Theorizing Animals: Re-thinking Humanimal Relations (Human-Animal Studies)

Theorizing Animals

Human-Animal Studies Editor

Kenneth Shapiro Animals & Society Institute

Editorial Board

Ralph Acampora Hofstra University

Clifton Flynn University of South Carolina

Hilda Kean Ruskin College, Oxford

Randy Malamud Georgia State University

Gail Melson Purdue University

VOLUME 11

Theorizing Animals Re-thinking Humanimal Relations

Edited by

Nik Taylor Tania Signal

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theorizing animals : re-thinking humanimal relations / edited by Nik Taylor, Tania Signal. â•…â•… p. cm. — (Human-animal studies ; 11) â•… Includes index. â•… ISBN 978-90-04-20242-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ╇ 1. Human-animal relationships. 2. Human-animal relationships—Philosophy. I. Taylor, Nik. II. Signal, Tania. III. Title. IV. Series. â•… QL85.T46 2011 â•… 304.2’7—dc22

2011001410

ISSN 1573-4226 ISBN 978 90 04 202429 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

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For the furry folk in both our lives, past and present, who have inspired—and continue to inspire—our interest in all things humananimal. Here’s hoping they get as much out of our relationships as we do.

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Contents Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi List of Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Preface: In Hope of Change: Rethinking Human-Animal Relations? Lynda Birke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Introduction Nik Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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KNOTTY PROBLEMS: TO THEORISE OR NOT? 1. Mapping Human Animal Relations Peter Beatson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2. Theorizing ‘Others’ Lisa Kemmerer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 part two

ANIMALS AND MODERNITY 3. The Underdog in History: Serfdom, Slavery and Species in the Creation and Development of Capitalism Mary Murray. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 4. Dangerous Dogs and The Construction of Risk Claire Molloy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 5. Ritual, Reason and Animals Gavin Kendall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

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Animal Performers 6. The Representation of Animal Actors: Theorizing Performance and Performativity in the Animal Kingdom Gregory S. Szarycz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 7. The Gaze of Animals Philip Armstrong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 part four

Forward thinking 8. Can Sociology Contribute to the Emancipation of Animals? Nik Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 9.

Theorising Rider-Horse Relations: An Ethnographic Illustration of the Centaur Metaphor in the Spanish Bullfight Kirrilly Thompson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

10. Ciliated Sense Eva Hayward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Concluding Remarks: From Theory to Action: An Ethologist’s Perspective Jonathan Balcombe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

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Foreword This volume takes on one of the important challenges facing the emerging field of Human-Animal Studies: the development of theory. It begins with the meta-theoretical question: Does the field need theory? What are the pitfalls of theory? Is a macro-theory, one that provides a framework for this multi-disciplinary field, possible; is it desirable? Can the field thrive with theory that is simply extensionist—that takes existing social theories and modifies them to include nonhuman animals? What are the prospects for “hybridized theory?” Finally, can the field develop sui generis theory—theory peculiar to this inter-species, relationship-centered field? Whether or not the editors, Taylor and Signal, have succeeded in meeting these tall orders in this slim volume, I think you will agree the questions are now clear and on the table. Kenneth Shapiro, Series Editor Animals and Society Institute, Inc., Washington Grove MD

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Ken Shapiro for recognising the potential of this collection and for his advice throughout the process. A big thanks to the authors for their patience throughout and thanks also to those who helped behind the scenes with the various skills needed to pull a manuscript like this together. It was somewhat of a steep learning curve for the editors so we appreciate your input. Thanks must also go to Lynda Birke and Jonathan Balcombe for agreeing to write the Preface and Concluding Remarks, respectively. Final thanks are also due to Chris Pearce from Liquid Nature who generously provided the photographs for the cover.

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List of contributors Nik Taylor (editor) received her Ph.D in Sociology from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1999 where she addressed the sociology of human-animal interaction. She argued that sociology could, and should, take account of human-animal interactions in a thesis entitled ‘Human-Animal Relations: A Sociological Respecification’. Now a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Flinders University, Dr Taylor currently researches human-animal interactions and is an Associate Editor of Society & Animals and an editorial board member of Anthrozoos, Sociology, and Sociological Research Online. She has published numerous articles on human-animal relations and is currently working on a book concerning animal identity and work. Tania Signal (editor) Tania received her DPhil from Waikato University (New Zealand) studying within the Animal Behaviour & Welfare Research Centre. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Central Queensland University (CQU). Her research interest is human-animal studies, in particular, the human animal violence connection from a psychological perspective. She is an associate editor for Society & Animals and regularly reviews for Anthrozoos. Peter Beatson Peter Beatson has doctorates in English literature from Cambridge University (1974) and in sociology from the University of Provence (1978). Formerly an associate professor of sociology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, he is now retired, but remains an honorary research fellow at that institution. In the past, his two major areas of academic and personal interest were literature and the arts on the one hand, disability on the other. However, in 2005 he co-founded an inter-disciplinary undergraduate course at Massey University on animals and human society to which he still contributes. Although a comparative newcomer to the field of human-animal studies, he has developed a strong passion, both intellectual and humanitarian, for the subject. He feels his major potential contribution at this stage is the devising of an over-arching

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analytical framework for the study of human-animal interactions—a heuristic model that can be applied across historical, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. This is the subject of his chapter in the present book. His other nascent interest is in the representation of animals in world literature, with a particular focus for the moment on the depiction of animals in the fiction of the New Zealand writer Maurice Gee, about whom Peter is writing a book. Lisa Kemmerer Lisa Kemmerer earned a BA in International Studies from Reed College, a Masters in Theology from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD in Philosophy from University of Glasgow, Scotland. She has taught philosophy and religion courses in Alaska, Washington, and Scotland, and currently teaches at Montana State University, Billings. Lisa’s reviews and articles have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers; she has written, directed, and produced two documentaries on Buddhism, and has most recently completed a book on ethics and animals titled In Search of Consistency (Brill Academic, 2005). Mary Murray Born in England of Irish parentage and ancestry, Mary came to New Zealand in 1991. Before coming to Massey she taught at universities in England, Scotland and Ireland. She has researched and published in the areas of historical sociology and feminist theory, including a book for Routledge, The Law of the Father (1995). Her research and teaching interest now lie in the areas of sociology of death and dying, emotions, sociological and feminist theory, sociology of dreams, and the relationship between humans and animals. She is currently working on a book to be published with MacMillian on the sociology of death and dying. Claire Molloy Dr Molloy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media at Edge Hill University. Her PhD, ‘Discourses of anthropomorphism’, was a critical history of anthropomorphism since the eighteenth century. She has published on the subjects of anthropomorphism and the relationship between animals and national identity and is the guest editor for a special edition of the journal Diegesis on the subject of

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anthropomorphism in 2008. Her book Memento was published in 2010 by Edinburgh University Press. Gavin Kendall Gavin Kendall is Professor of Sociology at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. His books include The State, Democracy and Globalization (Palgrave, 2004, with Roger King), Understanding Culture (Sage, 2001, with Gary Wickham) and Using Foucault’s Methods (Sage, 1999, with Gary Wickham). His latest book, The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism (with Zlatko Skrbis and Ian Woodward), will be published by Palgrave. He is on the editorial advisory boards of the journals New Zealand Sociology, Foucault Studies and Athenea Digital. Gregory S. Szarycz Greg Szarycz holds a PhD from the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he was also a contributing lecturer. He has subsequently held teaching positions at the University of Guelph, the University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University. He is a regular presenter at international conferences, including at the British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS), the University of Oxford, and the Society for Cross-Cultural Research (SCCR). Philip Armstrong Philip Armstrong (MA, PhD) is the co-director (with Annie Potts) of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies (www.nzchas. canterbury.ac.nz), and he teaches English and Human-Animal Studies at the University of Canterbury. He is the editor (with Laurence Simmons) of Knowing Animals (Brill 2007), a collection of essays on “the animal turn” in philosophy, literary criticism, film and cultural studies; and he has just completed a monograph entitled What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (Routledge, 2008), which surveys the representation of human-animal relationships in novels written in English from the 18th to the 21st centuries. In addition, Philip is one of three scholars collaborating on a three-year project funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, which entails researching and writing a book entitled Kararehe: Animals in Art, Literature and Everyday Culture in Aotearoa New Zealand (under contract with Auckland University Press).

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Kirrilly Thompson Kirrilly Thompson is an anthropologist who carried out doctoral research in Andalusia looking at the human-animal relations of the corrida de rejones (the bullfight from horseback). Her academic interests in sport, performance, embodiment, human-animal relations and the human-animal boundary arise from her involvement in the equestrian discipline of dressage. She has also researched sports fan culture in a public health context through research into the role of alcohol in South Australian football fan subculture. Eva Hayward Eva Hayward is a guest researcher in the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden, and an assistant professor in the Department of Cinematic Arts, University of New Mexico. She has lectured and published widely on animal studies, experimental film, and embodiment. Her recently published essays, “Lessons From A Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Transspeciated Selves” and “Spider City Self,” explore intimacy, transsexuality, and animality.

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PREFACE In Hope of Change: Rethinking human-animal relations? Lynda Birke1 Writing this while the world’s humans busily debate how badly we have affected the climate, I think about the interconnectedness of life on earth. Humans, nonhumans, ecosystems—all are profoundly entwined, and interdependent. Just maybe, out of all this intense debate, we might wake up to the fact that we humans are not alone, that we inhabit this world with an astonishing array of others, whose lives we affect by our actions. It is that interconnection with other animals that fascinates so many of us, and which forms the basis for the newly emerging scholarship in human-animal studies. Wherever and however we live, we are always relating to animals—from companions by our firesides, to the animals whose flesh some eat, to the animals who are used in scientific research, in zoos, as transport, and to the parasites living in or on us. But these interspecies minglings have been absent from many areas of academic inquiry—especially in the social sciences and humanities, which have focused on what we humans are up to and ignored our co-travellers. At last, however, these omissions are being recognised, and nonhuman animals are (slowly) creeping and crawling into the ivory towers. The study of animals is, of course, traditionally a concern of the sciences, especially biology. That is the sense of theorizing animals that I am most familiar with, framed within the discourses of evolution and animal behaviour. Here, we can learn about the behaviour of wild animals and how they adapt to their particular environments. But that is only part of the story, and the flourishing field of humananimal studies testifies to how we can think about other animals and their relationship to us, in many different ways. Slowly, we have begun to acknowledge the importance of other species of animals in the creation of our societies, our cultures and our histories—as well 1

╇ Biological Sciences, University of Chester, Parkgate Road, Chester, UK

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as our roles in creating, and sometimes destroying, theirs. To think about our relationships with other animals is to engage in a serious intellectual challenge, for we must range widely and across academic disciplines. My own approach to human-animal studies derives partly from my background as a biologist specialized in the study of animal behaviour. It emerges, too, out of interest in our social relatings with other species, and how such relatings work within, and produce, what we understand as culture. But it is also founded in politics. While human-animal studies within the academy runs in parallel to broader cultural attitudes toward nonhuman animals, it has roots in animal advocacy politics as well. As such, it can both chart how we think about animals and help to create further change. But to do that effectively, it needs critical theory as well as activism; it needs the people prepared to do things (often radical things) which challenge the status quo, and at the same time it needs theories which challenge and develop our ideas. Perhaps it is my own history of working in the women’s and environmental movements which makes me always want both the practices and the theories to underpin political and social change. That is why I welcome the challenge posed here, in Theorizing Animals: Re-thinking Humanimal Relations. Theory matters. It matters because it helps us to understand these relations, it matters because it can inform politics, it matters because it can help drive change. And change we certainly do need. Within Western cultural traditions, there is a long history of domination, and of perceiving other animals as there solely for our use2. Although attitudes toward (some) other species and some forms of cruelty have altered over the last couple of centuries (we no longer consider it acceptable to have bear-baiting in the streets of London, for instance), there is still widespread abuse. Billions of animals suffer and die in the name of providing us with meat, with drugs, with entertainment—practices which show no sign of abating3. And billions suffer daily as their world is torn apart through our destruction of the earth’s habitats. ╇ I am not for a moment suggesting here that non-Western cultures necessarily relate to animals in non-dominating ways, simply that my concern here is with the Western intellectual heritage. 3 ╇ And some of which—the felling of forest to provide pasture for more cattle for meat production for instance—contribute to global ecological crises. 2

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While a separation of ‘us’ from ‘them’ is a very old habit, it was exacerbated by the modernist separation of nature from culture (and resulting separation of academic disciplines). While we are now much more aware that we inhabit hybrid naturecultures, that the dualism is deeply damaging, those old habits are hard to break. Thus, we continue to abuse animals, and we continue to search for ways in which they are ‘not as good as’ us. Theorizing human-animal relatings, however, has to recognize that all kinds of dualisms are interlinked in modernist thought. As several contributors to Theorizing Animals note, the justifications we use to separate ourselves work just as well if the ‘other’ is a human of different background to us, or another species. It’s precisely the tenacity of dualistic thinking that means we have to keep working at new theoretical approaches. Any new theory must find ways to transcend those entrenched habits. There are, inevitably, many ways to theorize animals, as this book attests. And we face many challenges in doing so. How, for instance, do we get away from the modernist heritage that leads us to talk about ‘animals’ (as implicitly different ‘from’ us)? Even though I’m a biologist, well-trained in Darwinian evolution, I still find it extremely difficult to escape such linguistic either/or traps. We always slip back—why else talk about human-animal studies, as though we are not them? What else is conveyed when I speak here in this preface about humans and ‘other animals’? And what is glossed over by referring to the generic ‘animals’: which animals are we talking about, in what contexts? We can welcome nonhuman animals into the annals of sociology and other disciplines—and doing so is leading to a great flow of fascinating and fruitful ideas. But there’s another hurdle facing us in our theorization: where exactly are real, material animals in our theorizing of them? Can we produce ideas that acknowledge other species’ abilities and integrities, or will they always be in the shadows of our anthrocentric notions? To be sure, recent work in cognitive ethology helps to emphasise the consciousness, capabilities, and sentience of all kinds of nonhumans; but how are those insights of ‘who animals are’ brought to bear on thinking in the social sciences and humanities, to inform how we think about relationships between us and other animals? It is extremely important that we recognize the involvement of nonhumans in the creation of cultures (human or otherwise), that we understand that they are not only ‘good to think with’, but are also crucially partners in the making of our world. How

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we theorize that, without marginalizing or trivializing them, continues to pose the kind of challenge admirably addressed by contributors here. Yet to me, the fundamental problem facing our theories lies with the inarticulacy of human-animal relatings. I often ponder this as I realize that however much we might write about what other animals do, or what they signify to us, we still cannot put into words what we feel. It is in those profound moments of connectedness, of touch or gaze between us and an individual who is of another species, that I become dumb, inarticulate, unable to express what is going on. I may be in touch every day with the horses and dogs living in my domestic sphere, or in earshot of the wild birds who squabble at the bird feeders in my garden: but despite often feeling that sense of profound connection, I still cannot speak their language(s). And they call the others ‘dumb’ animals! It is, however, often those inexpressible moments that make me want to work with ideas about how we relate to these myriad others. Despite the intellectual challenges, theorizing how those relationships work is vitally important—for all inhabitants of this world. It is through connections with/to other species that we might begin to challenge prevailing views of the world around us—and it is through those connections that change might be implemented. And by that I mean radical change; as some of the contributors here have noted, tinkering about on the surface of how we think about animals will do little to change long-established practices. To get to those points requires some serious work. Re-theorizing animals is an important part of that effort. It is imperative that such re-theorizing takes nonhuman animals seriously, treating them as aware actors on the social stage; it must recognise their awe-inspiring abilities rather than pointing to other species’ inability to do things like write poetry or software. And, in a world where these others are treated as mindless, disposable, our theories must emphasise their mindfulness. Theorization is critical for change, and change there must be in how we think about, perceive, behave toward others, of whatever species. Only when we stop inhabiting spaces and practices in which animals are rendered inarticulate, can we feel the wonder of meeting other minds.

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INTRODUCTION Thinking About Animals Nik Taylor This is a book concerned with the way that we humans think about animals. As such it is a book concerned with epistemology, i.e., how we know what we know and the processes by which certain facts and beliefs come to be considered as legitimate knowledge. The book is broadly post-humanist and post-structuralist in that it questions taken for granted assumptions about the human-animal divide and points to the ways in which this divide is maintained through the operation of knowledge. So, for example, many of the authors are concerned with discourses about animals, i.e. the taken for granted ways in which humans think and talk about animals as though they are inferior to humans and how this belief then becomes entrenched culturally. That this thinking and talking about animals is often the basis of academic theorizing about them is also acknowledged throughout. Animals have become the increasing focus of academic interest, an interest which spans multiple disciplines and begins to question hitherto taken for granted assumptions about the place of animals and their relationship vis á vis humans. Recent evidence regarding environmental problems and changes has led to an increased awareness of the inter-connectedness of all life which in turn has led (is leading?) to a rejection of the human-centered—anthropocentric— assumptions which are considered to be indicative of current ways of seeing animals. If humans are no longer ‘the centre of the universe’ and if our relations with animals are much more complex than previously thought, then we need to study them in new—and diverse— ways; in ways which continue to challenge us to re-think ‘our’ relationships with ‘them’. This then serves to legitimize much of the current interest in animals from disciplines previously largely concerned only with humans (i.e. the social sciences and the humanities). It also serves as the basis of the current book. Throughout the

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book there is an overwhelming interest in epistemology and linked to this is a general critique of post-Enlightenment ways of thinking. Post-Enlightenment thinking here is taken to refer to traditional schools of thought where rigid binaries or dualisms (such as those between human and animal, or between nature and culture) are taken uncritically as self-evident. This is also known as modernist thought as it is reflective of the period known as modernity. Whilst some have tried to attach concrete dates to the period known as ‘modernist’ (e.g. Giddens, 1991), in the current volume we are more concerned with the manifestation of modernism (and postmodernism) in intellectual culture as opposed to in concrete societal structures. As such, hard and fast dates are difficult to pin down. Suffice to say that modernism is associated with the post-enlightenment period of scientific and rationalistic dominance and discourse. Postmodernism, on the other hand, refers to ways of thinking which seek to deconstruct the taken for granted assumptions which underpin the rigid binaries which dominate modernist thought. Throughout the book there is concern to delineate modernist from postmodernist arguments. Modernism is taken to be the period from the EnlightenÂ� ment onwards wherein such binaries, or dualisms, were left largely uncontested. Post-modernism refers to the period of thought beyond that which deconstructs such dualisms and, in particular, points to the operation of power through their use, power that is achieved by the exclusion, or ‘othering’ of a particular group. Finally, many of the scholars in the current book take a post-humanist approach. This is an approach which points out that modernist thinking is humanist thinking, i.e. there is an assumption that humans are the ‘centre of the universe.’ In other words, most of the scholars in the current volume seek to critique standard ways of ‘thinking about’ animals and they do so from an epistemological starting point. The general assumption is that knowledge is socially—contextually—produced and it is done so with the assumption that the “subject is always already human” (Wolfe 2003, 1). Moreover, this humanism, i.e. the belief in the importance of the human subject to the exclusion of all else, is seen as the intellectual framework which leads to a deeply embedded anthropocentrism in modern ways of thinking. One of the consequences of this starting point for the scholars in the current volume is the point that knowledge is not produced in a vacuum; socio-Â� political forces are seen as playing a large part in the production of

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knowledge about animals, about their assumed place and about the ways in which they should be treated. In other words, for many of the contributors to this work epistemology and ontology overlap. Epistemology is concerned with knowledge (what counts as legitimate knowledge and how do we know what we know) whereas ontology is concerned with the state of being in the world. The link between the two in the current volume is that ideas about animals (i.e. epistemology) are seen to have a direct affect on their reality (i.e. ontology). As such this collection offers a selection of essays which are generally critical of current thinking about how we conceive of animals with the assumption that ideas and conceptions of them is inextricably linked to the treatment of them. These new approaches towards animals have necessitated, in turn, a re- think of traditional approaches towards animals and their ‘place’ in the human world. Increasingly scholars of human-animal relationships are arguing that traditional social theories, based upon postEnlightenment (i.e. modernist) pretensions are an inadequate starting point for the study of human-animal relationships. For example, the belief that there is a ‘Truth out there’ which is amenable to identification, study and control is seen as linked to, and predicated upon, the belief that ‘the social’ is an entirely different realm to ‘the natural’ and thus that animals and humans are worlds apart. This is an untenable base for a meaningful approach towards human-animal relationships (e.g. Irvine 2004; Taylor 2007) because it places animals strictly outside of assumed human interests. In essence, then, it writes animals out of consideration before the fact—meaning that we start with the assumption that their importance, if it does exist, is simply that of importance to humans and to society, not in their own right. This is largely seen as the anthropocentric legacy of modernist, post-Enlightenment, thinking. This mirrors current arguments in environmental and geographical studies where it is becoming clear that anthropocentrically based theories are no longer an adequate tool with which to theorize about increasingly complex human relationships with the natural environment (e.g. Whatmore 2006). Given that the theoretical and conceptual tools which we currently have available to us may well be archaic and unable to account for human-animal relationships, new directions are called for. Throughout this book authors interchange the terms modernity and post-enlightenment to invoke general paradigms of thought wherein rational and scientific approaches which separate nature

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from culture are the paramount ways of knowing the world. Traditional theories of human-animal relations operate within this firmly modernist framework, i.e. a framework which one which conceives of nature as something outside of, and separate to, humanity. Even those seeking to challenge traditional conceptions of animality and its place vis á vis humanity tend to operate within such paradigms. This has led to an unending stalemate when it comes to seeking appropriate ways to treat animals. For example, the various theorists which argue that rights should be given to animals find themselves arguing ceaselessly with their opponents regarding the attribution—or lack of—the given criterion of the day. Thus we see endless arguments regarding the possession (or attribution) of language, culture, moral frameworks, sentience (see, for e.g. Regan 1984; Singer 1990) and so on in animals. The debate rages on both sides with advances in ethology and the biological sciences often re-igniting such arguments. However, as soon as one attribute is ‘proven’ to exist in animals the bar is raised and we find ourselves faced with a new set of arguments regarding the lack of something in animals that humans are purported to possess. And the merry-go-round continues. Whilst not detracting from the findings of studies which demonstrate the rich and detailed lives of nonhuman animals there is a need to move beyond this argument. One particularly obvious starting point might be the fact that humans are animals. However, our modernist (western) intellectual heritage is one which has sought to establish that humans are somehow different to animals. Following classical Cartesian arguments the prevailing point of view is that close relationships can only be formed and sustained by humans (e.g. Arluke & Sanders 1996; Cazaux, 1999; Sanders 2003), and this has been further embedded in western epistemologies by the the utilitarian and/or anthropocentric ideology that animals are a means to human ends (Taylor 2007a & b). This has resulted in the vast body of social thought which starts from a point wherein the social is seen as polar opposite to the natural, with the social being perceived as superior to the natural. Furthermore this persistent belief pervades our very epistemological foundation. For example, despite Darwin’s insistence on both the physical and mental continuity between humans and nonhumans, as evidenced by the ‘anthropomorphism’ which pervades his writings (Crist 1999), modern (western) ideologies of humans and animals only (tentatively) accept the physical continuity he proposed.

