Humans and Other Animals Hurn T02266 00 pre 1 02/03/2012 14:21 Anthropology, Culture and Society Series Editors: Professor Vered Amit, Concordia University and Dr Jon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex Recent titles: Claiming Individuality: Small Places, Large Issues: The Will of the Many: The Cultural Politics of An Introduction to Social How the Alterglobalisation Distinction and Cultural Anthropology Movement is Changing the EditEd by VErEd Amit Third Edition Face of Democracy And noEl dyck thomAs hyllAnd EriksEn mAriAnnE mAEckElbErgh Community, What Is Anthropology? The Aid Effect: Cosmopolitanism and thomAs hyllAnd EriksEn Giving and Governing in the Problem of Human International Development Commonality Discordant Development: EditEd by dAVid mossE And VErEd Amit And Global Capitalism and the dAVid lEwis nigEl rApport SBtarnugglgalde efsohr Connection in Cultivating Development: Home Spaces, Street Styles: kAty gArdnEr An Ethnography of Aid Contesting Power and Policy and Practice Identity in a South African Anthropology, Development dAVid mossE and the Post-Modern ClEitsyliE J. bAnk CkAhtayll egnAgrednEr And TImerargoirn aantido nV aionlden tchee: In Foreign Fields: dAVid lEwis Unimaginable The Politics and Experiences EditEd by AndrEw strAthErn, of Transnational Sport Corruption: pAmElA J. stEwArt And nEil Migration Anthropological Perspectives l. whitEhEAd thomAs F. cArtEr EditEd by diEtEr hAllEr And Anthropology, Art and cris shorE Cultural Production On the Game: Women and Sex Work Anthropology’s World: mAruškA sVAšEk sophiE dAy Life in a Twenty-First Race and Ethnicity in Latin Century Discipline America Slave of Allah: ulF hAnnErz Second Edition Zacarias Moussaoui vs Culture and Well-Being: pEtEr wAdE the USA kAthErinE c. donAhuE Anthropological Approaches Race and Sex in Latin America to Freedom and Political pEtEr wAdE A World of Insecurity: Ethics Anthropological Perspectives EditEd by AlbErto corsín The Capability of Places: on Human Security JiménEz Methods for Modelling EditEd by thomAs EriksEn, Community Response to EllEn bAl And oscAr sAlEmink State Formation: Intrusion and Change Anthropological Perspectives sAndrA wAllmAn A History of Anthropology EditEd by christiAn thomAs hyllAnd EriksEn And krohn-hAnsEn And knut g. Anthropology at the Dawn of Finn siVErt niElsEn nustAd the Cold War: The Influence of Foundations, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Cultures of Fear: McCarthyism and the CIA Anthropological Perspectives A Critical Reader EditEd by dustin m. wAx Third Edition EditEd by uli linkE And thomAs hyllAnd EriksEn dAniEllE tAAnA smith Learning Politics from Sivaram: Globalisation: Fair Trade and a Global The Life and Death of a Studies in Anthropology Commodity: Revolutionary Tamil EditEd by thomAs hyllAnd Coffee in Costa Rica Journalist in Sri Lanka EriksEn pEtEr luEtchFord mArk p. whitAkEr Hurn T02266 00 pre 2 02/03/2012 14:21 HumAns And OtHer AnimAls Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human–Animal interactions Samantha Hurn Hurn T02266 00 pre 3 02/03/2012 14:21 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 library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data applied for this book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing services ltd typeset from disk by stanford dtP services, northampton, england simultaneously printed digitally by CPi Antony rowe, Chippenham, uK and edwards Bros in the united states of America Hurn T02266 00 pre 4 02/03/2012 14:21 Contents Series Preface vi 1 Why Look at Human–Animal Interactions? 1 2 Animality 12 3 Continuity 27 4 The West and the Rest 41 5 Domestication 55 6 Good to Think 70 7 Food 84 8 Pets 98 9 Communication 112 10 Intersubjectivity 125 11 Humans and Other Primates 139 12 Science and Medicine 151 13 Conservation 165 14 Hunting and Blood Sports 176 15 Animal Rights and Wrongs 189 16 From Anthropocentricity to Multi-species Ethnography 202 References 221 Index 250 Hurn T02266 00 pre 5 02/03/2012 14:21 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 vi Hurn T02266 00 pre 6 02/03/2012 14:21 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 anthropolo- gists 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 1 Hurn T02266 01 text 1 02/03/2012 14:21 2 HumAns And OtHer AnImALs 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 