Humans and Other Animals

Samantha Hurn

Description

What are our attitudes towards other animals, and how does this affect our humanity?



This work of anthrozoology explores the myriad and evolving ways in which humans and animals interact, the divergent cultural constructions of humanity and animality found around the world, and individual experiences of other animals.



This book looks at case studies covering blood sports (such as hunting, fishing and bull fighting), pet keeping and ‘petishism’, eco-tourism and wildlife conservation, working animals and animals as food. It addresses the idea of animal exploitation raised by the animal rights movements, as well as the anthropological implications of changing attitudes towards animal personhood, and the rise of a posthumanist philosophy in the social sciences more generally.
1. Why look at human-animal interactions?

2. Animality

3. Continuity

4. The West and the Rest

5. Domestication

6. Good to think

7. Food

8. Pets

9. Communication

10. Intersubjectivity

11. Humans and other primates

12. Science and medicine

13. Conservation

14. Hunting and blood sports

15. Animal rights and wrongs

16. From anthropocentricity to multispecies ethnography

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Anthropology
• Animal Rights
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849647267
• Langue: English

Extrait

Humans and Other Animals
Anthropology, Culture and Society
Series Editors:
Professor Vered Amit, Concordia University and Dr Jon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex
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In Foreign Fields:
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First published 2012 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Samantha Hurn 2012
The right of Samantha Hurn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780745331201 Hardback ISBN 9780745331195 Paperback ISBN 9781849647267 ePub ISBN 9781849647274 Kindle
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Contents

Series Preface
1 Why Look at Human–Animal Interactions?
2 Animality
3 Continuity
4 The West and the Rest
5 Domestication
6 Good to Think
7 Food
8 Pets
9 Communication
10 Intersubjectivity
11 Humans and Other Primates
12 Science and Medicine
13 Conservation
14 Hunting and Blood Sports
15 Animal Rights and Wrongs
16 From Anthropocentricity to Multi-species Ethnography
References
Index
Series Preface

Anthropology is a discipline based upon in-depth ethnographic works that deal with wider theoretical issues in the context of particular, local conditions – to paraphrase an important volume from the series: large issues explored in small places . This series has a particular mission: to publish work that moves away from an old-style descriptive ethnography that is strongly area-studies oriented, and offer genuine theoretical arguments that are of interest to a much wider readership, but which are nevertheless located and grounded in solid ethnographic research. If anthropology is to argue itself a place in the contemporary intellectual world, then it must surely be through such research.
We start from the question: ‘What can this ethnographic material tell us about the bigger theoretical issues that concern the social sciences?’ rather than ‘What can these theoretical ideas tell us about the ethnographic context?’ Put this way round, such work becomes about large issues, set in a (relatively) small place, rather than detailed description of a small place for its own sake. As Clifford Geertz once said, ‘Anthropologists don’t study villages; they study in villages.’
By place, we mean not only geographical locale, but also other types of ‘place’ – within political, economic, religious or other social systems. We therefore publish work based on ethnography within political and religious movements, occupational or class groups, among youth, development agencies, and nationalist movements; but also work that is more thematically based – on kinship, landscape, the state, violence, corruption, the self. The series publishes four kinds of volume: ethnographic monographs; comparative texts; edited collections; and shorter, polemical essays.
We publish work from all traditions of anthropology, and all parts of the world, which combines theoretical debate with empirical evidence to demonstrate anthropology’s unique position in contemporary scholarship and the contemporary world.

Professor Vered Amit
Dr Jon P. Mitchell
1 Why Look at Human–Animal Interactions?

The merits of studying human interactions with other nonhuman or other-than-human animals (henceforth animals) have been recognized for some time by scholars from across the social sciences and humanities. While social and cultural anthropologists (henceforth anthropologists) have certainly had a hand in furthering our understanding of human–animal interactions, especially in recent years, it has been scholars from cognate disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, social history and cultural geography who have taken the lead. There are some noteworthy anthropological examples from the discipline’s early years, such as Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Sudanese Nuer’s ‘bovine idiom’ (1940), or Rappaport’s (1967, 1968) observations of Tsembaga Maring ‘pig love’, but these forays into the realms of human interactions with other animals were exceptions that proved the rule.
It is perhaps unsurprising that anthropologists have traditionally been disinclined towards the study of the human–animal bond, or at least less inclined than colleagues in cognate subject areas. Indeed, it might be argued that their disinclination is largely a result of the perceived semantic and ideological boundaries of their discipline (see also chapters 3 and 16). Anthropology, more so than any other social science or humanities subject, is premised, as the etymology of the name suggests – it loosely translates as ‘knowledge of man’ – on the primacy of the human. This in turn suggests the presence of fundamental and immutable differences between humans and other animals. As a result, as far as most anthropologists have been concerned, animals are of peripheral interest at best, constituting mere objects to be utilized by the human subjects of ethnographic inquiry.
While it has been perfectly acceptable for biological or physical anthropologists to consider the relationships between humans and other nonhuman primates within an evolutionary framework, social or cultural anthropologists have been constrained by the limits set by their species. Yet such a distinction is, like all systems of classification, not only arbitrary but also a cultural construct, and one which is not necessarily shared by many of the human cultures and societies which have themselves been the focus of anthropological attention.
Over time, as anthropologists have become intimately familiar with a diverse range of world views, systems of classification and cultural practices, they have also come to scrutinize what it is they are doing and why. In the process, the ‘animal question’ has become increasingly pressing. Indeed, the burgeoning interest in human–animal interactions in contemporary anthropology can be regarded as an inevitable consequence of the so-called reflexive turn, of the introspection and critical analysis of anthropology as an academic discipline and professional practice which emerged in response to a series of disciplinary ‘crises’ in the 1960s. First, there was the recognition that anthropologists and their ethnographic data often played decisive roles in colonial activities; second, the recognition that anthropology was