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If we truly wish to begin to study human relations with animals then we need to find ways to move past current entrenched beliefs regarding human superiority and ontological centrality and instead turn to thinking about animals in entirely new ways. This entails an examination of the various epistemological practices used on a daily basis designed to obfuscate the fact that humans are indeed animals and that the divisions between human and animal and social and natural, are socially constructed and maintained. In essence, what is needed is an examination of the inherent anthropocentrism of western thinking which is inevitably linked to the modernist project which itself is predicated upon the superiority of humans over nature and their animal counterparts. Recognition of the embedded anthropocentrism and humanism of modernist theory has led to numerous post-humanist attempts to re-conceive the ways in which we think about animals. Eschewing traditional structure versus agency arguments which lead inevitably to the intractable polar opposites that Latour (2004) names monoÂ� naturalism or multi-culturalism, has led post-humanist thinkers to develop entirely new ways of conceiving human-animal relaÂ� tionships. Seeking to start from an entirely new place, scholars of human-animal relations are at the forefront of groundbreaking new paradigmatic attempts to conceive human-animal relations and, in turn, nature-culture debates. Collections such as Simmons and Armstrong’s Knowing Animals (2007) and Tyler and Rossini’s Animal Encounters (2009) indicate that there is both an interest in, and need for, new and innovative ways to approach our relationships with animals. In turn, the theoretical frameworks which we utilize to analyze these ‘humanimal’ (Beatson, this volume) relations also need revising. One of the key points that most of the scholars in this field are at pains to make is that the divisions we take for granted (social v natural; animal v human) are no longer viable ways of seeing the world. And, in fact, they over-simplify what is, in reality, a much messier terrain of interconnected ‘things’ (humans, animals, inanimate objects, technology and so on). There is then a trend within this area to coin new—yoked—phrases to represent this. Examples include Haraway’s ‘naturecultures’ (1991) and the notion of ‘humanimal’ put forth in this volume by Beatson. Following on from these different ways to think about interlinked human-animal lives, the current collection aims to present a variety of innovative ways to

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Â� re-think humanimal relations informed by a variety of academic disciplines. Whilst not every author presented here would necessarily identify as post-humanist, the volume itself, as a whole, is necessarily so in that its aim is to re-articulate the way humans ‘know animals.’ And despite differences brought about by intellectual background, all the authors presented here have one thing in common—they aim to problematise the notion of ‘animal’ and the human-animal relationship in order to unpack traditional assumptions about human relations with animals and about the place of animals within the world. As with any new area of knowledge, no one way forward will suffice. It is crucial, therefore that we find both new ways, and new places, to think about animals. As such the current volume presents a deliberately eclectic collection of potential—alternate—ways to ‘know animals.’ It is not intended to be exhaustive in scope but rather to present new ideas and new ways forward. The range of work presented here is testament to both the burgeoning interest in humananimal relations and to their importance, whether this importance be seen as primarily to humans (e.g. what do animals tell us about ourselves) or primarily to animals (e.g. how do epistemological positionings of animals dictate human treatments of them). The book is divided into four sections: (1) Knotty Problems: To Theorise or Not? (2) Animals and Modernity, (3) Animal Performers, and (4) Forward Thinking Section One: Knotty Problems: To Theorise or Not? The first section is comprised of two very different approaches to the idea of theorizing animals. Both chapters in this section put forth the argument that humans can (and should) help other animals, but precisely how we go about this is the topic of debate here. Beatson (chapter 1) argues that this can be achieved by re-conceiving our approaches to human animal studies whilst Kemmerer (chapter 2) argues that we need to abandon theory entirely and instead concentrate on effecting change by other means. The first chapter sets out an alternative heuristic map of humanimal relations and, as such, opens this volume with one particular classificatory system which offers a different way of ordering our thought about animals and their relations with humans. In this

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Â�chapter, Beatson uses the concept of ‘mutual determination’ to argue that “through the very process of being acted upon by humans, animals unwittingly shape human society in their own image.” Beatson argues that culture mediates five key areas—population, economy, politics, community, and welfare—which themselves encompass “any and every conceivable form of human-animal relationship” which, in turn are subsumed under the rubric of ‘nature.’ Taking as its starting point the separation of human and animal via the invention of culture, this chapter explores the various forms that human “cultural dictatorship” over nature has taken. For example, Beatson argues that whilst the main impact of humans on animal populations has been to shrink and/or eradicate them, there has been a corresponding impact by animals on human culture. This is evidenced by such things as the geographical distribution of human populations being historically influenced by the migration and distribution of nonhuman populations. This idea of ‘mutual determination’ is used throughout the chapter to demonstrate that human and animal lives are inextricably linked—be it via issues of population, economics, politics, community or welfare. The chapter concludes with a direct discussion of the role of culture in human-animal relations: direct because Beatson is clear that culture has been a constant—if oblique— companion throughout the preceding five key spheres of interest. Beatson argues that it is through the pernicious operation of discourse that culture becomes something taken for granted and through this serves to legitimate human subjugation of other animals. His final point, however, is unfailingly optimistic: that through a re-theorization of the cultural constructions of human-animal relations “the yoke of human dominion, of which culture is an integral component, is starting to weigh slightly less oppressively on our fellow creatures.” The next chapter offers a direct counter-argument to that of the first. After offering an overview of how certain (human) groups have theorized about other (human) groups, Kemmerer explores the other end of the analytical spectrum by arguing that we might wish to consider not theorizing at all. She opens with a cautionary tale regarding the very idea of theorizing. Pointing out that theories are often put forth by those with vested interests in the ideas behind them, or the behavior they encourage, she reminds us that if we survey all of the theories ever proposed throughout human history “the vast majority” of them have been proven wrong. She points out that “vested Â�interests

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and the theories that support vested interests …require that ‘Others’ be subjugated”. After offering examples of the theoretical justification of the subjugation of human ‘Others’ such as slaves and women, Kemmerer moves to discuss theories about animal ‘Others’. She argues that human theorizing about animals begins from an exclusivist perspective. For Kemmerer, this is an ever present failing/necessity of current theories about animals because the human sense of self requires a clear dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’, human and animal, which justifies current hierarchical thinking which in turn establishes humans above all other species. She goes on to highlight examples, such as language, intelligence and morality, wherein human theorizing about animals is used to maintain a separate, and inferior, status for animals. Following this abstract outline of the harm that theories can do, Kemmerer moves to examine specific practices, e.g. factory farming and the veal industry, which continue to proliferate due to the inherent justification current theories about animals offer. Her conclusions are stark and challenging—that humans have “proven embarrassingly partial in theorizing about ‘Others’”; that self interested theories allow the continuance of exploitative behaviors towards animals; that human failure to adopt a compassionate morality towards animals is a direct result of our theories about them; that it is time to stop theorizing and instead “to bring change through choices”. Section Two: Animals and Modernity The second section addresses human animal relations and species boundaries under modernity. In the first chapter of this section (chapter 3), Murray addresses the road to modernity and its effects on animals. Murray blurs species boundaries by pointing to the speciesism inherent in classical Marxist statements regarding the transition to modernity and by demonstrating how Marxist concepts regarding human slavery and oppression are applicable to animals. In the second chapter of this section (chapter 4), Molloy offers an analysis of human-animal relations within reflexive modernity which are characterized by the need for a preservation of species boundaries through her analysis of the ‘dangerous dogs’ moral panic which occurred in the UK in the late nineties. Finally, in this section Kendall (chapter 5) points out that even though modernity is often thought

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characterized by reason and rationality at the expense of the charismatic and the magical, human-animal relations often have ritualistic overtones which offer transcendent experiences. The chapters in this section have in common not only attempts to theorize about the impact of modernity on animals and on human-animal relations, but the fact that they seek to extend traditional social theories to nonhuman animals. In chapter three, Murray argues that in debates about the transition to modern capitalism the role of non-human animals has hitherto been ignored. To Murray, existing debates, which focus exclusively on human social relations, are speciesist and ignore the fact that this transition to capitalism from feudalism was constructed in and through particular forms of speciesist social relationships. Murray draws analogies between the enslavement of humans and of animals in early societies and points out that whilst freeing of human slaves occurred it did not find a corollary in the status of animals who remained then, as now, property of human masters. Utilizing a traditional Marxist framework and drawing on standardized Marxist debates, Murray demonstrates how capitalism was founded on the “back of hooves, paws and claws” whilst both necessitating and extending the slavery of nonhuman animals. She points out how Taylorist and Fordist methods, developed to increase worker efficiency, are relentlessly applied to intensive, industrial animal production wherein animals have even less freedoms than their human predecessors did under such systems. Moreover, for Murray, such systems do not benefit from the products of the animal-slaves alone but from the very animals themselves who become commodified in the process. Following a brief review of the intellectual foundations which generated Marx’ species blind philosophy—humanism— Murray goes on to point out the numerous concepts within Marxism which can readily apply to animals in capitalist societies. These include not only the increasing commodification of animals, but the reification of this process whereby the social relationships which cause and maintain this commodification remain obfuscated. Throughout the chapter Murray makes it clear that there is nothing intrinsic to animals that necessitate this outcome, rather it is the outcome of “an unholy alliance between science, technology and the pursuit of profit” which leads to animals being transformed into commodities for human use; into “miraculous machines” which are “sacrificed for the multitudes.”

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introduction

Taking the introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act [DDA] (1991) in the UK as a starting point, Molloy is concerned with analyzing the “specific social and cultural conditions and frameworks of understanding that gave rise to the emergence of dogs as risks in the UK”. Utilizing theories of risk she demonstrates how the moral panic surrounding ‘dangerous’ dogs in the nineties in the UK was used to negotiate and to affirm both “social hierarchies and cultural norms”. Molloy points out that Beck’s original thesis on risk was based on an analysis of the consequences of the loss of a clear demarcation between nature and culture. She then argues that certain companion animal keeping practices can be understood, within this framework, as part of the myriad social control practices which developed in response to a sense of the loss of clear nature-culture boundaries. Given that “nowhere is the line between nature and culture more blurred than within pet-keeping practices where nonhuman animals are brought into the domestic sphere” it is a perfect place to analyze the function of various regulatory practices—of which the DDA is the most overt. Molloy then uses the idea of moral panics to culturally and historically trace the development of the construction of certain dogs as risky. A construction which ultimately led to a moral divide between those perceived as ‘good’ dog owners and those perceived to be ‘bad’ dog owners. Central to this was the pervasive and dominant construction of a relationship between some marginalized males and the ownership of certain types of ‘dangerous’ dogs, in particular pit bulls. A relationship which was characterized by perceived similarities in aggressive behavior. Taking examples from the media at the time, Molloy demonstrates how pit bull owners were slowly denied the opportunities to be credible sources of knowledge and how, instead, a complex interplay between the media and various state agencies came into being which ensured that the discourse surrounding dangerous dogs was extended to become a discourse about social deviance. Furthermore, in a response to the ontological insecurities characteristic of reflexive modernity the discourse also came to be about nature-culture boundary maintenance. Molloy thus argues that ‘risk’ was central to the construction of the abject status of certain animals and that ‘abject animality’ combined with Beck’s model of risk society offers a meaningful way to think about human relations with ‘dangerous dogs.’ The next chapter maintains this theme of animals and modernity by considering ritual and tradition as a way of thinking about human

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relations with animals. Kendall examines two humanimal intersections—ancient Greek sacrifice and Balinese cockfights—in order to develop his argument that rationalistic attempts to characterize society—and animals’ place within it—may be misplaced. He points out that modern societies render animals invisible by removing any wonder or magic that might have once been bestowed upon them and replacing it instead with a rational discourse. For Kendall, the theory that ‘hot’ interactions between humans and animals which gave rise to wonder and mysticism such as those found in the ‘wild’, have increasingly been replaced by ‘cold’ interactions which are characterized by inspection, surveillance and reason, is a compelling one but only a partial one. He argues that there are several exceptions to this idea that the ‘heat’ has slowly been drained from human encounters with animals. For example, he points towards the rituals involved in whale watching—where the ritual is primarily that of the whales rather than the humans. Nonetheless he argues that human whale watching practices with their stress on the naturalness of the encounter (the whales may or may not show; nature is uncontrollable) and the fact that here humans are able to play a part in the primordial ritual of whale migrations offer a ‘transcendent experience’. This experience, he argues, holds all the hallmarks of a ritual. He expands on this argument by turning to look at dog and cat shows where again he sees evidence of both tradition and ritual. He concludes that “modernity was never really completely drained of tradition and ritual, and critical reason was never really alone on the battlefield, with tradition dead at its feet”. Instead, ritual and tradition have been— and still are—ever present and offer an alternative way to understand both “ourselves and how we make sense of non-human animals”. Section Three: Animal Performers The third section concentrates on the ideas of performance and performativity as a way to think about human-animal relations. In the first chapter of this section (chapter 6) Szarycz argues that all life is dramaturgical and that the intertwined ideas of performance and performativity can be used to meaningfully explore human-animal relations. Related to this is the next chapter (chapter 7) where Armstrong uses a visit to London Zoo whereupon he ‘gazes’ at a captive tiger whilst she gazes elsewhere, to discuss the meaning of

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animal ‘gazes’ and the role that this concept might play in fostering new ways to think about animals. In chapter 6 Szarycz argues that all social life is dramaturgical and he seeks to extend this analysis to non-human animals by analyzing how humans construct perceptions of the natural world through representations of animal actors. The chapter begins with a discussion of performance and performativity and an examination of the possibility, and appropriateness, of applying these terms/theories to nonhuman animals. By arguing that performance is a process which depends on the skill of the actor, its context and its interpretation, Szarycz points out that it is a concept which can readily be applied to nonhuman animals. He points out that animal performances are narratives about nature wherein audiences seek—through their interpretations of the performance and associated animal behaviors—to discover something about the physical and mental capacities of the actor. Using examples drawn from traditional sites of animal performance, e.g. circuses, Szarycz demonstrates how the implication that trained animal behavior is an extension of their natural behavior is one which is directed by human assumptions about animal behavior mediated through ‘staged performances’. Szarycz points to the differences between the presentation and the re-presentation of nonhuman animals, the main difference being that presentation is direct whilst re-presentation is mediated. Despite these differences, and the differences they in turn lead to in terms of both animal behavior and human participation in animal performances, Szarycz concludes that they are subsumed within ideological frameworks which dominate the way various discourses (e.g. ‘animal’, ‘wild’, ‘nature’) are constructed within human cultures. Despite this, Szarycz concludes that there is something inherently inexplicable, magical, in animal performance and that through it “animals reveal something we did not know of them”. Armstrong begins his chapter by considering the gaze of a captive tiger and asks what does it mean if that which we are theorizing about can return our gaze; can look back at us? Armstrong uses two main ideas here. The first is Berger’s argument that industrial capitalism has led to the disappearance of ‘real’ animals, to be substituted by virtual animality (e.g. as spectacles in zoos). The second is Derrida’s now famous account of the encounter he had with his cat one morning and the questions it led him to. Drawing from both of these ideas, Armstrong uses the idea of ‘gaze’ (both from human to

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animal and from animal to human) as the organizing principle of this chapter. Following a historical review of the mythical qualities bestowed upon animals’ eyes and their gaze, this chapter then turns to a discussion of the various events which contributed to the paradigm shift which ultimately removed visual agency from nonhuman species and in turn served to reify human superiority. Despite the ascendency of rationalistic and logical paradigms which often account for perceived animal inferiority, Armstrong demonstrates how many key pieces of post-enlightenment literature maintain earlier mythical ideas regarding the gaze of animals. However, this has been accomplished at the price of subsuming these ideas within a deeply analytically rational paradigm which again serves to both create and justify human superiority over animals. This chapter then moves onto more contemporary accounts of animals and argues that just as industrial modernity involved the disappearance of animals, one of the hallmarks of postmodernity is an attempt to reverse this. Armstrong points out that much postmodern literature concerning animals represents the ontological insecurity characteristic of modernity and uses animals to point to an “atavistic fear”. However, Armstrong argues that one response to this fear, rather than simply harking back to the strict hierarchical relations between humans and animals constitutive of modernity, could be to instead take the opportunity to develop new theories and material relations between humans and animals. For the remainder of the chapter, Armstrong does just this: he weaves in ideas from various scholars and disciplines to conclude that we need to bring together philosophy, theory, the sciences and new theories about animals to allow us to learn from, as well as about, our nonhuman counterparts. Section Four: Forward Thinking The final section of the book is concerned with the application of a relatively new social theory—Actor Network Theory (ANT)—to human animal relations. In the first chapter of this section (Chapter 8), Taylor asks whether social theory as it currently stands is adequate to the task of theorizing about, and emancipating, animals. She argues that it is not—that its modernist base is inherently anthropocentric and based upon the very dualisms that maintain humananimal boundaries which in turn legitimate animal oppression. She

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then turns to a discussion of ANT as one alternate way of thinking about animals. Similarly, Thompson (chapter 9) argues that traditional ways of seeing horse riders gives primacy to the human in the relationship at the expense of the horse who is often overlooked entirely. She argues that a fusion of ANT and the centaur metaphor are alternative ways of conceptualizing the hybridity of horse-rider relations. Finally, the book concludes with a chapter which addresses the ways in which technology, humans and animals come together to form a working display of jellies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The author, Hayward, is keen to draw attention away from traditional ways of thinking about animals on display (as passive objects subject to human gaze) and instead outlines ways of thinking which again stress the interplay of humans, animals and objects. In the first chapter of this final section, Taylor points out that as social theorists increasingly attempt to come to grips with ‘the animal question’ they are finding that a direct corollary of this is the need to revisit ‘the social question’ as current conceptions of animals are based on a belief in the social-natural divide. This chapter questions whether Sociology, in its current forms, can indeed, ever resolve ‘the animal question’ without recourse to established epistemological frameworks which ultimately underpin animal oppression in modern society. Concluding that social theories are inadequate in this respect the author then explores various facets of post-humanist thought, and in particular, Actor Network Theory, as one potential starting point for a resolution of these issues. Pointing out that ANT starts from an epistemological point wherein humans, animals, technology and objects are considered as equal, Taylor argues that this is one particularly fruitful way forwards for human-animal scholars who seek to move beyond agency-structure debates and envision a different future for animals. She concludes the chapter with considerations of the problems inherent to adopting ANT wholesale as a way forward in human-animal studies and points towards issues which need further consideration within such a framework, such as the moral status of animals. In chapter 8 Thompson explores new ways to address humanhorse relations. Stressing the necessity for inter-corporeal communication between human and horse, she points out that the hybrid generated from the riding relationship questions taken for granted human-animal boundaries. Using data drawn from fieldwork in Andalusia, research into the corrida de rejones (bullfight from