anthropo- logical 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 at times an ethnocentric and androcentric discipline whose (predominantly male, predominantly white Euro-American) practitioners had presented a male-biased view of the male realms of indigenous societies; and, third, the recognition that objectivity in ethnographic research was an unattainable goal. Each of these ‘crises’ will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters, but it is worth dwelling on the third a little longer here. It is an unfortunate irony that Bronislaw Malinowski, the so-called ‘founding father’ of British social anthropology, who established ethnographic fieldwork as a methodological paradigm, was also inadvertently responsible for the ideological shift which led to ‘objectivity’ being dispelled as a methodological myth. While his published academic work advocated grasping ‘the native’s point of view’ (1922: 25) the posthumous publication of Malinowski’s personal diary revealed that the fieldworker can never completely discard his or her cultural baggage. This point is perfectly illustrated, coincidentally enough, in relation to ‘the natives’, animals and their collective ‘irrelevance’ (as far as Malinowski was concerned) to the anthropological endeavour: ‘I see the life of the native as utterly devoid of interest or importance, something as remote from me as the life of a dog …’ (1967: 167). tHe COmPArAtIVe APPrOACH Anthropologists study what it means to be human, and while the purported aim of anthropologists since the days of Malinowski Hurn T02266 01 text 2 02/03/2012 14:21 WHy LOOk At HumAn–AnImAL InterACtIOns? 3 has been to study humanity ‘through its diverse manifestations’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1985 [1983]: 49), in reality anthropologists have traditionally been concerned with the comparative study of ‘otherness’. In the colonial past, indigenous peoples were the ‘others’ against whom proto-anthropologists, the so-called armchair theorists such as J.G. Frazer (1922) and E.B. Tylor (1968 [1871]) measured their own ‘civilization’. In the contemporary postcolonial world, anthropological attitudes towards human subjects have radically changed, and the tenets of social evolutionism, which were so influential for the early anthro- pologists, are no longer regarded as appropriate when it comes to thinking about variation within the human species. Yet it is perfectly acceptable to think about animals within an evolutionary framework. As will be revealed in the coming chapters, some anthro- pologists have instead turned their attentions to nonhuman ‘others’ who fill the void created by the reflexive turn. As Eugenia Shanklin noted in her own review of anthropologi- cal interest in animals up until the mid 1980s ‘the investigation of human and animal interaction may well be one of the most fruitful endeavours of anthropology’ (1985: 380). The reasons given by Shanklin include the diverse ways in which ‘animals are used, how they function in various societies, and how their many meanings are derived’ (1985: 379–80). To use (and adapt) the words of philosopher Donna Haraway: ‘we [as anthropologists] polish an animal mirror to look for ourselves [and what it means to be human]’ (1991: 21). This has also been true of human anthropological subjects over the years. As a comparative discipline, anthropology can only operate when there are ‘others’ against whom one’s own ideas and customs (or those of one’s ‘home’ society) can be measured and judged. Ingold’s (1994a [1988]) edited volume entitled What is an animal? brought together scholars from across the social sciences who were tasked with addressing the book’s title from their respective disciplinary perspectives. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no general consensus in response to what is a rather loaded and contentious question, but overall the contributors did agree on two points: ‘First, that there is a strong emotional undercurrent to our ideas about animality; and, second, that to subject these ideas to critical scrutiny is to expose highly sensitive and largely unexplored aspects of the understanding of our own humanity’ (1994a [1988]: 1). In other words, when asked ‘what is an animal?’ contributors were forced to tackle the corollary ‘what does it mean to be human?’ Hurn T02266 01 text 3 02/03/2012 14:21