Animals, Society and Culture Lecture 2: What is an animal? 2013-14.
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Transcript of Animals, Society and Culture Lecture 2: What is an animal? 2013-14.
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.