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Â�horseback) and personal equestrienne experiences, Thompson uses this chapter to investigate the utility of the centaur metaphor to better explore human-horse relationships. In particular she argues that the centaur metaphor may meaningfully be used to draw attention to the usually taken for granted role of the horse by allowing a description of the multiple levels of hybridity which are the ultimate aim for most riders. For Thompson, human-horse relationships are unique. This uniqueness can be found, for example, in the fact that the horse is one of the largest animals that humans form close ties with and in the fact that the horse remains perceived as both wild and domesticated at the same time. Ultimately, however, it is the rider-horse relationship which leads to a hybrid relationship, a relationship “generated through the interaction of rider and horse” which is only possible “though a harmonization of human and animal”. This then leads to the “ontological thrill” of being more than just human and more than just horse, but being a true hybrid—a centaur. It is this uniqueness that for Thompson, demands unique (or at least new) ways of addressing human-horse relations. For her, ANT offers this. With its stress on the ‘relatings’ rather than the ‘relators’, ANT allows the idea of the horse playing a central role. Furthermore, with its insistence that humans exist and operate within broader networks of nonhumans (in ANT this term covers animals as well as non sentient artifacts, although does not confer the same moral status to them as detractors tend to argue) it allows for an analysis of rider-horse relations in such a way as to take account of the horse and various other contextual and spatial phenomenon such as technology (e.g. tack). Thompson finishes the chapter by applying these ideas to a comparison of the picador and rejoneador rider-technology-horse networks in the Spanish corrida. In the final chapter of the volume Hayward opens by claiming that “species don’t just have relationships, they are relationships”. She then explores this further using Haraway’s idea of ‘metaplasm’. For Hayward, metaplasm is a way of getting at the co-mingling of “sign, matter and action” which is constitutive of social life and has particular relevance for human-animal studies as it allows analyses which do not privilege the human. Instead it leads to an analysis which focuses on the material relationality between beings/things rather than on (human) actors alone. Hayward then uses her own visits to a jellyfish exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) to explore this idea further. The exhibit was one which worked

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Â�specifically by “building nature” to immerse both observers and observed in a ‘natural’ environment. Her guiding questions throughout the piece are: “how does the display form and re-form ontologies and epistemologies?”, “what metaplasm of TechnoHumanAnimal emerge?” She points to the immersive nature of the exhibit as one which deliberately pulls at the “foundations of familiar order”. This intensity of involvement and immersion in the virtual marine world of the jellies is one where familiar order is “transposed, altered, reconfigured” so that observers, if only for a short period of time, cohabit rather than merely observe. Given that technology enables this kind of immersive, cohabiting experience, what role then is left for the jellies? Or, as Hayward puts it “how do we account for their presence in the apparatuses of immersion, refraction and transparency?” She acknowledges that analyses which stress the marketability of certain animal features (here, the ‘difference’ of the jellies) and/or their role as an embodiment of nature (as opposed to culture) may be relevant to understanding parts of the MBA display. However, she points to the inherent anthropocentrism of such theories and instead, insists that we need to recognize the jellies own participation in the exhibit and the life of the aquarium. Ultimately she argues “‘they’ and ‘we’ are metaplastic—we are of each other through processes of being and knowing not as discrete units, but as material ensembles made possible by the Drifters display”. The title of this final section of the book is a deliberately misleading in that it suggests there is a definitive future to get to, where our thinking about animals might be significantly different. However, one of the central arguments of this collection is that there is no such thing as a finite point we are/should be reaching. We decided to leave the title in, however, as it suggests a journey, movement, and it is precisely this optimism we wish to leave you with: that things are forever moving, knowledge is always changing; attitudes—and with them epistemologies and methodologies, are always malleable, mutable and unfixed. Thus a future which (re) conceives of nonhuman animals in entirely different ways is not beyond reach. In closing we would like to briefly reflect on the link between theory and practice. Whilst detractors often question the need to theorize about anything at all, pointing out that it is action which counts, we defend our choice to publish a book which theorizes about animals. It is our contention that theory and practice are inextricably linked: that the ways in which we think about, and know, animals

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directs how we treat them. If we think that animals are inferior ‘Others’ to humans then we neatly justify much (if not all) of the horrible practices they are subject to throughout the world. Accordingly, if we change the underlying assumptions we have about animals it must lead to a change in the way we treat them. One cannot occur without the other. This book is therefore much more than an academic exercise; it is the beginning of a prescription for change. We hope that you find this book as enjoyable to read as we did to put together. References Arluke, A. and C. Sanders. 1996. Regarding Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bekoff, M. and J. Pierce. 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cazaux, G. 1999. “Beauty and the Beast: Animal Abuse form a Non-speciesist Criminological Perspective.” Crime, Law & Social Change 31( 2): 105-126. Crist, E. 1999. Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity. Haraway, D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Irvine, L. 2004. If you Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection With Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Latour, B. 2004. The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Regan, T. 1984. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sanders, C. 2003. “Actions Speak Louder than Words: Close Relationships between Humans and Nonhuman Animals.” Symbolic Interaction 26(3): 405-426. Simmons, L., and P. Armstrong. 2007. Knowing Animals. Boston and Lieden: Brill Academic Publishers. Singer, P. 1990. Animal Liberation. London: Harper Collins. Taylor, N. 2007a. “Never an it: Intersubjectivity and the Creation of Personhood in an Animal Shelter.” Qualitative Sociology Review 3(1) http://www.qualitative sociologyreview.org /ENG/archive_eng.php. Accessed March 2010. Taylor, N. 2007b. “Human-Animal Studies: A Challenge to Social Boundaries?” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas 24(1): 1-5. Tyler, T., and M. Rossini. 2009. Animal Encounters. Boston and Lieden: Brill Academic Publishers. Whatmore, S. 2006. Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces. London: Sage. Wolfe, C. 2003. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species and Posthumanist Theory Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

PART ONE

KNOTTY PROBLEMS: TO THEORISE OR NOT?

CHAPTER ONE

Mapping Human Animal Relations Peter Beatson This chapter is an exercise in conceptual cartography. Its purpose is to help contribute clarity and order to the myriad forms that humananimal interactions can take, to the wide diversity of academic disciplines involved in the study of those interactions, and to the many sites where active intervention on behalf of abused animals occurs. The discussion is not ‘theoretical’ as such, but undertakes the more modest, pretheoretical task of constructing what might alternatively be termed a unified heuristic field, a classificatory system, an analytical framework, or a sociological map. The map comprises seven regions. Any and every conceivable form of human-animal relationship can be classified into at least one of those regions. They are:

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chapter one Conjunctures, disjunctures and issues

At their most elementary level, the seven zones of the map provide a heuristic check list for theorists in the field of Human-Animal Studies of all the key factors that must be fed into their descriptive or explanatory equations. Every relationship between humans and particular kinds of animals can only be fully and adequately theorised when regarded as the conjuncture (i.e. the simultaneous interplay) of all seven spheres. Bearing these conjunctures in mind helps guard theorists against the reductionism inherent in ‘one factor’ causal explanations. The seven spheres mutually determine one another, and no one zone, be it economic, political, cultural or whatever, has ontological priority. In the present chapter, they have been teased apart for analytical clarity, but in messy reality they are inextricably interwoven. Over and above the basic heuristic function just mentioned, the analytical model is particularly fecund from a theoretical perspective when used to identify the ‘disjunctures’—i.e. the points of tension, contradiction or conflict—which exist both between different zones of the map and within each zone itself. The identification of such disjunctures enables us to explore and clarify the many issues surrounding the human-animal nexus—the practical and ethical problems it generates, and the conflicts to which it gives rise as the interests of humans and of animals collide both within and between the seven spheres. Because of space limitations, it has not been possible to do more than hint at the nature and complexity of such issues, nor to flesh out and give colour to the descriptive generalisations contained in this chapter through the use of illustrative examples. The present discussion contains only the bare skeleton: it would require a full book in its own right to flesh out its staccato abstractions and bring them fully to life. All the present author is able to do to compensate for the high level of generality at which the chapter is written, and the brevity with which its constitutive points are presented, is to refer readers to the suggested Further Readings listed in-text at the end of each section.

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Mutual Determination Despite the frustrating inability to adequately unpack issues and provide concrete examples, the scheme’s potential theoretical usefulness can at least be suggested through developing one key sociological theme, which will be employed as a core organising principle throughout the discussion—a theme to be termed ‘mutual determination’. By this term is meant the two-way processes through which human society and the non-human animal kingdom condition each other. On the one hand, humans forge a large part of the destiny of many other species. Animals’ life experiences and their very identities are to a very large extent determined by how humans think and feel about them, and how they act towards them. In the power struggles that take place endlessly amongst all life forms, the human species has gained the upper hand in many respects. In each of the seven spheres, humans play God to other animals. That is only half the story, though. In the process of shaping animals to human ends, human society simultaneously shapes itself. If the fate of animals is to a large extent in human hands, our own destinies are determined by the animals with which we interact. Animals depend on us, but we in turn depend on them. In each sphere, then, it will first be shown how humans have acted upon other animal species, shaping them in line with our own needs and desires, but then the other side of the coin will be revealed—how in the process of subjugating animals to human dominion, we have simultaneously forged our own social identities. It is prudent, however, to add a note of qualification about describing this two-way process as ‘mutual’. While it is true that predatory, disease-bearing or destructive animals have exercised their own autonomous agency by damaging or killing humans and their livestock, or by destroying property, they have never consciously and deliberately targeted human society as they themselves have been targeted. Thus, the term ‘mutuality’ does not necessarily imply that nonhuman animals are independent agents of social determination. Even where such agency does exist, it is accidental. For the most part, it is only through becoming the objects of human conscious activity that animals have been empowered as the unconscious subjects of social construction. That point accepted, however, our core sociological theme holds good: through the very process of being acted upon by

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humans, animals unwittingly shape human society in their own image. NATURE Strictly speaking, ‘nature’—by which is meant both the external natural environment or wilderness, and also the internal biological organisms of individual life forms—lies outside the domain of human society altogether. It existed billions of years before humans appeared on the planet, and it lays down the conditions on which human life exists. Thus, the natural world really occupies a separate sphere of its own, different in kind from the main body of our sociological map. The latter comprises the six remaining zones, and it is those six we will mainly be discussing. However, nature will be our constant companion, even if not explicitly mentioned by name, since it is the natural world that ultimately sets the rules by which the social game is played. Once upon a time, no divide between the natural and the human existed. There was only ‘the wild’. For over three million years, our ancient forebears the hominids, such as Australopithecus africanus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus, lived in the wilderness alongside all other species. Only one relationship existed between the ancient proto-humans and their neighbours—the relationship of predator and prey. Non-human carnivores killed and ate humans, while humans in turn ate whatever animals they could catch and kill with their hands or rudimentary weapons. Then something quite extraordinary occurred to alter the balance of power out there in the wild. Between 50,000 and 150,000 years ago (nobody knows for sure) a new species called Homo sapiens came on the scene, a species that developed two unique qualities which progressively allowed it to transcend the dominion of nature. On the one hand, its biological infrastructure evolved new features, notably an upright, bipedal posture, opposable thumbs, a larynx able to emit a wide range of sounds, and an enlarged, neurologically complex neocortex, which in conjunction gave it the competitive edge on other species. On the other hand, and in intimate conjunction with these biological developments, it invented for itself something we now call ‘culture’. This will be explored more fully at the end of the chapter, but it has played such a major determining role in humanity’s relationship with nature, it is unavoidable that culture should be introduced right at the outset of the story.

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Putting it at its most general, culture is everything our species possesses that we created for ourselves, rather than being endowed with by biology, and everything which is transmitted via the media of imitation, learning and language rather than being genetically acquired through sexual reproduction. The new breed of naked apes that began walking the planet on their hind legs around 100,000 years ago were physically pathetic specimens, lacking in all but the most rudimentary natural forms of self-protection and of aggression, yet their evolving material culture (everything made and manipulated manually) gave it increasing protection from predators, while making it a far more effective killing machine. It defended itself, and it caught and killed other animals, with a new array of technology, such as spears, bows and arrows, poisons, nets, running nooses and concealed pits with sharp stakes at the bottom. It compensated for its own exposed skin by wearing the hides it flayed from the animals it killed, and it kept itself warm, frightened off carnivores and made flesh more edible for its under-developed teeth by the use of fire. Thus, through the use of material culture the balance of power shifted radically and irreversibly in favour of the new species. At the same time, something even more remarkable began to happen. Through its newly acquired symbolic culture (i.e. thought and its representation in signs) people began to stock their inner worlds with ideas and images of other species. Humans attributed supernatural qualities to animals, they told stories about them, they created ritual ceremonies around them, they adopted them as totems, they drew pictures of them, and they built up a cumulative storehouse of knowledge about their attributes and activities. They thus not only interacted with animals on a physical basis, but created whole inner worlds of the mind populated by those animals. In short, the human species stepped out of nature and into culture. Of course, humans still retained the basic biological infrastructure they shared with other natural organisms, and which still determines many of their experiences and actions. Granted that point, culture played an ever more dominant role in social evolution, and nature, along with the wilderness that embodied it, was increasingly pushed to the periphery of human life. A ‘Great Divide’ was created: humanity drew a circle around itself, and retreated behind the defensive walls that marked the point where the wilderness ended and their society began.

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Having created this citadel, the human species then spread out from its original homeland in Africa, pushing the walls of the human sphere out further and further, colonising an ever greater amount of the former wilderness. Down the millennia, they replaced its forests with farms, built cities over it, drove roads through it, quarried it for metals and fossil fuels, and they polluted it with the waste products of human industry. As the circle of the human expanded to eventually encompass the entire planet, the wild creatures retreated before the human invaders, were exterminated, or were dragged across the great divide to exist henceforward on terms determined not by nature alone, but by nature as moulded by an evolutionary newcomer that had learned how to dictate to evolution itself. The rest of this chapter will explore the various forms this cultural dictatorship over nature has taken, beginning with its impact on the very biology of other species. Further Reading: Nature

Bulliet 2005, Chapters 3 & 4; Diamond 1998, Chapter 1; Patterson 2002, Chapter 1.

DEMOGRAPHY Physical bodies are the basic building blocks out of which all societies, both human and animal, are constructed. It is logical, therefore, to begin our exploration of the social map with the demographic infrastructure in which those bodies are situated. Defined broadly, demography involves the description and explanation of the general characteristics of a given population, notably its changing size, composition and distribution, and the ways its members make their entrances and exits via birth, death and migration. Fatal Contact The first and most traumatic impact of human on non-human populaÂ�tions can be summed up in the term ‘fatal contact’. As Homo sapiens spread out across the planet, other species were wiped out. The archaeological records show that when humanity colonised new continents or islands many of the native animal inhabitants soon became extinct. It is believed this fatal contact originally may have occurred because the animals in question had not evolved alongÂ�side humans, and therefore had no in-built biological fear of them. The wholesale destruction of biodiversity began with prehistoric

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Â�hunter-gatherers, but resumed with new intensity in the modernist era—the last 250 years or so—which has seen species in all parts of the world driven to the verge of extinction or beyond at an everincreasing rate. Some have been deliberately targeted, either as resources to harvest, game to hunt, or pests to eradicate. Other species have been the incidental victims of economic development, perishing en masse when forests were destroyed, wetlands drained, or their habitat was polluted with industrial waste. Others again were exterminated by predators such as rats and mustelids introduced by human colonists. The sheer size of the human population has also played a major role in the destruction of biodiversity. Prior to the modern period, there seemed to be enough room on the planet for all species, but over the last few centuries it has become chronically over-crowded. At the start of the nineteenth century, our numbers are estimated to have hit the one billion mark for the first time in human history. Just two centuries later, we are well on the way to seven billion, and still rising. The more the human population expanded, the more room it occupied, and there was correspondingly less for wildlife. Some conservationists hold that the human population explosion is the single most dangerous threat to the on-going survival of endangered species, especially in places like South America, Africa, India, China and Indonesia, where—unlike in the West—populations continue to grow apace. Further reading: Fatal Contact

Ackerman 1995; Armstrong & Botzler 2003, Part VII; Carson 1994; Dolins 1999, Part V; Eldredge 1998; Garner 2004, Chapter 6; Quammen 1996; Regenstein 1975; Stallwood 2002, Part Two; Wilson E. 2003; Wilson K. 2004; Young 2004.

Domestication Despite the on-going human assault on biodiversity sketched above, a limited number of species have been spared genocidal massacre as a result of their domestication during the ‘agrarian’ (or ‘agricultural’) revolution that began around 10,000 years ago. As it changed its life style from hunting to farming, human society encouraged or forced a limited number of other species to cross the great divide between the wilderness and the human enclave. From that time onwards, these species lived in captivity, where their destiny was to serve social ends on terms laid down by their human owners. Although countless

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domesticated animals may have individually experienced wretched existences and distressing deaths under the human yoke, their species as a whole typically benefited from human patronage, as unlike their wild cousins they were fed, watered and sheltered, protected from predators, encouraged to multiply, and accompanied their European owners as the latter spread out and colonised the globe. There was more to domestication, however, than just the original act of animals being taken into the human fold. Once they were there, their owners began modifying their basic biological constitution in the light of human wants, be those for food, for artefacts, for labour, for entertainment or for appearance. A limited amount of ad hoc selective breeding was carried out for thousands of years, but it really only became a systematic aspect of the biological manipulation of animals with the second, science-based agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century. Since then, the evolutionary destiny of domesticated animals was no longer determined by natural but by human selection, which in effect have brought new sub-species into existence. These were stripped of the all-round aptitudes of their wild cousins, but became experts in one chosen capacity, be this growing thick wool, producing large amounts of meat, milk or eggs, hauling or carrying heavy loads, conforming to a fashionable template or whatever. Further Reading: Domestication

Bulliet 2005, Chapters 2 4 5 6 & 7; Clutton-Brock 1994; Clutton-Brock 1999; Diamond 1998, Chapters 4 & 9; Hyams 1972; Ritvo 1987, Part I; Serpell 1995, Part I.

The Impact of Animals on Human Populations Human populations have waxed and waned in size depending on the waxing and waning of the animal populations on which they have depended for survival. The more abundant the animals, the more protein humans are able to consume. This in turn has a major impact on the birth rate. Protein rich diets promote fertility, protein starved diets generate sterility. At the same time, of course, lack of adequate food undermines human health and thereby increases the death rate. Thus, when an animal population declines or disappears altogether, the human population dwindles accordingly, while animal abundance triggers a local human population explosion. A second determining factor in human-animal demography involves migration. When animals move around, humans move

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around too. In hunter societies, this meant that human predators were forced to migrate seasonally along with the caribou, reindeer, bison and the like upon which they preyed. When hunting gave way to herding, this pattern of seasonal migration still continued amongst nomadic pastoralists. Instead of occupying houses, nomads lived all their lives in tents, following their foraging herds or flocks around the Tibetan plateau, the Sahara desert or wherever. This same phenomenon—animal and human populations migrating together—also occurred in colonial settler societies like the Americas and Australasia. Human pioneers introduced sheep or cattle to their new colonial homelands, thereby founding pastoral industries which acted as economic magnets to ever more human settlers. Thus, whether we are talking about hunters following the herds of migrating bison, of nomads wandering around after their foraging yaks, or European migrants settling down to make their livelihood out of newly established pastoral industries, the migratory patterns and the consequent geographical distribution of human populations has in the past been vitally influenced by the migration and distribution of non-human ones. A final feature of animal demography deserving a mention concerns the impact made by farm animals on the natural environment, and therefore on the human population with which they share that environment. As flocks and herds grow in numbers, and industrial techniques of animal husbandry become ever more intensive, the emissions of cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry contribute significantly to the pollution and degradation of waterways and the atmosphere from which all life forms, human and non-human alike, increasingly suffer. While wild animals have been the victims of industrial pollution, their domesticated cousins have themselves been the inadvertent agents of such pollution. ECONOMY The economy is the sphere of the social map where raw materials are extracted from nature and processed to meet human wants, where services are provided, and where wealth is generated and circulated. Regarded as the personal property of those who have killed, captured or farmed them, animals have featured in all three roles. For a start, they have served as walking larders to provide humans with food derived either from their flesh or from their products, like

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milk, eggs and honey. Although cultural attitudes towards the consumption of meat have varied enormously, some forms being interdicted by religion, custom, humanitarian values, cultural tastes or personal affection, in postmodern society as in that of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, one of the three primary use values of animals has been the provision of nourishment for humans. The second of those primary functions was to serve, like other parts of nature, as the raw material for the construction of artefacts. Human ingenuity has found a myriad uses for every part of dead animals. A short list would include converting their skins, feathers or wool into clothing and adornment, making tools, weapons and decorations out of their teeth and bones, using their feathers as pens and their hides as parchment, boiling their carcasses down for glue or lubricating oil, burning their fat or their dung for heat and light, building huts out of that same dung, fashioning a whole range of useful or ornamental household objects from ashtrays to rugs, and turning them into medicines. Only over the last 100 years or so have animal products been partially replaced as functional or decorative objects by industrially produced ones, such as plastics, synthetic fibres and fossil fuels. The third basic use function served by animals has been as a reservoir of slave labour. Down the millennia, humans have forced animals, along with enslaved fellow humans, to perform all the heavy, dangerous, dirty or mindlessly repetitive tasks they themselves did not want to perform. Only with the advent of modernity and its accompanying industrial revolution a few centuries ago, when humans figured out how to harness alternative forms of energy, like steam, fossil fuels and electricity, were animals—above all the horse family—liberated from the yoke of bondage to humans. With the invention of money, a second tier was added to the economic functions of animals: they took on exchange as well as use value. They make money for those who capture or hunt them, who breed and farm them, who slaughter them, who process them, who transport them, who wholesale and retail them, who cook and serve them up, who display them as entertainment, who attend to their medical needs, who sell pet foods, who conduct research on them in laboratories. In short, like motorcars, Coca-Cola, oil or furniture, they are on the market.

