Animals, Society and Culture

Lecture 2: What is an animal?

2013-14

Significant encounters

Dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rats Horses Swans, crows, keel tailed fish,

ostriches, giraffes, rhinos Domestic animals Wild animals

Plant or animal – or both?

Euglena

Lecture outline How animals are defined in

relation to human The dualistic mode of thinking

about humans and animals which characterises western thought

How animals and humans are understood in other cultures in a non-dualistic way.

Defining animals in western culture

Human-animal distinction Humanity – personhood, agency,

intentions, social values, moral conscience

Animality – swayed by primordial passions

Historical instability – Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe

Human-animal boundary permeable

Border creatures Hierarchy of creation Blurring of boundaries punished Animals were put on trial

Changing ideas about animals

Richard Tapper (1994) ‘Animality, humanity, morality, society’ in T Ingold (ed) What is an animal? Routledge

Classic typology of production systems: Hunting and gathering Pastoralism Agriculture Urban-industrial production

Animals are ‘good to think with’ Hunter-gatherers – Totemism,

agency, personhood Pastoralism – herds replicas of

human society Agriculturalism – taming of the

wild, macho Urban-industrial – animals

marginalised, anthropomorphised

Dualism

Aristotle – animals don’t have souls Enlightenment – animals not

capable of reason Descartes – animals are like

machines, unable to feel pain Currently – animals don’t have

language

Language

Tim Ingold (1994) ‘The animal in the study of humanity’ in T Ingold (ed) What is an animal? Routledge

Lewis Henry Morgan and the beaver

Marx, architects, spiders and bees Imaginary blueprint

Habitual action

Distinction between: Novel products of intentional design Habitual replication of traditional

forms Distinction between:

Conversation Communication

Thinking

Language is an ‘instrument of thought’ (Ingold)

Animals communicate without thinking

The signals they transmit correspond to bodily states not concepts

Most action is habitual

Difference

‘the differences between our species and others are probably of a comparable order, neither much greater nor much less, than those that separate non-human species from one another. Humans are unique, but not with any unique sort of uniqueness’ (Fernandez-Armesto, 2004:36 in Anderson 2007:6).

Jaques Derrida

French philosopher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry49Jr0TFjk

Non-dualistic ontology

Ingold key reading (wk 2) Critiques idea that ‘nature’ is

culturally constructed Hunter-gatherer ontology of dwelling Immersed in ‘dwelt in world’ not

detached from it as ‘mind’ Entire persons vs disembodied minds

Personhood Western thought – animals are not

persons For the Cree (northern hunters)

personhood applies to human, non-human animals, non-animal kinds

‘Human persons are not set over and against a material context of inert nature, but rather are one species of person in a network of reciprocating persons’ (Scott cited in Ingold, 2012:43)

Unity of life

Human is one of many outward forms of personhood

Unity underpins differentiation Humans and non-humans are alive World is meaningful, meaning not

given to the world by human mind

Summary Answer to question of what is an animal

varies across time and cultures –it relates to the question what is it to be human – the one defines the other.

This is a dualistic way of understanding humans and animals. Defining animals as ‘other’ means they’re not ‘like us’ so are outside the moral universe.

We don’t have to look at animals in terms of their ‘otherness’ to humans. All species are unique, not just the human species.