestrian relations expose multiple hierarchical intersections of nature and culture within which both human-horse relations and horses are affected by class structures and identities. In equestrian culture, class affects relations within and across species, and how horses are conceptualized and used, as symbols and as living animal bodies. Keywords animals and class – animal work – equestrian culture – nature/labor – social construction of horses Across space and time, horses have been valorized, loved, worked, exploited, and slaughtered. Given the diversity of human-horse relations, horses have, not sur- prisingly, often been associated with nobility, wealth, and rule (e.g. Ritvo, 2010; Kelenka, 2009), but also with manual work and working class people’s livelihoods (Cassidy 2002, 2007; Greene, 2008; Walker, 2008; Chamberlin, 2006). Moreover, while high-ranking social actors may use horses for sport and leisure, many of the daily interactions, including the “dirty work” (e.g., Anderson, 2000) of clean- ing up manure, are the responsibility of working-class people. Put simply, horses’ lives have been interconnected in various ways with the hierarchies that exist in human societies. Today, over 300,000 horses live in Ontario, Canada, many on farms in the rural communities north and west of Toronto, a region often called