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The Economic Impact of Animals on Human Society Our species has always lived parasitically off other animals. If for some reason that economic parasitism had not been possible, human society would have been immeasurably impoverished. In terms of use value, there would have been no nutriment except what we could get from plants, none of those countless useful or decorative artefacts we made from animal parts, no labour-saving devices to carry us and our goods around and to perform all the other menial work we have imposed. In terms of exchange value, if humans were no longer able to traffic commercially in animals, whole sectors of the economy would collapse, and indeed would never have come into existence in the first place. There are entire cities, like fishing towns, entire regions, like farming districts, entire occupational categories, like veterinary medicine, and indeed entire national economies which rely totally or mainly upon animal-based industries. Billions of people around the world are dependent on animals for their livelihood. The economy is the basic infrastructure of human society, on which the rest of that society is built. Undermine that infrastructure and the rest of society would either totally collapse, or at least be massively transformed. Animals are an integral element of the infrastructure. In pre-modern times, in fact, they were its major component, and even today they are essential to many national or local economies. Human society has forced animals to serve its economic ends, but in doing so humans became so economically reliant on animals, human history as we know it would be different almost beyond recognition if we had never become parasites on other animals in the first place, or if that parasitism suddenly came to an end. Further reading: Economy

(The following relate mainly to agribusiness, which today accounts for the greatest proportion of animal-based economic activity. However, material relevant to other forms of animal commerce can be found in the readings for Fatal Contact, Domestication, Live Entertainment, and Research.) Animal Studies Group 2006; Beatson P 2009a, Part Three; Bernstein 2004, Chapter 3; Eisnitz 1997; Franklin 1999, Chapters 7 & 8; Garner 2004, Chapter 4; Harrison 1964; Harrod 2000, Chapter 1; Hills 2005, Chapter 11; Mason & Singer 1990; Mason & Finelli 2006; Masson 2005; Patterson 2002, Chapter 3; Penman 1996; Rollin 2003; Rollin & Benson 2004; Rowlands 2002, Chapters 4 &5; Singer 1990, Chapter 3; Stallwood 2002, Part Five; Urquhart 1983; Wolfson 1996.

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POLITICS We are now entering the house of power, as embodied in political societies. By ‘political society’ is meant a human collectivity whose leaders lay claim to sovereignty over a particular geographical territory. Warfare Throughout all recorded history, political societies have existed in a state of endemic warfare, tribe against tribe, kingdom against kingdom, empire against empire, religion against religion, nation state against nation state. When in-groups were not fighting outsiders, they waged civil wars amongst themselves. Ever since animals were domesticated some 10,000 years ago, they have been dragged into those wars. The endless slaughter and suffering inflicted by humans on other humans has been universally accompanied by a similar, sometimes greater slaughter and suffering amongst animals. The only difference has been that at least some humans have known what the fighting was about—animals never have. Animals have been caught up in human military mayhem in three major ways. For a start, a limited number of species, notably the horse family, camels and elephants (but sometimes dogs, pigeons and even marine mammals as well) have been deployed as front line troops. This practice only really stopped after the mechanisation of warfare in World War II. Before that, they were coerced into the very thick of battle. Inevitably, therefore, as human soldiers were speared, slashed, shot, choked with poison gas, consumed by fire or blown apart, so two were their animal fellow combatants. The sound track of every war contained not just the battle cries of soldiers, but the whinnying and screams of their horses. At the end of the battle, the field was strewn alike with mutilated, dying or dead men and animals. An even greater number of animals, particularly members of the horse family, were deployed behind the front lines to provide armies with logistic backup. They carried supplies on their backs, pulled wagons loaded with food, tents, ammunition, equipment and the wounded. They also hauled the heavy iron cannons that became an essential part of warfare from the sixteenth century on. As well as being under constant danger from enemy attack, they were exposed to the same privations, like forced marches, thirst, hunger, disease

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and foul weather, as the foot soldiers they accompanied. Furthermore, when the human troops were starving, their animals suffered the ultimate ignominy of being slaughtered for food. Those who survived the war were almost always abandoned by their owners when the human troops returned home. Animals have had suffering and death inflicted on them in an even greater way by becoming ‘collateral damage’ of human conflicts. Whenever there is a barrage of shells, a release of poison gas, a deluge of burning oil, a bombing raid, or a scorched earth military policy, all animal life in the target zone is injured or wiped out, not just human victims. Further Reading: Warfare

CluttonBrock 1992; Cooper 1983; Diamond 1998, Chapter 4; Haran 2007; Kean 1998, Chapter 7; Kinloch 2007; Williams 1950; Xenophon 1999.

Animal Welfare Legislation Aggression is not the only feature of political society, though. Government can have a benevolent as well as a brutal face. It can use its sovereign power peacefully to regulate society for the wellbeing of all its members by imposing legal rights and obligations on them. Until recently, societies have seldom used this power for the benefit of animals. They have mainly limited their legal regulation of animals to laying down the rights and responsibilities of their human owners. It would have seemed laughable to suggest that government should concern itself actively with the wellbeing of animals, since they were regarded as mere ‘things’, self-evidently devoid of the rights and privileges of human subjects or citizens. The only time the law addressed animals directly was during the medieval period, when they could be formally tried and punished for criminal offences, but they rarely benefited from this (to our minds bizarre) accordance of juridical personhood, since it frequently ended in gruesome executions. However, the legal status of animals began to change slowly to their advantage from the beginning of the nineteenth century, first in England then in other parts of the world. Philanthropists developed a new moral conscience towards animals, appalled by the wholesale cruelty or neglect from which they suffered. This new breed of humanitarians began to pressure governments to extend the legal

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protection already enjoyed by human citizens to the animals in their charge. It was a long, slow process, as giving legal protection to animals seemed almost as wrong-headed to many people as giving the vote to workers or to women. By the start of the 21st century, however, most nations, at least in the West, had animal welfare legislation in place, which gave certain animals a limited number of legal protections and entitlements. While still deemed human property, domesticated animals were acknowledged under the new animal welfare legislation to possess the same or similar sentience (the capacity to experience physical pain and emotional distress) as humans. They should therefore be protected by law from the gratuitous infliction of suffering, and should be legally entitled to the provision of nourishment, shelter and medical attention. Even wild animals acquired some basic legal protection from gratuitous cruelty and the extinction of their species, both through national legislation and also through international conventions protecting endangered species. In the wake of such legislative and political measures, a new legal discipline was pioneered in certain Western countries at the start of the twenty-first century, embodied in Animal Law academic courses, books, journals, networks and legal funds. They were dedicated to the further extension of legislative protections for animals, and to the better enforcement of existing laws. More radically, from around the mid-1970s a para-political social movement began campaigning for the political and/or moral rights already accorded humans to be extended to animals—a subject to which we shall return shortly. Further Reading: Animal Welfare Legislation

(See Animal Rights below.)

The Political Impact of Animals on Human Society Up until the first third of the twentieth century, animals—particularly horses—played a major role in shaping human history. The reason for this lies in what was said earlier about the role of animals in warfare. The geopolitical shape of the globe has always been largely determined by the outcome of wars in which victory usually went to those with the best animal technology at their disposal. The Hyksos were able to conquer ancient Egypt through their possession of horse-drawn war chariots: when the Egyptians themselves assimilated the new equine technology, it enabled them in turn to dominate their African and Middle Eastern neighbours. In the Middle Ages,

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Mongol horsemen under Genghis Khan swept across and conquered just about the whole Eurasian continent because they had faster horses, and were more adept at fighting from horseback, than the peoples they conquered. The Spanish conquest of the Incas in the 16th century was in part due to the fact that the former fought from horseback, the latter only on foot. Until the mechanisation of warfare in the mid-20th century, the rise and fall of empires, and therefore the course of political history, has thus to a large extent depended on the human capacity to assemble and deploy animal allies. As well as animals being the agents of military violence abroad, the horse and the dog have also been employed as accomplices of the armed forces or police in the imposition of law, order or social repression at home. Sniffer dogs like beagles are employed by customs officers to detect smuggled contraband, while larger, more powerful ones are used by their police handlers to intimidate and pin down criminals. On another front, horses and sometimes dogs have been employed for purposes of crowd control. Depending on the occasion, and on one’s ideological view of social conflicts, this deployment of animal coercion may involve the legitimate imposition of law and order, or may be regarded as an adjunct of naked oppression unleashed by the ruling class of the age—monarchs, aristocrats, slave owners or whoever—on the rebellious masses. At the end of the day, politics is about the ability to mobilise brute force whether at home or abroad, and animals, particularly in traditional, pre-industrial societies, have regularly been pressed into political service as the agents of such force. Animal rights The employment of animals as instruments of brute coercion, however, is only part of the political story. The other part picks up on a point made earlier about the growing body of protective animal legislation in the West over the last two centuries or so, through which animal welfare has been placed on the political agenda in a number of Western countries. This so-called ‘welfarist’ approach to animal legislation has outlawed certain flagrant forms of animal abuse and neglect, but in the view of many pro-animal advocates has not gone nearly far enough. As a result of political lobbying by powerful vested interest groups, such as agribusiness, the biomedical establishment and the animal entertainment industry, many forms of blatant cruelty were left

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totally untouched by legislation, and even where laws did apply they tended to be ignored or trivialised by enforcement agencies. In response to the alleged ‘tokenism’ of the welfarist approach to animal legislation, a more radical campaign on behalf of animals was launched in the 1970s, given philosophical expression in influential books like Peter Singer’s 1975 Animal Liberation and Tom Regan’s 1983 The Case for Animal Rights, and put into action by mainstream organisations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the more shadowy, cell-based Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Taking its lead from other new social movements of the time, which demanded rights and/or liberation for ethnic minorities, women, gays, indigenous people and the disabled, the animal rights movement added ‘speciesism’ to the list of other denounced ‘isms’, such as racism, sexism, heterosexism and ablism. Animals were to have their rights politically entrenched, ads had an increasing number of hitherto alienated, exploited or oppressed human categories since the 18th century. Going even further, radicals at the extreme, liberationist end of the animal rights spectrum demanded the total abolition of human ownership of animals and dominion over them, as human slaves had been emancipated in the 19th century. From being the fringe concern of a small number of humanitarians, the animal rights campaign has become a mass social movement, aimed not just at legal reforms but the total transformation of the collective mind-set of the age. As such, it generates the same philosophical, moral, legal and practical issues as the various human rights movements on which it is modelled. Above all, it encounters the ageold dilemma of whether worthy ends justify the means employed to achieve them. Along with other rights and liberation crusaders, animal rights activists have felt obliged on occasions to step outside the law, usually through minor infractions such as trespass or peaceful civil disobedience, but in a small minority of cases employing intimidatory guerrilla tactics involving violence to property and/or people. Such attacks have been used by groups with vested interests in the on-going exploitation of animals to stigmatise and discredit the entire animal rights movement with the ‘terrorist’ label. As so often happens with political or para-political struggles, In its drive for reform, the pro-animal movement has catalysed a reactionary counter-movement. Whether direct pro-animal activism has on balance helped or hindered the cause of animals themselves is a moot point, as is the larger philosophical issue of whether a moral ideal justifies

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the adoption of illegal or immoral means of achieving it. The point for our present purpose, however, is that the animal cause—moral dilemmas and all—has introduced a major new feature onto the contemporary political landscape, one which would have been virtually unthinkable even fifty years ago. Further Reading: Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Legislation

Armstrong & Botzler 2003, Parts I & X; Atterton & Calarco 2004; Beatson 2008; Beatson 2009a, Part Seven; Bekoff & Meaney 1998; Benton 1993; Bernstein 2004, Chapter 6; Carruthers 1992; Clark 1999; Cohen & Regan 2001; Finsen & Finsen 1994; Francione 1995; Francione 1996; Franklin 1999, Chapter 9; Frey 1980; Garner 2004; Garner 2005a, Chapters 6 & 10; Garner 2005b; Hills 2005; Kean 1998; Mann 2007; Mathews 2007; Newkirk 2000; Nibert 2002; Oldridge 2005, Chapter 3; Perkins 2003; Regan 1983; Regan 2001; Regan 2004; Rowlands 2002, Chapter 10; Ryder 1989; Ryder 1998; Salt 1980; Sankoff & White 2009; Scruton 1998; Singer 1990; Singer 2006; Stallwood 2002; Tester 1991; Wise 2000; Wise 2002; Wolfe 2003; WynneTyson 1989.

COMMUNITY In the fifth region of the social map, we move from the public world of politics to the private world of personal relationships, encapsulated in the term ‘community’. A community is an informal, emotionally charged group or network. Its most important defining characteristic is that members of a community feel that they belong together: literally or metaphorically they are ‘family’. They have a special relationship with group insiders, whom they treat with consideration which they do not extent to those living outside the charmed circle of the community. Communities also constitute ‘status groups’, both externally and internally. On the one hand, they are jealously conscious of their comparative standing amongst other communities with regard to what can variously be termed status, honour, prestige, distinction or mana. On the other hand, they construct and police their own internal hierarchies, their members constantly competing against one another for standing within the group. Honorary Humans There have been three main ways in which the human community has related to non-human animals. First, a distinction is made between animals who are outsiders to that community and those who live on the inside. The former are definitely not members of the human community, whether they live ‘out there’ in the wild (hyenas, tigers, sharks, buzzards, etc.) or in our midst, as do cockroaches,

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pigeons, rats and fleas. Until quite recently, such outsiders tended to be hunted, feared or shunned if defined as ‘pests’ or ‘vermin’, or else ruthlessly over-harvested if regarded as socially useful or commercially exploitable raw material, such as fish, whales, big game or brightly plumaged birds. Like human outsiders, they were killed when possible, avoided when not. However, over the last century or so humans have undergone a change of heart towards certain outsider communities, triggered by our newly-acquired conservationist conscience about the way we were driving many of them into the gulf of extinction. Particular concern has been felt for charismatic fauna that have seized the public imagination or sympathy for one reason or another. Efforts have been made to slap on protection orders, conduct breeding programmes in captivity, and set aside reserves where the remainders of such species could hopefully continue to lead their own communal lives outside the human orbit. For the most part, however, animal outsiders are regarded either as game to be trophy hunted, resources to be harvested, or as vermin and pests to be annihilated. A second category comprises domesticated species who live alongside humans within the charmed circle of the community, but are not embraced as members of it. They have no particular claim on human affection or respect in and for themselves. Farm and work animals are emotionally neutral raw material for the production of food and artefacts, or they are forced into slave labour. They are ‘in’ the human community but not ‘of’ it. Finally, there are certain privileged individuals, or indeed whole species, who are both ‘in’ and ‘of’ the community. They are accepted as cherished members of the family, as respected working partners, or perhaps as celebrities of the entertainment industry. They are given their own individualised names, if small and tame enough are allowed inside the house, and to eat them would be regarded as cannibalism. In short, they are accorded honorary human status, rather than being regarded as mere things. Even when animals are accorded such privileged status, this does not automatically protect them from abuse or neglect. Communities can be as destructive as they are supportive of both their human and their animal members, who may be the victims of everything from sadistic cruelty to appalling neglect. The children for whom pets are often acquired can be the worst culprits, especially in dysfunctional

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families where a chain of abuse may flow from parents to children and from them again to household animals. Even when blatant cruelty is not the issue, pets may be summarily abandoned by their owners when no longer wanted. On another front, animal celebrities like racehorses, greyhounds, circus elephants and big cats in zoos may be overtly pampered and feted, but behind the scenes be subjected to abuse or neglect, or to being ignominiously discarded or killed when no longer of value as popular drawcards. It is wise, therefore, not to romanticise the warm, fuzzy side of community life. Their status as communal insiders can often turn out to be less a privilege than a tragedy for the animals involved. Further Reading: Honorary Humans

(Other material on wild, farm and companion animals can be found in the further readings under the headings Fatal Contact, Economy, and Constitutive Elements of Culture.) Armstrong & Botzler 2003, Part IX; Franklin 1999, Chapter 5; Garner 200, Chapter 3; Podberscek, Paul & Serpell 2000; Rowlands 2002, Chapter 9; Sabloff 2001; Serpell 1988; Stallwood 2002, Part One; Thomas 1983, Parts III and VI; Tuan 1984.

The Communal Functions of Animals The animals who are chosen for the dubious privilege of being honorary insiders may serve this function in a variety of ways. The first was dealt with above, in the discussion of companion animals, so only requires a word of reminder here. Human beings have a profound hunger for companionship. They need to relate to others, and for others to relate to them. In a word, they need to belong. Friendship with an animal fulfils this need, especially for socially isolated people, who may have few meaningful human relationships. Live Entertainment and Cultural Representations Over and above their need for companionship, humans have an insatiable appetite for spectacles and entertainment to divert their minds from the harsh realities of everyday life. It is frequently to animals that they turn for such diversion. It has often involved humans killing the animals in question, as with hunting, fishing and bull-fighting. Alternatively, groups of humans have set animals to fight one another as with bear- and bull-baiting, and with cock and dog fights. In other instances, competition is still involved but not blood-letting, as with sports like horse and greyhound racing, or human-animal tussles in the rodeo. In yet other cases, animals are put on public

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display simply to be gaped at, as with dancing bears and performing dogs, animal performers in circuses and marinelands, or the inmates of zoos. Frequently, however, it has not been live animals as such that have entertained humans down the ages, but their representations in the visual arts, oral narratives, literature, movies and the mass media. The virtual animals who appear in such representations sometimes serve ostensibly didactic functions, as with religious allegories, exemplary fables and scientific documentaries. In the first and last instance, however, whatever hermeneutic meaning is derived from them, depictions of animals in literature, the arts, films and the mass media serve most people, most of the time, as entertainment pure and simple. Further Reading: Live Entertainment

(Other material on this subject and on cultural representations can be found in the further readings under the heading Constitutive Elements of Culture.) Amieson 2006; Armstrong & Botzler 2003, Part VIII; Bernstein 2004, Chapter 4; Bostock 1993; Cartmill 1993; Davis 2000; Franklin 1999, Chapters 4 & 6; Garner 2005, Chapter 9; Hanson 2002; Hemingway 1932; Herman 2001; Hills 2005, Chapter 12; Kean 1998, Chapter 2; Lawrence 1926, Chapter 1; McKenna, Travers & Wray 1987; Ritvo 1987, Chapters 5 & 6; Rothfels 2002b; Rowlands 2002, Chapter 7; Stallwood 2002, Parts Three & four.

Further Reading: Cultural Representations

Akhtar& Volkan 2001; Armstrong 2008; Baker 2001; Bouse 2000; Burt 2002; Crist 1999; Daston & Mitman 2005; Fudge 2004; Ham & Senior 1997; Hassig 1999; Kalof 2007b; Kenyon-Jones 2001; Malamud 2003; Mitman 1999; Pollock & Rainwater 2005; Porter & Russell 1978; Rebold Benton 1992; Rothfels 2002a; Sax 2001; Scholtmeijer 1993; Simons 2002; Tate 2007.

Identity and Status In the course of animal-based diversionary activities, human groups often generate collective identities for themselves—a distinctive sense of who they are that marks them off as different from other communities, and perhaps as superior in status to them. Such identity is signalled by the various external trappings with which the group in question surrounds itself, is subjectively experienced as a strong emotional bond with others engaged in the same activities, and is expressed in an in-group vocabulary of specialist terms or jargon fully intelligible only to insiders. The English rural gentry, for instance, for centuries based their distinctive sense of communal selfhood on hunting, accompanied with the traditional paraphernalia of

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pink jackets, hunting horns, hounds, halloos and hunting argot. When fox-hunting was outlawed in England, its devotees felt that more than an enjoyable pastime was being denied them: the ban was experienced as a threat to the whole traditional identity and the superior status of the English country gentry. Fox-hunters provide only one example of the way in which animal-based recreational activities generate a sense of group identity: the same can be said of pigeon fanciers, Kennel Club members, bird-watchers, the horse-racing fraternity and a host of other communities with shared pastimes. In other cases, it is not from sport but animal-based economic activity from which a sense of communal identity is derived. The whole cowboy ethos, for instance, from its ritual rodeo displays to the characteristically laconic personality of its movie heroes, rests in the last instance on the relationship between humans, horses and cattle. Similarly, seaside fishing communities, whaling crews, farmers, zoo staff, naturalists and many other occupational groups have based their shared culture on the animals upon which their livelihood has depended. Flowing on from this, human collectivities have frequently adopted specific animals as the core symbols of their identities. In early hunter societies, this involved a total fusion of the human and the animal. A clan group would name itself after a certain animal—kangaroo, white cockatoo, shark, buffalo or whatever. They would claim kinship with it, would perform ceremonies in its honour, and would consummate their union with it by ritually devouring its flesh. Though less religiously charged, this same self-identification of communities with animal icons continued down the ages, and traces of primordial totemism are still widespread today as rival rugby fans cheer on the Springboks or the Wallabies, and entire nations identify with an animal emblem, like the bear, bulldog, eagle, rooster or kiwi. In these and many other ways, human communities seek and are accorded recognition through the animals with which they identify themselves. The recognition in question is frequently linked with the striving for social standing mentioned earlier. Throughout history, animals have been deployed as status symbols, whose display conferred prestige on their owners. Ancient potentates enhanced their magnificence through the collection of exotic wild beasts, often presented by foreign dignitaries whose own mana was augmented by the lavishness of their gift. Monarchs down the ages have identified themselves emblematically with the most regal of creatures, notably the bull, the

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lion and the eagle. Nobles used to affirm their distinction from commoners through the possession of similarly noble hunting mounts, hounds and falcons. In another domain, the kudos of the owners of fighting or racing animals waxes and wanes according to the competitive success of their champions, while dog and cat fanciers vie amongst themselves at shows for awards based on the breeding, appearance and comportment of their pedigree pets. Human communities are endemically hierarchical, and their members’ position on the status ladder is frequently signalled and reinforced through their construction of similar hierarchies in the animal kingdom. Further Reading: Identity and Status

(Material on these topics can be found in the further readings on Live Entertainment and Cultural Representations above, and Constitutive Elements of Culture below.)

WELFARE The sixth zone of the social map is the sharing, caring domain, where we treat the ill, protect the vulnerable, provide for those in need, and generally foster the physical, psychological and social wellbeing of our fellows. Ever since the dawn of farming, all domestic animals have been vitally dependent upon humans for their wellbeing. By laying claim to the ownership of animals, humans have taken on the responsibility for caring for them—meeting their basic needs, protecting them when vulnerable, and providing health services for them. How well has the self-appointed master species fulfilled its responsibilities in this respect? For stylistic variety, I will address that issue in the form of a courtroom drama, wearing first the wig of the counsel for the prosecution, then for the defence. The Animal Welfare Debate Counsel for the Prosecution: “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the defendant—the human species—stands accused of the most appalling crimes against animal kind. Like children amongst adults, animals have been totally reliant for their wellbeing on the goodwill of humanity. That parental goodwill is tragically lacking. Animals have been systematically subjected to every form of abuse from wholesale neglect to deliberate cruelty. Animals have been tortured and mutilated for our entertainment, whether by the wanton savagery of young boys or the adult brutality of blood sports. In the course of their work, they have been routinely

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beaten, raked with spurs or jabbed with goads. They have equally routinely been overworked to exhaustion and beyond. They have suffered the agonies of thirst and hunger from human neglect. They have been subjected to all the horrors of war. They have passed their entire miserable lives chained up, or imprisoned in crates, pens or cages. They have experienced nightmare conditions when being transported from the wilderness or the farm to captivity or the slaughterhouse. They have been cold-bloodedly tortured in laboratories in the name of science. Their lives have usually ended in terror and acute, sometimes prolonged, physical agony. There is only one possible verdict: guilty as charged.” Council for the Defence: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client, the human species, is not nearly as black as painted by the prosecution. Indeed, the charges are palpably absurd. I concede there have occasionally been some regrettable lapses on the part of individuals, but I would argue that far from undermining the welfare of the animals in their care, by and large humans have actively promoted such welfare.” “In the first place, regardless of moral issues, humans have a vested self-interest in the wellbeing of the animals they own. They are vitally dependent economically on their animal property for their livelihoods. Healthy, happy animals are more productive and profitable than sick, starved, abused or neglected ones. The farmer, the zoo keeper, the circus master, the racehorse owner or whoever show active concern for the wellbeing of their stock. To serve this selfinterest, the animals themselves are protected from predators, given shelter from the elements, are fed and watered and receive regular medical attention—none of which luxuries are enjoyed by their cousins out in the wild. To accuse the owners of animals of maltreating them makes no more sense than to accuse shopkeepers of spoiling their own merchandise. Good animal husbandry is good business.” “However, I would not make the case for the defence of humanity on instrumental, economic grounds alone. Concern for animal wellbeing, particularly over the last 200 years or so, has not been motivated solely by human self-interest. Another factor has entered the equation, which may be called by names such as philanthropy, humanitarianism or compassion. Humans today are concerned about animal welfare not because it promotes human interests, but out of empathy for the animals themselves.”

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“Admittedly, this was not always the case, but since the dawn of modernity, animals have slowly been incorporated into the moral community of those for whom we feel compassion. It began with the Romantic movement in philosophy and literature in the 18th Â�century, was augmented by a current of humanitarianism that entered English public life in the 19th, and has been given scientific weight over the last few decades by the new disciplines of cognitive ethology and Â�animal welfare science. Humanity today has finally become aware that animals are sentient beings, capable of suffering and of happiness, of leading lives of misery or fulfilment, and should be treated accordingly. People of good will have begun applying the Golden Rule to animals as well as to their fellow humans: ‘Do unto others as ye would be done by’. Though guilty in the past, the defendant has turned over a new leaf, is now actively campaigning for improved animal welfare, and should therefore be given a second chance.” Further Reading: The Animal Welfare Debate

Arluke & Sanders 1996; Armstrong & Botzler 2003, General introduction; Atterton & Calarco 2004; Balcombe 2006; Beatson 2009a, Parts Five & Six; Beatson 2009b; Bekoff & Meaney 1998; Bekoff, Allen & Burghardt 2002; Bekoff 2006; Bernstein 2004, Chapter 1; Brown 1974; Caras 1996; Coetzee 1999; Darwin 1872; Dawkins 1980; DeGrazia 1996; Dixon 2008; Dolins 1999; Franklin 1999, Chapters 2 & 3; Garner 2005a; Godlovitch, Godlovitch & Harris 1971; Grandin & Johnson 2009; Gregory 2007; Griffin 1992; Gutmann 1999; Haraway 2008; Hursthouse 2000; Kean 1998; Manning & Serpell 1994; Masson & McCarthy 1995; Midgley 1984; Preece 2005; Rowlands 2002; Sapontzis 1987; Serpell 1996; Shepherd 1996; Steiner 2005; Taylor 2003; Thomas 1983, Part IV; Webster 2005.

The Impact of Animals on Human Wellbeing While the jury is out, let’s examine the other side of the coin: what significance do animals have for human health and welfare? Starting on the negative front, when animals get sick en masse, particularly with communicable diseases, human society suffers accordingly. A few years back, foot-and-mouth and ‘mad cow’ disease threatened to decimate the British farming economy. Worse, toxic micro-organisms may jump the species divide and spark off devastating human pandemics, as happened with plagues in Europe a few centuries back, the global influenza outbreak at the end of World War I, the spread of HIV/AIDS from the 1970s, ‘bird flu’ in the early 21st century and ‘swine flu’ at the time of writing. On the positive side, however, if animal diseases can make human economies and humans themselves sick, animals have also been used

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in the war against human illness. Throughout history, folk healers have concocted potions and remedies from animal parts, or have performed religious rituals aimed at transferring illnesses from humans to animals. More recently, millions of human diabetics have controlled their condition through insulin extracted from pigs pancreases, and today experiments are being conducted into xenoplanting organs from animal ‘donors’ into human patients. On a more humane note, dogs are trained to assist disabled people with practical tasks, while medical science has begun to recognise the therapeutic benefits of companion animals generally. Animal Research The human benefits derived from animals, however, have frequently been paid for at a tragic cost to the animals involved. In particular, the disjuncture between human and animal welfare is nowhere more extreme than in the animal research and testing laboratory. For the last 300 years or so, scientific advances in the fields of biology and medicine have been made largely at the expense of countless research animals upon whom laboratory experiments and tests have been conducted. All have involved various degrees of physical pain and emotional distress, but this has been legitimised by the alleged benefits of such suffering to humanity. This painful subject is explored more extensively in the further readings, but for the moment the key point being emphasised is that on many fronts, from the economic impact of communicable animal diseases to the pain and despair inflicted on lab animals, in sickness and in health the fate of human and animal partners are inextricably united till death (typically that of the animal) do them part Further Reading: Animal Research

Armstrong & Botzler 2003, Parts V & VI; Beatson 2009a, Part Two; Bernstein 2004, Chapter 5; Bourke & Eden 2003; Coleman 1991; Garner 2004, Chapter 5; Garner 2005a, Chapter 8; Greek & Greek 2000; Hills 2005, Chapter 13; House of Lords 2002; Lafollette & Shanks 1996; Lansbury 1985; Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2004; Rollin 1998; Rowlands 2002, Chapter 6; Ruesch 2003; Russell & Burch 1959; Sharpe 1988; Ryder 2006; Singer 1990, Chapter 2; Stallwood 2002, Part Six; Swabe 1999; Verhoog 1999.

CULTURE Culture is the most uniquely human region of the sociological landscape—the one we have largely to ourselves. It is also the most

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important, as we perceive and interact with all the other spheres, including nature itself, only through the medium of culture. We very seldom act upon our environment directly with our physical organisms alone. We control it, rather, through our material culture—the vast array of technology our species has accumulated down the millennia. Even more importantly, human interactions with their environment are mediated by symbolic culture—our thoughts and their expression in language, through which we make sense of ourselves, the world around us, and the supernatural domain. For the human species, culture has become second nature, to the point where most people, most of the time, are unconscious of its mediations. Constitutive Elements of Culture Given its centrality in human affairs, it is inevitable that culture has been our constant companion from the very outset of our voyage of discovery through the analytical map laid out in this chapter. It was first introduced in the opening discussion of Nature, where it provided the material and symbolic means by which the evolutionary newcomer Homo sapiens prised open a divide between itself and other wild animals, and eventually gained ascendancy over them. Although not always mentioned explicitly by name, culture continued to play a central role in the various spheres of the map as they were unfolded. To summarise and conceptualise what has already been said, symbolic culture can be analysed into the four major Â�features of which it is constituted: knowledge, norms, life styles and rituals. In the first place, culture is the repository of society’s accumulated cognitive knowledge—empirical facts, theories to explain those facts, and techniques for manipulating the environment. Everything that humanity knows (or thinks it knows) about animals, along with the unwitting contribution that research animals have made to the advance of science, belongs in this domain. Moving from the realm of ‘is’ to ‘ought’, culture contains a second, ethical dimension. This comprises norms of conduct, from minor points of etiquette to binding taboos and laws, underpinned by an infrastructure of emotionally-charged beliefs and values. Everything said earlier about the human treatment of animals belongs in this normative domain. In the third place, culture contains what might variously be termed life style, fashion, taste or aesthetics. This includes bodily and

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�household adornments, the sports people play, the literature and art they enjoy, the food, drink and drugs they consume, their manner of speech and comportment, and all the other ways in which communities construct and signal their collective identities and lay claim to social esteem. As suggested by the earlier discussion of animal-based entertainments and representations, without animals as resources, the life styles of innumerable communities would have been vastly impoverished. Finally, culture contains a ritual dimension, expressed in the performance of special ceremonies of one sort or another. Rituals are focused upon core symbols of particular significance to the participants, such as a totemic animal, a religious icon or a national flag. Through its rituals, a community revitalises its group solidarity, reaffirms its roots in the past, and expresses its aspirations for the future. However, the core function of ritual is to divide the world into two distinct zones, one sacred, the other secular. The latter contains the banal flow of everyday social life. Sacred occasions and places, on the other hand, are set apart from this secular flow, and are charged with intense passions like awe, reverence, fear, grief or exhilaration. It is to the significance of animals for this sacred domain of culture, as manifested in religious beliefs and practices that we will now turn. Further Reading: Constitutive Elements of Culture

Boehrer 2007; Kalof 2007a; Kete 2007; Malamud 2007; Resl 2007; Senior 2007.

Animals and the Supernatural At least until the scientific revolution of the last few centuries, there has been a near-universal human belief in the existence of a supernatural domain of magic and religion peopled by spirits or gods. It was first and foremost such supernatural beliefs that dictated how animals were to be regarded and treated. In prehistoric hunter-gatherer society, so far as this can be reconstructed through scholarship, animals were an integral component of a totemic, animistic and anthropomorphic world view. Though they differed in appearance from humans, behind their masks animals were constituted of the same spiritual essence. Human genealogies were sometimes traced back to a primordial animal ancestor. In the present, animal and human societies mirrored each other in everything from their hierarchical structure to their religious beliefs.

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Furthermore, the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman were extremely porous. Humans and animals could take on one another’s forms, intermarry, and human-animal hybrids were not unsurprising. At another level, certain creatures—notably birds— were intermediaries between the supernatural and human worlds, delivering auguries, omens and prophecies for those skilled in reading the signs. Interacting with animals, therefore, first and foremost required humans to observe correct ritual protocol. If the appropriate ceremonies were not carried out, or animals not treated with due respect, they would become angry and punish their human counterparts. The basic metaphysical premise in all this was that animals were ontologically identical to humans, and therefore regarded as their spiritual equals. This animistic and anthropomorphic world view remained widespread long after hunter-gatherer societies were supplanted by farmbased ones from around 10,000 years ago. Indeed, it is still active in many parts of the modern world, whether as a literal belief in the supernatural qualities of certain animals, as emotionally charged folklore about werewolves, hell-hounds, witches’ familiars and the like, or as standard items in the mass entertainment industry. Despite such living vestiges, however, the belief in animal souls, and therefore in spiritual equality between humans and animals, began to wane with the advent of animal domestication. Indeed, both ancient Greek philosophy and the monotheistic Abrahamic religions militated against such beliefs. From being our spiritual equals, animals were demoted to the subjects of human dominion, existing only as means to serve their owners’ ends. Even so, they continued to play an important if secondary role in religious ceremonies. With the exception of a dwindling number of zoomorphic gods, animals were no longer regarded as powerful beings in their own right, but instead were offered up as sacrifices on the altars of newly-invented anthropomorphic deities like Zeus or Jehovah. As can be seen in the two founding texts of Western literature, Homer and the Bible, Whenever a god required placation, a divine favour was asked or thanks for good fortune were in order, heifers, lambs, goats, doves and other sacrificial creatures had their throats cut. Until the Christian era, no event in human society could proceed without an animal sacrifice being offered up. The temple at Jerusalem was first and foremost a blood-drenched slaughterhouse, dedicated to appeasing the insatiable appetite of Jehovah for animal offerings.

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Aversion to animal sacrifice, and to the unsavoury image of Jehovah it projected, began to appear in the later books of the Old Testament, but it was really only when Christ was proclaimed by his followers to have offered himself up as a metaphorical sacrificial lamb, whose blood cleansed away the sins of believers, that literal animal sacrifice was slowly phased out in the West, although today it continues to play an integral role in many traditional societies, including the Islamic world. For most contemporary Westerners, the supernatural associations of non-human animals tend to be only relics of distant past beliefs, but even so, to gain an adequate understanding of that past it is still important to appreciate the crucial role that cultural constructions of religion and magic used to play in the human treatment of animals, first as our spiritual equals, then as sacrificial objects. Throughout all history, and still today in many parts of the world, the ways that animals were to be regarded and treated by humans were laid down by allegedly supernatural authority— authority which, in the Abrahamic religions at least, legitimised the exercise of human power over all other life forms. It is the implications of the key words ‘power’ and ‘legitimation’ that will be explored in the concluding pages of this chapter. Further Reading: Animals and the Supernatural

Armstrong & Botzler 2003, Chapters 35-39; Bernstein 2004, Chapter 2; Bulliet 2005, Chapters 2 & 7; Gray 2002; Harrod 2000; Kemmerer 2006; Linzey 1987; Nelson 1993; Regan 1986; Scully 2002; Thomas 1983; Waldau & Patton 2006.

Culture and Power Power is the ability of individuals or groups to impose their will upon and therefore to control their social and natural environments. It allows its possessors to get things done (‘power to…’), it enables them to dominate others (‘power over…’), and it acts as a defence against external coercion (‘power from…’). Power is the single most significant defining characteristic of human-animal relations. The balance of power had already begun to shift in favour of humans against other species in the hunter-gatherer period, a shift which accelerated dramatically with the domestication revolution, and was consolidated into near-total hegemony with the advent of modernity. As is abundantly clear from everything that has been said in our discussion of culture, it is only through cultural agency that our species has been able to achieve this power

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Â�ascendancy. It is culture, not biology, that empowers humans to protect themselves from animal predation, and to force them to serve human ends as raw material for food and artefacts, as slave labour, as sources of entertainment and companionship, and as objects of biomedical research. Thus, to reiterate the key point, culture is an active agent in the power dynamics that typify human-animal relations. Culture’s role as an agent of power, however, is only part of the story. The rest involves not agency as such but the legitimation of the coercive power it unleashes. Culture not only empowers humans to exercise dominion over the animal kingdom, but rationalises and justifies their use and abuse of that power. Cultural legitimations of humanity’s subjugation of its fellow creatures have taken the forms of both overt ideology and covert discourse. A word of definitional explanation is needed at this point. The terms ideology and discourse can both be broadly defined as ‘the manipulation of culture in the service of power’, but are nevertheless analytically distinct. Furthermore, they are both conceptually unstable terms, varying in their significance from one intellectual context to another, and even within the same academic discipline. For our present purposes, ideology will refer to explicitly formulated and enunciated doctrines, while discourse denotes more implicit, deeply-embedded epistemological assumptions and practices. In the former case, cultural ideologues and gatekeepers have promulgated explicit justifications of human hegemony. The three most influential of such ideologies have been based on: (a) The alleged edicts of a supernatural power; (b) The assumed possession by humanity of higher faculties such as Reason; (c) The secular modernist faith in material progress, to be Â�delivÂ�ered by economic development and scientific experimentation. The functions of such legitimising ideologies is to shift the epistemological source of human exploitation and oppression of animals from the domain of naked coercion to loftier metanarratives, the challenging of which would be to query the formally enunciated doctrines of an entire cultural epoch. The shifting of ground from brute force to taken-for-granted assumptions brings us to the covert operations of discourse mentioned above, which are more insidious, and therefore even more influential, than explicit ideological legitimations. Culture’s most

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potent agency derives from its capacity to conceal the secret of its own social origins. In sociological reality, culture is a human artefact, and being socially constructed can therefore be deconstructed and changed. It is precisely its own constructed nature that discourse serves to conceal. It is acquired so young by most people, is reinforced throughout their lives with such persistent unanimity, and is charged with such emotional intensity, that discursive culture becomes impervious to challenge. Indeed, it would not occur to most people to issue such a challenge in the first place, since quite simply they perceive nothing to query. Unlike the explicit pronouncements of ideologues, discourse slyly erases its own tracks, leaving in its wake only the bald, unquestionable fact which ‘everybody knows’, that animals exist to serve human ends. Human domination of animals is the most deeply entrenched and widespread form of oppression and exploitation, even more fundamental than slavery and patriarchy. It has been justified by appeal to supernatural and natural principles, but ultimately has required no such metaphysical rationalisations: its rightness and normality have seemed so ‘natural’, it has scarcely required overt justifications. It is only when the discursive legerdemain of culture is uncovered and the true nature of its agency exposed, that its exercise of power is able to be challenged. The upshot of these remarks is that culture is profoundly conservative in nature, owing to its capacity to camouflage its secret alliance with power dynamics, and this conservatism is nowhere more evident than in human attitudes towards other species. That said, the sociological fact remains that despite its seemingly immutable mask, culture is a human creation, and as such is open to change, as challenges to the age-old institutions of slavery and patriarchy have already demonstrated. It is only within the last 250 years or so, and more particularly since the animal rights/liberation movement of the 1970s, that cultural constructions of human-animal relations have begun to be seriously re-theorised. Through that re-theorisation, the yoke of human dominion, of which culture is an integral component, is starting to weigh slightly less oppressively on our fellow creatures, although it will be many years yet, if ever, before the burden of millennia is totally removed.

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Further Reading: Culture and Power

(Since power is a ubiquitous feature of the human-animal relationship, it features prominently in all the further readings listed in this chapter.)

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Patterson, C. 2002. Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books. Penman, D. 1996. The Price of Meat. London: Victor Gollancz. Perkins, D. 2003. Romanticism and Animal Rights. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Philo, C., and C. Wilbert. 2000. Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. London: Routledge. Podberscek, A., Paul, E. and J. Serpell. 2000. Companion Animals and us: Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollock, M., and C. Rainwater. 2005. Figuring Animals: Essays on Animal Images in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Porter, J., and W. Russell. 1978. Animals in Folklore. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Preece, R. 2005. Brute Souls, Happy Beasts, and Evolution: The Historical Status of Animals. Toronto: UBC Press. Quammen, D. 1996. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Scribner. Rebold Benton, J. 1992. The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages. New York: Abbeville Press. Regan, T. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights, Berkeley: University of California Press. Regan, T. 1986. Animal Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on the Use of Animals in Science. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Regan, T. 2001. Defending Animal Rights. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Regan, T. 2004. Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights. Oxford: Tewman & Littlefield. Regenstein, L. 1975. The Politics of Extinction. New York: Macmillan. Resl, B. 2007. Cultural History of Animals in the Middle Ages. Oxford and New York: Berg. Ritvo, H. 1987. The Animal Estate: The English and other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Rollin, B. 1998. The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Rollin, B. 2003. Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical and Research Issues. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Rollin, B., and J. Benson. 2004. The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions. Oxford: Blackwell. Rothfels, N. 2002a. Representing Animals. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rothfels, N. 2002b. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rowlands, M. 2002. Animals like Us. London: Verso. Ruesch, H. 2003. Slaughter of the Innocent. London: Slingshot Publications. Russell, W., and R. Burch. 1959. The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique. London: Methuen. Ryder, R. 1989. Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes towards Speciesism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Ryder, R. 1998. The Political Animal: The Conquest of Speciesism. Jefferson: McFarland. Ryder, R. 2006. “Speciesism in the Laboratory.” In In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave edited by P. Singer, 87-103. Malden: Blackwell. Sabloff, A. 2001. Reordering the Natural World: Humans and Animals in the City. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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Salt, H. 1980. Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress. London: Centaur Press. Sankoff, P., and S. White. 2009. Animal Law in Australasia: A New Dialogue. Annandale, NSW: Federation Press. Sapontzis, S. 1987. Morals, Reason and Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sax, B. 2001. The Mythical Zoo: An Encyclopedia of Animals in World Myth, Legend and Literature. Santa Barbara: Abc-Clio. Scholtmeijer, M. 1993. Animal Victims in Modern Fiction: From Sanctity to Sacrifice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Scruton, R. 1998. Animal Rights and Wrongs. London: Metro Books. Scully, M. 2002. Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. New York: St Martin’s Press. Senior, M. 2007. Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment. Oxford and New York: Berg. Serpell, J. 1988. “Pet-Keeping and Animal Domestication: A Reappraisal.” In The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation, edited by J. Clutton-Brock, 10-21. London and Boston: Unwin Hyman. Serpell, J. 1995. The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour, and Interactions with People. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Serpell, J. 1996. In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Sharpe, R. 1988. The Cruel Deception: The Use of Animals in Medical Research. Wellingborough: Thorsons. Shepherd, P. 1996. The Others: How Animals made us Human. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books. Simons, J. 2002. Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation. HoundÂ� mills: Palgrave. Singer, P. 1990. Animal Liberation. New York: New York Review of Books. Singer, P. 2006. In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave. Malden: Blackwell. Stallwood, K. 2002. A Primer on Animal Rights, New York, Lantern Books. Steiner, G. 2005. Anthropocentrism and its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press. Swabe, J. 1999. Animals, Disease and Human Society: Human-Animal Relations and the Rise of Veterinary Medicine. London: Routledge. Tate, P. 2007. Flights of Fancy: Birds in Myth, Legend and Superstition. London: Random House. Taylor, A. 2003. Animals and Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate. Peterborough Ontario: Broadview. Tester, K. 1991. Animals and Society: The Humanity of Animal Rights. London: Routledge. Thomas, K. 1983. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500– 1800. London: Allen Lane. Tuan, Y. 1984. Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. New Haven: Yale University Press. Urquhart, J. 1983. Animals on the Farm from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. London: Macdonald and Co. Verhoog, H. 1999. “Animals in Scientific Education and a Reverence for Life.” In Attitudes to Animals: Views in Animal Welfare, edited by F. Dolins, 218-230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waldau, P., and K. Patton. 2006. A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Webster, J. 2005. Animal Welfare: Limping towards Eden. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, J. 1950. Elephant Bill. Garden City: Doubleday. Wilson, E. 2003. The Future of Life. New York: Vintage Books. Wilson, K. 2004. The Flight of the Huia: Ecology and Conservation of New Zealand’s Frogs, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press. Wise, S. 2000. Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books. Wise, S. 2002. Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books. Wolfe, C. 2003. Animal Rights: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolfson, D. 1996. Beyond the Law: Agribusiness and the Systemic Abuse of Animals raised for Food or Food Production. New York: Archimedian Press. Wynne-Tyson, J. 1989. The Extended Circle: A Commonplace Book of Animal Rights. New York: Paragon House. Xenophon. 1999. On Horsemanship. Champaign: Project Gutenberg. Young, D. 2004. Our Islands, Our Selves: A History of Conservation in New Zealand. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

Chapter Two

Theorizing ‘Others’ Lisa Kemmerer Theories The word “theory,” stemming from the Greek “contemplation,” or “speculation,” has been part of the English language since at least the late 16th century (“Theory”). Theories are tools that help us explain or understand the world around us, and ourselves. There are many types of theories, “from purely syntactic or “formal” extrapolations of mathematics or logic, to evidence-driven constructs typical of the physical sciences, to rational/moral analyses found in the social sciences and certain branches of philosophy, and to the interpretive principles found in many areas of the arts and humanities” (“Theory”). But certain elements are true of all theories. For example, all theories are: –â•fi abstract, –â•fi expected to be based on reason or logic –â•fi understood—at least by most theorists—to be distinct from established “truths” (“Theory”). There are two ways to form theories: with empirical evidence, and with philosophical ideas. Philosophical theories contain “statements whose truth cannot necessarily be scientifically tested through empirical observation,” but which are based on the use of reason with regard to ideas (“Theory”). Furthermore, the truth of any given statement stemming from a theory is relative to that particular theory. “Therefore the same statement may be true with respect to one theory and not true with respect to another” (“Theory”). For example, if I were to say “The dog is fierce,” it would be impossible to assess whether or not this statement is true or false without knowing which dog I am talking about, or what I mean in using the term, “fierce.”

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In contrast with philosophical theories, a scientific theory is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of empirical observations. A scientific theory does two things: 1. it identifies this set of distinct observations as a class of phenomena, and 2. makes assertions about the underlying reality that brings about or affects this class. (“Theory”) Humans theorize so that we might feel as if we better understand ourselves, the world around us, and our place in the universe. We theorize about how the mind works in relation to the body, about the origins of the universe, and about the development of childparent bonds. We theorize because we do not know, and sometimes we theorize because we cannot know, as with theories revolving around the origins of the universe. Some theories, after a time, enjoy considerable acceptance, in which case many people cease to see these ideas as theories, and begin to see them as reality. Most people view gravity as a reality, as a scientific “truth.” Similarly, most people view biological evolution as “truth.” We take these theories for granted because we do not have any better competing theory, because we learn about these theories when young and uncritical, and because these theories tend to be consistent both with reason and experience. For example, with regard to evolution, we have seen pictures, or been told about the Galapagos finches, or perhaps about skeletal findings like those of “Lucy,” a primate recently found and named, though she lived many centuries ago. Sometimes people take the truth of a theory for granted simply for the sake of expedience. Sometimes we do so because we prefer to have some answers, something to accept as a truth, even if we have no way to substantiate that particular theory. We do so even though theories sometimes change more often than the phases of the moon. Humans often desire to have some theory on which to hang our hat. For example, we accept ever-changing medical theories concerning nutrition and diet because we—individual members of the community—have few dependable ways of knowing what is best nutritionally. Furthermore, we have learned to trust scientists—though they have been known to lead us astray. Nonetheless, we tend to believed men in white coats if they report that mixed proteins are required for sound health; that the egg is the perfect meal, or that meat and dairy

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are fundamental to sound nutrition. Many of us now know that not even one of these statements is true, but some cling to these outdated nutritional ideas long after these theories regarding optimal human diet and nutrition have been proven wrong. Even though it is somewhat common knowledge that nutritional information regarding dairy and flesh products were frequently funded by powerful people inside the animal industries, and that these powerful individuals lobbied the government in order to have their products listed as basic and essential on the food pyramid (Adams 2003, 37). Though many of us grew up with this pyramid as our model, some have come to learn that an egg a day only increases one’s chance of premature death, that the consumption of milk is linked with diabetes and obesity, and that animal protein is linked with heart disease, cancers, obesity, and infertility (Dejousse 2008). Consequently, most of us are now more cautious about theories posed by those with a vested interest. But how often do we know who stands behind a theory? Vested Interests, partiality, and theorizing ‘Others’ Vested interests always put justice and truth at risk. If three people have a vested interest in a given inheritance, and one of the three is the judge determining who ought to receive the inheritance, justice is at risk because the judge has a vested interest, and is likely to be partial. Similarly, if the judge in a particular case is engaged to be married to a man who is on trial, justice is at risk because the judge has both a vested interest and is likely to be partial. Vested interests also put theories at risk, yet those who pose theories almost always have vested interests. This is not to say that all theorists are so hopelessly caught up in vested interests that they cannot be impartial, only that vested interests must always be considered a factor when assessing theories, and in fact bias among those who theorize tends to be fairly common—most of us focus on a particular study for a particular reason. History is replete with embarrassing examples of theories rooted in partiality. Heterosexuals developed theories about “others” when they decided that homosexuals were “mentally ill and in need of professional medical help” (Regan 124). They sought to eliminate “all sexual desires or replac[e] unnatural abnormal, homosexual desires with natural, normal heterosexual ones” through such methods as “abstinence, hypnosis, Â�psychoanalysis,

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vasectomy, shock treatment, the administration of hormones and drugs, castration (in the case of men), hysterectomy (in the case of women), lobotomy, and aversion therapies” (Regan 2001, 124). Similarly, European Christians, working from Greek models and from the notion that they were the most important part of creation, proposed theories asserting that the earth—because of humanity – was the center of the created universe. Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas simply gave older, Greek ideas a Christian twist: By the Middle Ages, [geocentrism] took on a new power as the philosophy of Aristotle (newly rediscovered in Europe) was wedded to Medieval theology in the great synthesis of Christianity and Reason undertaken by philosopher-theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. The Prime Mover of Aristotle’s universe became the God of Christian theology, the outermost sphere of the Prime Mover became identified with the Christian Heaven, and the position of the Earth at the center of it all was understood in terms of the concern that the Christian God had for the affairs of mankind. (“The Universe”)

It is interesting how adherents insist that Christianity is Godcentered, while Christian theories such as those of Aquinas prove to be overwhelmingly arrogant in their tendencies to be human-centered. These biased (but once well established) theories have largely gone the way of vinyl records and polyester. Ongoing inquiry, with the help of advancing technology, has proven such theories wrongheaded. In fact, if we consider every theory ever established by a human being, the vast majority have been discredited and abandoned. With hindsight, our theories often seem sadly inadequate, or blatantly wrong. Oftentimes our wrongheaded theorize have been motivated and shaped by vested interests. Other times, our theories are wrong simply because we are limited in what we are able to understand. Too often we theorize about “others,” as in the case of heterosexuals theorizing about homosexuals, or men theorizing about women. Most people who have put forward theories about homosexuality have been heterosexuals, and most of these theorists have been markedly influenced by Christianity. It such cases we must be leery—even suspicious. When humans theorize about “others” our theories are most likely to go astray, both because we fail to understand “others,” and because there is something that theorizers might gain by theorizing about “others.”

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History provides plentiful examples of theories clouded by personal affiliation and assumed personal interests. Slavery During a time when slaves had no right to life, no right to property, and no right to freedom, a time when slaves could be beaten, sold, raped, or murdered, the Caucasian physician, J. H. Van Evrie, wrote White Supremacy and Negro Subordination; or, Negroes a Subordinate Race and (so-called) Slavery its Normal Condition. In this widely read and influential work, Evrie presented documentation from a study in which he compares brain mass to size of body in Caucasians (self) and Africans (“other”). He noted that Caucasian brains are comparatively more massive, and theorized that, due to smaller brain size, African Americans are innately inferior. He concluded that Africans in the U.S. were not equal to Caucasians biologically, and deduced that Africans were incapable of learning to read, write, or speak as Caucasians read, write, and speak. “They” were assumed incapable of grasping abstract ideas, such as morality. Evrie, a strong Christian, theorized that God created Caucasians to be superior, to take charge of Africans (Regan 2001, 113). (Interestingly, his conclusion did not require Caucasians to travel to Africa to place all Africans under the superior supervision of Caucasians on behalf of the divine, but only to the maintenance of slaves in the U.S.) Around the same time period as Evrie, Samuel Cartwright, a wellregarded Caucasian physician in Louisiana, “discovered” two ailments peculiar to those with dark skin who were native to Africa (“other”), Drapetomania and dysthesia ethiopica. The former is manifest in just one symptom, the tendency to run away from one’s owners. The latter, also called “rascality,” was evidenced by “talking back, fighting with masters, refusing to work, destroying property, and insensibility to pain” (Regan 2001, 115). Cartwright’s demented theory of supposed ailments failed to identify the most likely cause of these behaviors: a healthy response to oppression, exploitation, and cruel injustice. Yet other prominent pre Civil War Caucasian physicians presented theories to explain why Africans (“other”) were not as evolved—were not suited to become physicians or even free citizens.

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Like Evrie, they rooted their scientific theories in empirical evidence—brain mass and observable behavior. Men who developed these theories of “other” gained a solid following among those who were in their own racial category, and both the theories and those who supported these theories helped to legitimize and maintain slavery. Most contemporary readers recognize these theories of “other” as self-serving, as evidence of the corruption of power and privilege, as spurious and self-interested. We are much less likely than our great grandparents would have been to accept these theories. Women Caucasian males gained much by enslaving Africans and women. Carl Vogt, one of the leading European professors in the area of natural history wrote that “the grown-up Negro partakes, as regards his intellectual faculties, of the nature of the child, the female, and the senile White” (Ehrenreich 2005, 129). In both Europe and the U.S., women were deprived of the vote, and men passed legislation to keep women dependent and powerless: [U]pon marriage a woman lost any right to control property that was hers prior to the marriage, nor did she have rights to acquire any property during marriage. A married woman could not make contracts, keep or control her own wages or any rents, transfer property, sell property or bring any lawsuit. (“Married”)

As with Africans, if men were going to continue to maintain their elite position of power, they needed theories to justify why individual freedoms and democracy could not effectively make women (“other”) their political and social equals. Dr. R.R. Coleman, Dr. Edward H. Clark, and Dr. G. Stanley Hall, were among the physicians who presented theories about the proper place of women based on feminine biology (Regan 2001, 120). Current theories of the day suggested that the human body was a closed system in which energies spent to develop one portion of our physique deprived other areas (Regan 2001, 120). Developing oneself was, therefore, a delicate balancing act. Furthermore, the world was understood to be divided into two distinct spheres: public life and home life; public life was largely reserved for males, while women were relegated to a home life shared with males (Regan 2001, 117).

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Coleman, Clark, and Hall proposed theories suggesting that women were biologically better suited, and therefore most appropriately kept, to home life. They further indicated that, if women wasted their energies developing the wrong organs, they would be unable to fulfil their primary role: childbearing (Regan 2001, 120-121). They put forth theories to explain why women who receive higher education, or who engaged in strenuous physical activities, would not be able to fulfil their womanly roles—they would be barren because such misplaced endeavours would reduce a woman’s reproductive energies. R.R. Coleman of Alabama wrote: Women beware. You are on the brink of destruction: You have hitherto been engaged in crushing your waists; now you are attempting to cultivate your mind: You have been merely dancing all night in the foul air of the ball-room; now you are beginning to spend your mornings in the study. You have been incessantly stimulating your emotion with concerts and operas, with French plays, and French novels; now you are exerting your understanding to learn Greek, and solve propositions in Euclid. Beware! Science pronounces that the woman who studies is lost! (Ehrenreich 2005, 141).

Men, who were deemed biologically suited to work outside the home, were told by the latest theorists that it was prudent for them foster both their intellect and their physique. The same theorists told women (“other”) that they were biologically suited for childbirth, and that they ought, therefore, to remain inside the home. Males, theorizing about women (“others”) determined that women ought to stay in the home and avoid education and sports—leaving public spheres exclusively to men—and focus on bearing and raising children, and tending the home. Women were encouraged to forgo higher learning and rigorous activities based on theories, developed by men, who had come to believed that women would destroy their reproductive abilities, and be left barren and bereft of children, should they stray from their rightful roles (Regan 2001, 120-121). These handy male theorizers documented the fact that women who received higher education married later, if at all, and had less children (Regan 2001, 118). Empirical, scientific studies conclusively demonstrated that only 28% of college educated women married, compared with 80% among women who did not attend college (Ehrenreich 2005, 141). For men theorizing “other,” this was not an indication that educated women preferred not to tie themselves to a man, but rather that education

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had destroyed their chances of marriage. For many women, this was a terrifying possibility, and the fear and dread that was intended to keep women in their place was extremely effective (Ehrenreich 2005, 143). (New studies demonstrate that every “year of a mother’s education corresponds to 5-10% lower mortality rates for children under 5. Every three years of additional education correlates with up to one child fewer per woman” (Population 2007, 2). New theories, many of which women were involved in, suggest that educated women are better able to make their own choices about reproduction—which is good, not bad—and that they therefore often choose to have fewer children, if any.) To support earlier, patriarchal theories about women’s biology as centered on her ovaries, requiring her to stay home, male physicians “discovered” that women’s brains were smaller—that their brains were not “intended” to be a primary feature in a woman’s body or the center of her life (Regan 2001, 120). In contrast, the Caucasian male brain proved that Caucasian males were the most intelligent, and therefore best equipped to hold power and make decisions. A woman’s intelligence need not be great to tend homes, raise children, and keep obedience to one’s husband, and this was clearly the rightful role of such small-brained humans. While the theories of people like Coleman, Clark, and Hall now seem downright bizarre, these theories were deemed legitimate in their day (Regan 2001). These doctors in white coats conducted studies, observed and documented empirical evidence, assessed data, and only then developed theories. They felt that they had reached sound conclusions based on solid evidence. To patriarchal physicians examining female “others,” for men who had something to gain by keeping women under their power and control, their gathered evidence was convincing, their conclusions logical. At a time when women could not vote, divorce, or retain legal custody of children, when women bequeathed all property to husbands through the act of marriage and were barred from most professions, physicians collected and presented hard evidence to support patriarchy, the status quo, and to defend their own power and privilege. Contemporary Examples of Theorizing ‘Others’ In each of the above cases, those in power (those making the rules, those with a vested interest in maintaining personal privilege and

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power) developed theories about “others.” These “others” were under their patriarchal power, and their theories worked to defend and justify Caucasian male privilege and power. Have human beings changed radically since the days of Evrie and Coleman, when a woman’s education was implicated in the shrinking of her uterus, when African slaves who sought freedom were diagnosed with “rascality”? Unfortunately, people in power are still spitting out theories designed to defend and justify their domination. In 2005, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, “questioned how much of a role discrimination plays in the dearth of female professors in science and engineering at elite universities” (Bombardieri 2005). Summers focused on “unproven research into genetics and ‘aptitude’,” “research showing that girls are less likely to score top marks than boys in standardized math and science tests” (Dobbs 2005). In light of this “evidence,” he theorized about possible reasons for this dearth of women in top academic positions in science and engineering. His theory was rooted in the science of biology: genetics and child rearing. Like the physicians of earlier generations, Summers justified the status quo, which favors his gender, by pointing to female biology. He did not acknowledge that his privilege and power as a white male in a patriarchal culture—rather than his biology—had disposed him to higher education and a privileged occupation. And he made sure that his theory was put into action: The number of women offered tenured positions dropped significantly under his leadership. “Of the 32 offers of tenure made by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences [under his watch], four went to women” (Dobbs 2005). During the 2003-04 academic year, just 13% of available faculty positions in the Arts and Sciences were offered to women at Harvard (“Senior”). In 1994, Charles Murray and Professor Richard J. Herrnstein (yet another Harvard affiliate likely enjoying a life of privilege) published The Bell Curve. This controversial book looked to genetic differences in intelligence and aptitude to better understand social problems, and to propose possible solutions. These two Caucasian men began their work with several key assumptions: –â•fi IQ tests measure intelligence, –â•fi intelligence is substantially heritable (no less than 40 percent and no more than 80 percent), and

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–â•fi IQ tests are not demonstrably biased against social, economic, ethnic, or racial groups. This latter assumption is particularly interesting, as it ignores formidable research that has indicated strong cultural bias in administered tests (Beatty 2008). Given this problem, the first assumption is also called into question. While Murray and Herrnstein acknowledge the ongoing debate over the importance of environment influences on the IQ gap between races, The Bell Curve is based on the assumption that IQ is genetic, posing an argument for biological determinism in which those who are poor, undereducated, or unemployed are in such unfortunate circumstances due to their biological nature—their innate inferiority. In their study, Murray and Herrnstein note that “AfricanAmericans typically earn IQ scores one full standard deviation below those of white Americans” (Beatty 2008). Though this gap has narrowed by about 3 IQ points, Murray and Herrnstein do not attributed this change to increased opportunities and less oppression, but to an increase in the lowest scores among Caucasian Americans (Beatty 2008). Murray and Herrnstein admit that Asians tend to have a higher IQ than Caucasians, but are quick to point out that the IQ of the average immigrant is now only 95, which is lower than the national average. They also note that these low IQ immigrants are “less brave, less hard working, less imaginative, and less self-starting than many of the immigrant groups of the past” (Beatty 2008). According to Murray and Herrnstein’s theorizing, this influx of lower IQ immigrants (“other”) is directly linked with a host of contemporary social problems, including poverty, lack of education, unemployment, divorce, “illegitimate” children, welfare dependency, crime, and political apathy (Beatty). While Caucasians continue to hold a solid majority, apparently they are not to blame. Not surprisingly, this theory leads these highly privileged authors to a conclusion that will favor those who are in their category—the highly privileged. They argue for biological determinism, and advocate for putting more money into “gifted” programs, while dropping affirmative action. Affirmative action, they argue, puts those with a lower IQ (“others”) into positions where more intelligent students and employees (self) might otherwise—and ought—to be placed. Murray and Herrnstein maintain that those who are already on top

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of the social hierarchy (Caucasians) belong at the top, and offer these individuals ample opportunities to foster and further advance their own potential, further enhancing their personal power and privilege. Theories about ‘other’ animals Theories posed by Caucasian men regarding Africans and women have at least sometimes been flagrantly biased in favor of Caucasian males, yet many of these theories have been taken seriously not only by scientists and scholars, but also by the masses. Theorizing “others” is inherently dangerous, especially when those in power—those with the education and positions that lead them to theorize—develop theories about “others” from whom they have much to gain. If a man develops a theory about women while his wife is at home tending his children and their home for free while he earns degrees and prestige, there is a strong indication that his theories will support this highly advantageous arrangement. Similarly, if a Caucasian who enslaves Africans develops a theory about Africans, her views are likely to be partial, and her conclusions suspect. Caucasian males in power have had much to gain by presenting theories about “other” individuals suggesting that they are not biologically suited to rule, not suited to share their privileges, whether in reference to “other” races or “other”-than-males. Not surprisingly, we have developed scores of theories about dogs, pigs, and brook trout that defend our right to use these “others” as we please. Our theories of language, sentience, intelligence, thought, reason, communication, community, learning ability, and ethics focus on our superiority, suggesting that we rightly exploit these “others.” For example, researchers failed in their first attempts to teach chimpanzees to speak, then concluded that chimps did not have linguistic ability, that they lacked the cognitive mechanisms necessary for all but the most basic forms of communication (“Language”). Theorists leaped from these initial forays into communication with chimpanzees to theorize that language is the exclusive realm of human beings, and that language is a critical defining human characteristic. No other primate (or any other species) was tested, yet the conclusion encompassed all nonhuman species. It has since been discovered that chimps lack the physiology for human verbal speech, but can communicate very effectively with sign

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language (not to mention communicating very well with one another). We are now finding—and admitting—that whales, apes, dolphins, and vervet monkeys, have complex forms of communication (Dawkins 1993, 23–24, Warren 1997, 53). [Vervet] monkeys are able to pick up subtleties in their grunts that completely escape the human ear. To a human, a grunt is a grunt is a grunt. It takes technological aids in the form of tape recorders and sound spectrographs to show that, as far as the monkeys are concerned, there is far more to it than that. . . . We still do not fully understand what it is that the monkeys are responding to or exactly how they manage to detect the differences between the grunts. But do it they clearly do, and they leave their human observers slightly baffled. (Dawkins 1993, 23–24)

Not only did we fail to test other species, but we smugly assumed that our elite linguistic status somehow justified our tyrannical exploitation of other creatures. This despite the fact that precious few (if any) contemporary ethicists considered language a necessary condition for moral standing—this initial assessment is now broadly recognized as blatant humanocentrism (Orlans 1998, 150). But the lingering effects of such theories are not so easily eradicated. In discussions exploring our exploitation of nonhumans, people still commonly defend human exploitation of cattle and pigs based on our “unique” use of language, sometimes focusing on syntax. Precisely what language, or syntax, has to do with the morality of exploitation remains unclear (even to those who pose this argument)—but nonetheless, it remains somewhat common to pose this now archaic argument. While language theories defending human supremacy have largely been discredited, a host of new theories have taken up where language theorists left off, working to define human beings as distinct from all other animals with the hidden agenda of justifying human supremacy, dominion, and exploitation. Mental abilities remain a particularly popular focus. Rene Descartes (1596–1650) is perhaps the most notorious example of a prominent thinker who presented a theory designed to bolster human privilege and power at the expense of dogs, rats, and any other nonhuman. By using reason and his Christian faith, he theorized that other species could neither think nor feel (Rachels 2007, 158). Vivisectionists and other exploiters were quick to accepted Descartes’ theory (Descartes 1955, 115).

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Needless to say, this vision of reality has had fateful consequences for our world. There is an apocryphal story told about some of the followers of Rene Descartes, who, on the banks of the Seine River in Paris, would nail dogs to wooden boards, cut them open, and watch them bark and writhe. They would exclaim: “Isn’t this wonderful? What marvellous machines! You do something to them, and predictably they start barking and writhing, almost on cue!” If the human mind is the sole reality, and the so-called physical world unreal, an inert, lifeless machine, it is easy to see how the barking and writhing would not be seen as manifestations and responses to pain (Muray 2010).

Many scientists and students of anatomy and physiology, content with Descartes’ theory, came to believe that the physique which they clearly believed to be analogous to their own, this crying and wounded dog, felt no pain, and therefore could be exploited to human ends without the slightest twinge of guilt. While these blinded theorists were unable to detect the monumental flaws in their thought processes, contemporary thinkers have managed to chuck this theory onto the pile with linguistic theories of human supremacy over nonhumans. Most people now agree that intelligence, like language, cannot be used to justify exploitation— and this is our main interest. Inasmuch as a lack of intelligence is not generally considered a legitimate reason to exploit another human being, how can it be a legitimate reason to exploit a dog or goat? Human intelligence clearly provides us with all that is necessary to exploit “others,” but intelligence (or a lack thereof) cannot justify exploitation. [I]intelligence allows us to control, vanquish, dominate, and destroy all other creatures. If this is the case, it is power that puts us on top of the pyramid. But if power provides grounds for including or excluding creatures from the scope of moral concern, we have essentially accepted the legitimacy of the thesis that “might makes right” and have, in a real sense, done away with all morality altogether. If we do accept this thesis, we cannot avoid extending it to people as well, and it thus becomes perfectly moral for Nazis to exterminate the Jews, muggers to prey on old people, the majority to oppress the minority, and the government to do as it sees fit to any of us. Furthermore, as has often been pointed out, it follows from this claim that if an extraterrestrial alien civilization were intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to us, it would be perfectly justified in enslaving or eating or exterminating human beings (Rollin 1981, 8).

Sadly, while Descartes is a particularly flagrant example, he has not been the exception to the rule. Our vested interest in exploiting

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nonhumans persists, and so we continually ask: In what ways are we unique, and how does our unique status justify our ongoing and extensive exploitation of pigeons and pigs, carp and capuchins? Perhaps, knowing that neither lack of language skills nor lesser intelligence can rightly justify exploitation, theorists turned to morality itself. Their thinking: If deer and chickens have no morality, how can we be obliged to treat them morally? If they cannot return the favor, why should we be held accountable to them? Theorists assumed that ethics, like language, was an exclusively human phenomenon though the preponderance of research now indicates that differences between species are a matter of degree, not kind—morality (like language) might be different, but it is likely to exist in other species if it exists in human beings. Evolutionary theory supports this conclusion, as does empirical evidence. A minimal definition of ethics entails a system of behavioural norms that generates expectations of behavior and punishes deviance (“Community”). Many different species comply with social expectations, and suffer social punishments for infringements. For instance, the vampire bat displays “decision-making . . . what looks like a system of morality based on the principle of reciprocation. . . , coupled with sanctions against those [who] do not live up to their obligations” (Dawkins 1993, 57). Many households have more than one dog, and all but the most unobservant human will have noticed that dogs have pack morality. Some behaviors are unacceptable, and punishment follows swiftly for infringements. Marc Bekoff, who has studied and written on animal morality extensively, notes that “[d]ogs, coyotes, and wolves are fast learners when it comes to fair play …. There are serious sanctions when they breach the trust of their friends and these penalties might indeed become public information if others see an individual cheating his companions” (Bekoff 2006, 142). Those who grow up around horses also observe this sense of right and wrong, and the swift punishment that is meted out as part of herd behavior. Based on recorded observations, the same seems to be true of other primates, felines, insects, and perhaps a host of lesser-observed species (“Inside”). Many creatures are genetically wired with a propensity for establishing and maintaining morality, especially animals like humans and sheep, who tend to live in communities. Likely, all creatures that live in community have morals that foster community, yet not even one of our accepted moral theories reflects this (rather obvious) likelihood.

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Instead, our moral theories explicitly exclude nonhumans. Social Contract theory proposes that those who are not within the moral community are not protected by the moral community. Those who cannot participate in a social contract—a moral agreement—are excluded (Rachels 2007, 158). Of course the authors of this theory were well aware that only human beings can participate in a human moral agreement—yet another example of a thinly veiled attempt to justify our power and control over the bodies and lives of cattle, cats, zebras, rattle snakes, and turkeys. Our theories about “other” animals have almost always proven to be an embarrassment. Recently Dawkins wrote that “we now know that these three attributes—complexity, thinking and minding about the world—are also present in other species. The conclusion that they, too, are consciously aware is therefore compelling” (Dawkins 1993, 177). Are theorists really still wondering if dogs and dolphins are consciously aware? Apparently so. Even the most well known philosopher of animal liberation, Peter Singer, failed to present a moral theory devoid of human bias. In his theory, mind figures prominently, and he therefore presents a moral theory that continues to favor human beings. Such assessments, and the theories they foster, say more about the nature of science—and about human nature—than they do about hippopotami, donkeys, or ducks. We are inherently partial; we have a huge vested interest in exploiting sheep and turkeys, mice and rats, and every other living being. We want to eat them, experiment on them, wear their skins, and use them for entertainment. With so much at stake, human theories regarding “other” animals must are highly likely to be partial. Any theory that cannot meet the requirement of impartiality, is inherently suspect (Rachels 2007, 13-14). When assessing and comparing animals (including humans) across species, theorists have tended to focus on prized and highly developed human attributes, then compare these prized and highly developed human attributes with the same attribute in “other” creatures, inevitably affirming our general sense that we are superior. Not only do we choose attributes at which we excel, but we have an unspoken motive: “For a variety of economic, religious, or other ideological reasons, it has been important to many people to insist on an unbridgeable gulf between humans and animals” (Dupre 1996, 331). Many humans are interested in establishing and maintaining an “unbridgeable gap” between humans and “other” animals, some way

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of self-defining that justifies our sense of hierarchy in which we stand on top of all other species, excluding these “others” from the moral community, allowing us to exploit “them.” What Theorizing about “Other” Justifies Humans in power, those with a vested interest in maintaining positions of power, have a tendency to be partial and unjust when theorizing about “others” whom they exploit. Recognizing this theorist’s tendency is critical to any assessment of the value and viability of theorizing about “other” animals. Based on our own track record, we have every reason to be suspicious of our ability to theorize justly about “other” animals. If we are to theorize about nonhuman animals, we must understand what is at stake—both for humans and for nonhumans. Theories are likely to justify the status quo—our sense of human superiority that justifies our domination and exploitation of “other” creatures. The suffering that humans now legally cause to nonhumans in contemporary Western nations is horrific, and it has long been justified via human theories about “others”—about nonhuman minds, sentience, culture, language, and/or the divine will. In any case, we feel that our exploitation of these “others” is justified. And to understand the depth of concerns that revolve around any question of theorizing about “others,” we must understand what our theories have brought to the table. This section explores our exploitation of just a two species in just one industry—animal agriculture. Factory Farming1 Many people are of the opinion that animals are generally well cared for in animal industries, that laws protect animals, and that it is in the industry’s best interest to treat other creatures well. Nothing 1 ╇ The information included in this section can be found on many websites, including VIVA! USA (http://www.vivausa.org/visualmedia/index.html), PETA (http://www.petatv.com/), HSUS (http://video.hsus.org/), PCRM (http://www.pcrm. org/resources/), Farm Sanctuary (http://www.farmsanctuary.org/mediacenter/vid eos. html), and Vegan Outreach (http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/Â�animals. html), to name just a few. Information on dairy cattle and laying hens was taken from the following sites: HSUS Factory Farming Campaign (http://www.hsus.org/ farm/resources/research/welfare/welfare_overview.html#76), farmsanctuary’s Facto ryFarming.com (http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/), and VIVA!

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could be farther from the truth. No federal laws regulate the treatment of animals raised for meat, eggs, or milk, and almost all customary agricultural practices, no matter how painful, are exempt from animal cruelty statutes. In the animal industries, welfare takes a back seat to economic interests. Animals are not viewed as individuals when they are exploited by factory farmers, they are viewed as units of production—“live-stock.” The cost of veterinary care, the cost of housing, and the cost of feed are all weighed against profits: Profits are the purpose and the guiding principle in animal agriculture, not individuals. In this section I explore “dairy” cattle to help readers understand why our self—serving theories, which have horrendous affects on “other” animals must be subject to rigorous scrutiny. “Dairy” Cattle and the Veal Industry Cows, like humans and other mammals, only lactate after giving birth. In order to produce milk, cows are artificially impregnated every year. They carry their young for ten months, then their calves are taken shortly after birth. Cows—like most mothers—try desperately to protect and keep their offspring. They bawl for days after their calves are stolen. What happens to these calves? The veal industry exists because of the dairy industry, and was created to take advantage of an abundant supply of unwanted male calves. If you support the dairy industry by purchasing dairy, you help to create and support the veal industry. Male “dairy” calves are either killed shortly after birth and sold as ‘bob’ veal for low-quality meals (such as frozen TV dinners), or they are chained by the neck in a two-by-five foot wooden crate, where they are unable to turn, and where they can neither stretch or lie down comfortably. The veal industry confines one million calves in these small crates annually, feeding them a liquid milk substitute that is deficient in iron and fiber, designed to create an anemic, lightcolored flesh that is prized as veal. Veal calves are usually slaughtered when they are just four months old. Life is no better for the mother cows. With their calves gone, milking machines are attached to the cow’s teats morning and evening. Dairy cows endure mechanized milking for ten out of twelve months USA Guides (http://www.vivausa.org/activistresources/guides/murdershewrote1. htm#).

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per year (including seven months of their nine-month pregnancies). Genetic manipulation and dietary controls cause extraordinary and unnatural milk output. Cows naturally produce just over two tons of milk per year, but Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH/BST) has increased milk flow so that cows now provide as much as thirty tons of milk annually, enough for ten calves. One-in-five factory farmed “dairy” cows secrete pus from her udders, which invariably mixes with her milk. Cows are so exhausted by the dairy process that they are often “spent,” and sent to slaughter, after four or five years of repeated impregnation, birth, and constant milking. (Those few cows who escape the animal industries and find their way to sanctuaries can live upwards of twenty years.) Most cows are pregnant when they are slaughtered. “Dairy” cattle are not considered to have high quality flesh (largely because most “beef” cattle are slaughtered at a much younger age, when their flesh is tender). The flesh of “dairy” cattle is used for soup, burgers, or processed foods. Those who believe that they do not support slaughter by consuming dairy products are mistaken: Both “dairy” calves and their mothers are slaughtered for human consumption at a young age. Cows exploited by the dairy industry suffer for many years at the hands of capitalists who impregnate them, steal their young and then their milk, and ultimately send them off to slaughter—capitalizing on their reproductive abilities, their nursing milk, and finally their bodies. In the dairy industry, cows suffer for years, while their calves are among the most mistreated and neglected of all factory farmed animals. When making changes in diet, please do not become a vegetarian who consumes more dairy products, it is better to cut back on all animal products to avoid adding economic support to the dairy industry, to avoid contributing to and encouraging the suffering of cows and their calves. Slaughter Legislation offers only minimal protection for animals sent to slaughter. Mammals are supposed to be “stunned” (rendered unconscious) before they are killed (federal Humane Slaughter Act, 1958), but slaughter, like most businesses, is shaped and driven by economic regulators. In the slaughterhouse, the quicker each animal is killed, the higher the profit margin. Time is money. Workers must be paid

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for their time, and while one animal’s body is on the dismemberment line, no other body can be processed. Consequently, economics encourage speed, which often makes effective stunning impossible. A USDA survey concluded that stunning was either “unacceptable” or a “serious problem” in 36 percent of sheep and pig slaughterhouses, and 64 percent of cattle slaughterhouses. (Even more remarkable, chickens, turkeys, ducks—every species of poultry—is exempt from the federal Humane Slaughter Act. In the U.S. slaughterhouse industry, 90 percent of those killed for food are birds.) Downers Transporting animals to slaughter is a rough business. Like all aspects of our animal industries, methods are dictated by a cost-analysis, and what is cheapest is seldom what is best for the animal being transported. As a result, animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified, and many also arrived injured. Some are unable to stand or walk. The meat industry calls animals who arrive at the slaughterhouse too sick or injured to rise or move, “downers.” 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk, and these individuals are kicked, beaten, or forcibly dragged from transport trucks (Kirchheimer). Undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals being kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain. These animals are often fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. (Please view undercover footage.) While the plight of “dairy” cattle and their calves may seem particularly brutal and unjust, the situation for fish, chickens, pigs, and cattle is no better. I encourage readers to explore undercover footage taken of these industries, which can be accessed online.2 ╇To understand the moral and spiritual importance of this topic, it is important to view undercover footage that reveals exactly what is happening behind the scenes, when those who deal with animals think that no one else is watching. Undercover footage can be found on many websites. For US footage visit Mercy for Animals at http://www.mercyforanimals.org/ and Compassion Over Killing at http://www.cok. net/. For Canadian footage, visit www.cetfa.com and www.defendhorses.org. For Australian footage, visit Animals Australia http://www.animalsaustralia.org/. For European footage, visit Vief Pfoten (Four Paws) for Western European footage at http://www.vier-pfoten.org/website/output.php, L214 for footage from France at http://www.l214.com/, Eyes on Animals http://eyesonanimals.com/€and Varkens in Nood€ http://www.varkensinnood.nl/ for footage from The Netherlands, and for an 2

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Theorizing Self White men once theorized that Africans were innately incapable of equality, of being granted freedom, of morality. For centuries, Caucasian male theories have defended their own thinly veiled selfinterests, and have helped to maintain the status quo, a society where Caucasian men held power and privilege while African Americans worked hard for pitifully little, and enjoyed few privileges. Men around the world have relentlessly theorized about the nature of women, about the feminine mind and body, about childbirth and menstruation, and about women’s rightful role in society; male theorizers have generally concluded that women rightly tend homes and raise children, rather than selling cars or building bridges. Theories developed by those in power about “others,” those who are not in power, have tended to be partial and biased, selfish and self-serving, and they have greatly harmed “others.” With regard to animals, humans have theorized that language, reason, ethics—even sentience and consciousness—were the exclusive gifts of human beings. Such theories were popular because they stroked our egos, and granted us privileges, excluding “others” from equal moral consideration—often from any moral consideration. When evidence eventually demonstrated that theories about “others” were based on faulty assumptions or incorrect data, those in power nonetheless generally maintained their exploitative behavior toward the “other,” and often continued to quote the same discredited data and theories. For example, theories indicating that cattle and chickens are insentient and lack consciousness have been soundly and roundly discredited, yet we still brand and castrate cattle without anesthesia, and slaughter chickens with no requirement that they first be rendered unconscious. When theorizer’s theories about “others” (theories that support their own superiority) are discredited, those who theorize, those who are in power, most often simply shift ground. For example, someone might argue that, even if dolphins can overall view, Compassion in World Farming at http://www.ciwf.org.uk/. I highly recommend these two short online videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCX7f_ s1CA4 and http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=mym2002. More broadly, visit PETA (http://www.petatv.com/), HSUS (http://video.hsus. org/), VIVA! USA (http://www.vivausa.org/visualmedia/index.html) (or VIVA! UK), PCRM (http://www.pcrm.org/resources/), Farm Sanctuary (http://www.farmsanc tuary.org/mediacenter/videos.html), and Vegan Outreach (http://www.veganout reach.org/whyvegan/animals.html).

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Â� communicate, they do not use syntax, and we can therefore use them for entertainment. Or they might say, even if chimpanzees have consciousness, they do not have self-consciousness, so we can use them for vivisection. Or an exploiter hoping to maintain their privilege might argue that, even if hogs do have morality, they cannot sign onto a social contract with human beings, and we can therefore consume them. (I have personally heard each of these arguments posed— many times). Whether or not theories about the natures of “others” stand the test of time, whether or not these theories are rooted in reason, they have proven both appealing and tenacious. Theories can be a worthy indulgence—even valuable. Theorizing is an practice that I have often enjoyed, and am enjoying even as I write. But we must learn from our mistakes: We must accept that there are situations in which theories are inappropriate—namely, theorizing “others.” Those who theorize too often theorized about “others,” representing them for our purposes. Theorizers, like all human beings, have vested interests. We are partial. Therefore we should not theorize about those whom we consider to be “other,” or about those who are under our power. To do so is to ignore history, and to greatly risk both the viability of theorizing, and justice itself. If powerful aliens were to descend, and identify humans as exploitable “others,” if they confined, deprived, and killed us for their purpose, would we want them to theorize about our nature, our minds, or our moral status? Would we trust their philosophizing about who we are? Would we want them to determine our abilities and propensities, and ultimately our fate? We ought not to theorize about “others.” Does this mean that we can never theorize about pigs and ducks? Does it mean that we can never theorize about African Americans unless we are African American? Or about women, unless we are women? The answer to this question rests in our ability to look in the mirror. Can a Caucasian male find a black woman when he looks in the mirror? Can we find a duck when we look in the mirror? If we cannot, then we must not theorize about those who remain “other.” If we can, then our theories must reflect an understanding that we and they are one. Ultimately, pigs and turkeys are not “other” any more than African Americans and women are “other” for Caucasian male theorizers. People and pigs become “other” when we wish to treat them Â�difÂ�-

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ferently from how we would wish to be treated. If we can look into the bright eyes of a calf and see into a mirror—if we can see in this individual a person—complete with interests, hopes, and fears—not unlike ourselves, then our theorizing is likely to have a greater degree of validity. If we theorize about self whenever we theorize about fish or a dice snake, crab-eating mongoose, or killifish, our theories are more likely to be grounded in reality—the reality that there is no “other,” the reality that we are all animals, and therefore are fundamentally alike, particularly in morally relevant ways, such as our ability to suffer and our innate desire to live without suffering. If Caucasians had seen themselves in the slaves they exploited—if they had recognized that Africans and Caucasians are humans, and therefore both are fundamentally alike, particularly in morally relevant ways, such as our ability to suffer and our innate desire to live without suffering, it would have been unlikely that theorists would have tried to justify slavery. Had men seen themselves in the women they trapped at home with a litter of children, they would not have supposed that women were naturally suited to homelife, or that they should be denied a life outside the home or equal say in matters of importance to them. Had Descartes seen himself in a dog, he would never have supposed that the dog’s cries were mechanical, and had no connection to sensations. If we could see ourselves in hens, cattle, and pigs currently trapped on our factory farms, we would not suppose that eating eggs, drinking milk, or eating flesh could be justified. Those who look at another human being, or another animal, and see “other” must not theorize about those “others.” Conclusion [Theories] are abstract and conceptual, and to this end they are never considered right or wrong. Instead, they are supported or challenged by observations in the world. They are “rigorously tentative”, meaning that they are proposed as true but expected to satisfy careful examination to account for the possibility of faulty inference or incorrect observation. Sometimes theories are falsified, meaning that an explicit set of observations contradicts some fundamental assumption of the theory, but more often theories are revised to conform to new observations, by restricting the class of phenomena the theory applies to or changing the assertions made. Sometimes a theory is set aside by scholars because there is no way to examine its assertions analytically; these may Â�continue on in the popular imagination until some means of

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examination is found which either refutes or lends credence to the theory (“Theory).

Theories are “rigorously tentative” and yet—even when a theory has been found to be flawed, it “may continue on in the popular imagination.” When people theorize about “other,” there is often “no way to examine [our] assertions analytically.” Some people still believe and assert that African Americans are intellectually inferior. Some people still believe that a woman’s biology rightly places her in the home, raising children. Many people continue to believe that only humans have language, only humans have the ability to reason, and only humans are guided by moral codes. How might we conclusively prove what transpires in the minds of “other” individuals—whether “other” primates or “other” species? Theorizing, our search for answers in a world filled with unknowns, sometimes yields wonderful and important information—information that is critical to how we understand our world and how we live in our world, and which aids us in a host of ways. Other times, theories are the product of vested interests and partiality, especially when humans theorize about “others.” In these instances, we often do great damage with our theorizing. If we are to theorize about oxen and sheep, then we must theorize about self. But theorizing self is perhaps not the most appropriate response. Today, what we need—and what cattle and mice, turkeys and pigs, Gobi jerboas and water opossums need from us—is not theorizing “others,” but a change of heart and a change of lifestyle. If we are to save ourselves, our planet, and these many individuals, we must see and accept our commonality with all creatures and stop posing Â�theories that begin with an assumption of critical difference. Because we have been unable to theorize justly about “others,” it is time to Â�dispense with theories and rediscover empathy, compassion, and common sense—of course pigs and cats think and suffer, have personalities and volition. Those who would suggest otherwise hold the burden of proof. At this critical moment on our threatened planet, it is time to bring change through personal choices rather than ponder possibilities. After all, just in the time that I have taken to write this paper about theories, billions of farmed animals have been killed at the hands of a greedy and exploitative humanity. This paper did not save them, nor will it save the ones who will be killed tomorrow.

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Thus far, human theories have been unable to stop the suffering and premature death for Latvian brown cows and white-tailed deer, and many of our theories have encouraged our exploitation and killing of these individuals. It is time to move from hopeful deliberation to dependable action. It is therefore time to quit talking and writing, and stop factory farms, laboratories, zoos, circuses, trappers, hunters, ranchers, dog breeders, fur farms and fur stores—it is time to protect all who are suffering and endangered in our neighbourhoods, communities, and on our planet. Theorizing is a luxury of the elite, whether theorizing about human-animal relations (as if the two were different) or about women’s ovaries. For one who recognizes that an individual who happens to be a gentle manatee or an endangered desert tortoise, a brakel chicken or a Gloucestershire old spots hog, is not “other” but part of our extended community, this is not a time for theories—this is a time for action. For those who wish to persist in their ponderings, based on our track-record across time, it is critical that we never theorize about “others.” If we cannot see ourselves in the reflective eyes of another animal, in their wiggles and vocalizations, then we have little to no hope of creating a theory of any worth or value; resultant theories are likely to justify yet more misery and death. Please, do not theorize about “others.” I must close now: Animals are suffering grievously—are slaughtered every second—justified by our theorizing about “others” regarding their supposed lack of reason, lack of souls, lack of language, and so I must get back to the critical task of animal liberation. Please, do not theorize about “other” animals. References Adams, C. 2003. The Pornography of Meat. New York: Continuum. Beatty, B. 2008. “The Bell Curve.” Human Intelligence. Accessed Jan 7 2008. http:// www.indiana.edu/~intell/bellcurve.shtml Bekoff, M. 2006. Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues. Philadelphia: Temple University press. Bombardieri, M. 2005. “Summers’ Remarks on Women Draw Fire.” The Boston Globe.€ Accessed January 17 2008. http://boston.com/news/education/higher/Â� articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/ Brown, M. 2007. Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News. Accessed January 7 2008. http:// wolves.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/wildlife-services-the-misnamed-federalagency-killed-16-million-animals-in-2006.

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Carlisle, E. 2007. “The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone and Red Tides.” The Louisiana Environment. Accessed 31 Oct 2008. http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/ enviroweb/DeadZone.htm “Community Ethics and Punishment.” On Philosophy. Accessed July 4 2009. http:// onphilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/07/23/community-ethics-and-punishment/ “Senior Positions.” Boston.com: Local News. Accessed July 4 2009. http://www. boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/08/01/harvard_improves_on_tenure_ offers_to_women/ Dawkins, M. S. 1993. Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness. Oxford: W. H. Freeman. Dejousse L., and J.M. Gaziano. 2008. “Egg Consumption in Relation to Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality: The Physician’s Health Study.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 87: 964-969. In Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine 17:3. Descartes, R. 1955. “The Discourse on Method.” Trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. In The Philosophical Works of Descartes. (Dover, New York: Dionys de Leeuw, A, 1996). “Contemplating the Interests of Fish: The Angler’s ChalÂ�lenge.” Environmental Ethics 18: 373–90. Dobbs, M. 2008. “Harvard Chief’s Comments on Women Assailed: Academics Critical of Remarks About Lack of Gender Equality.” The Washington Post. Jan. 19, 2005. A02. Accessed Jan 7 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ articles/A19181-2005Jan18.html Online. Dupre, J. 1996. “The Mental Lives of Nonhuman Animals.” In Readings in Animal Cognition, edited by M. Bekoff and D. Jamieson, 323-336. Cambridge: MIT Press. Ehrenreich, B. 2005. For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Expert’s Advice to Women. New York: Anchor. “Fish Species on Brink of ‘Global Collapse’.” The Reporter 39.1 (2007): 4. “Inside the Animal Mind.” Nature. PBS National. WPSX, Pennsylvania. 11 Jan. 2000. “Giant Tuna are being Slaughtered in Gulf.” In Brief, Spring (2007) 18-19. “History of Democracy.” Historyworld. Online. Internet. July 4, 2009. 1-4. . “Language Language Research with Chimpanzees: Linguistic Research on Great Apes in the Twentieth Century.” Accessed July 4, 2009. http://scientificinquiry. suite101.com/article.cfm/language_research_with_chimpanzees “Lethal Predator Control Courtesy of Wildlife Services.” The Humane Society of the United States. Accessed 31 Oct. 2007. http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/issues_fac ing_wildlife/lethal_predator_control_courtesy_of_wildlife_services/ “Married Women’s Property Act: 1848, New York€State.” About.com: Women’s HisÂ� tory. Accessed July 4, 2009. http://womenshistory.about.com/od/marriedwomen sproperty/a/property_1848ny.htm McQuillan, J. 2007. “The Exterminators” Missoula Independent. 18(1): 23. Muray, L. “An Introduction to the Process Understanding of Science, Society and the Self.” Religion-online.org. Accessed Feb. 14 2010. http://www.religion-online. org/showchapter.asp?title=2305&C=2294 Orlans, F.B., Beauchamp, T., Dresser, R., Morton, D. and J.Gluck. 1998. The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice. New York: Oxford. Population Institute. The Reporter: A Publication of Population Connection 39:3. Dec. 2007. 2. Phelps, N. 2002. The Dominion of Love. New York: Lantern. Rachels, J. 2007. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Regan, T. 2001. Defending Animal Rights. Urbana: University of Illinois. Rice, P. 2002. “Subsidies to the Meat Industry; Separation of Meat and State!” American Vegan 2:2, 8-9. Roach, J. 2007. “Gulf of Mexico ‘Dead Zone’ Is Size of New Jersey.” National Geographic News. Accessed Oct. 31 2007 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2005/05/0525_050525_deadzone.html. Rollin, B. E. 1981. Animal Rights and Human Morality. Amherst: Prometheus. “Sea Turtle Catch Closes Hawai’i Longline Fisheries.” In Brief. Summer (2006): 10-11. Singer, P. & Mason, J. 2006. Eating: What we Eat and Why it Matters. London: Arrow . “Theory.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed July 4 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory “The Universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy.” Accessed Feb. 14 2010. http://csep10.phys. utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/aristotle.html “What About Fish?” 1994. Editorial. Animal People: News for People Who Care About Animals 3.7: 2. “What Is Manifest Destiny?” Wisegeek. Accessed July 4 2009 http://www.wisegeek. com/what-is-manifest-destiny.htm “Wildlife Damage.” USDA-APHIS-Animal Damage Control. Accessed 31 Oct 2007. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/ “Will the US Ban Destructive Fishing?” AWI Quarterly 56.1 (2007): 17. Wilson, E. O. 1998. “The Biological Basis of Morality” Atlantic Monthly Apr. 53–70. Warren, M. 1997. Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Oxford: Clarendon.

PART two

animals and modernity

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Chapter Three

The Underdog in History: Serfdom, Slavery and Species in the Creation and Development of Capitalism Mary Murray Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but the dead... Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any monsters... (Marx 1976, 91)

Contemporary scholars (Speigel 1996) and animal rights activists (e.g., Peta, 2004) contend that non human animals incarcerated in modern factory farms, vivisection laboratories, the sport and entertainment industries and pet producing puppy mills are slaves. In this essay I will demonstrate that this claim can be solidly substantiated through the application of Marx’s social theory. To develop my argument that Marx’s social theory provides a solid theoretical basis for the claim that the situation of many, if not most, animals in modern society is one of slavery I will begin by looking at theoretical debates about the transition from feudalism to capitalism and what Marx had to say about the development of capitalism. I will outline what Marx had to say about slavery and serfdom in pre-capitalist society, and consider his view that slavery would be replaced by free wage labor in capitalist society. I will point to the fact that the scholarly debate about the transition from feudalism has, to date, failed to perceive the significance of non human animals as slaves for the development of capitalism. I will use aspects of Marx’s analysis of capitalist society to explain this analytic lacunae with respect to the situation of non human animals as slaves in the creation and development of capitalist society. Theoretical debates about the transition from feudalism to capitalism have been significant in the development of sociological and

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Â�historical understandings of the origins and nature of modern society. The theoretical debates have included Marxist (Brenner 1976, 1977, 1982; Dobb 1963; Hilton 1969, 1977, 1978; Sweezey 1950; Wallerstein 1974, 1976, 1980), Weberian (Weber 1930), Durkheimian (Durkheim 1960) and Malthusian (Postan 1950, 1966, 1973, 1975) perspectives. Feminists have also considered the role of gender and patriarchy in the development of capitalism (Hamilton 1978; Murray 1995). However, nowhere within the debate about the transition to capitalism have theoretical questions about the role of non-human species been posed. To date, debates about the transition have focused on changing social relations between humans as being constitutive of modern capitalist society. This chapter identifies ways in which the transition from feudalism and the subsequent development of capitalism in England was founded on the back of hooves, paws and claws. My argument will be that the development of capitalism was constructed in and through particular forms of speciesist social relationships. I will argue that such speciesist (Singer 1995; Dunayer 2004) social relationships have actually been constitutive of modern capitalism, rather than simply an effect of capitalism, or a relic from earlier societies. In developing this argument I will concentrate on Marxist accounts of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. My decision to do so is partly a pragmatic one, dictated by the limitations of space in an essay of this length. Moreover, my view is that much of the Marxist account of the creation and development of capitalism is compelling and convincing, and Marx was of course particularly concerned with the plight and role of the underdog in history. However, the Marxist underdog has never been a canine, or indeed any other species of non-human animal. Indeed I will argue that Marx’s theory suffers from a heavy dose of anthropocentricism, underpinned by speciesism, and that this potent cocktail has prevented Marx and, to date, modern Marxists contributors to the ‘transition debate’ from grasping the significance of non-human species for the development of capitalism. In developing my argument, I will, nonetheless, consider ways in which the Marxist analytical framework and conceptual categories such as serfdom, slavery, alienation, exploitation, commodity fetishism, reification, and class, are applicable to an analysis of the situation of non-human animals and the human-animal relationships in the development of capitalism in England. My approach in this

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respect is intended to be analytical. Analogies drawn by contemporary animal rights activists and organizations (PETA 2004), and scholars (Spiegel 1996) regarding, for example, the enslavement of non-human animals are compelling. They are an important way of highlighting the suffering of non-human species. This chapter considers such analogies through the lens of Marxist theory. Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism Marx and contemporary Marxists have written at length about the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this chapter I will concentrate on what Marx and Marxist scholars working with an ‘internal relations’ perspective—emphasizing social change within feudal society in England—had to say. I will not go into everything that has been said: I will concentrate on the main points of their accounts that are the most relevant for the themes of this chapter. All of them identify ‘free’ wage labor as the basis of the capitalist mode of production. Marx For Marx, the basis of capitalism is an exploitative social relation between a property-owning capitalist class and a property-less class of ‘free’ wage laborers. By ‘free’ wage labor Marx meant labor which was ‘free’ to sell its labor power—i.e. the energetic and creative capacity that a worker has to work and produce—as a commodity. In contrast to the serf or the slave, the ‘free’ wage laborer can enter into contracts to sell his or her labor power. However the freedom of the wage laborer is a formal freedom only because the laborer is also ‘free’ of—actually separated from—the means of production or subsistence. Basically the worker is property-less, and therefore forced to sell her or his labor power in order to live. In Capital Volume I, Marx (1976 Chaps, 26-32) documented the processes involved in the creation of ‘free’ wage labor and the “primitive accumulation of capital”, i.e. the early stages of capitalist development which appeared in England in ‘classic form’. He identifies two key processes. The first was the emancipation of the serfs. In England this began at the end of the 14th century and was complete by the 16th century. Serfdom, like slavery was a hereditary socioeconomic status. However, unlike human slaves, most who disappeared

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in England after the Norman Conquest, human serfs were not owned by anyone. However, as unfree peasants, serfs were exploited by the landowning classes. Under coercive sanction, serfs were forced to ‘transfer’ any surplus beyond their immediate subsistence needs to the feudal ruling classes. This could take the form of labor, rent in kind such as foodstuffs, or in money. The second key process in the primitive accumulation of capital in England was the separation of the free peasantry and small farmers from the land. Beginning in the late 15th century through to the 18th century enclosure of land, backed by the force of the state, ensured their expulsion from their means of subsistence. A new class of agrarian capitalists began large-scale sheep farming with a keen eye on profits to be made in the wool trade as well as the provision of food for an expanding urban population and industrial work force. The expropriated peasantry, initially turned into vagabonds and beggars, were subjected to further force and violence on the part of the state, intent on disciplining them to work as wage laborers. Marx discusses in some detail the use of ‘bloody legislation against the expropriated’. During the reign of Henry VIII for example, vagabonds who didn’t work could be whipped as well as suffer the loss of bodily parts such as half an ear. For continued refusal to work the punishment could be as extreme as execution. These laws remained in force until the beginning of the 18th century. The new class of landless laborers disciplined in this way supplied labor power for the new industries developing in the cities of England, including steel, coal and cotton. Contemporary Marxist Accounts Contemporary Marxist accounts of the transition to capitalism similarly stress the significance of the emergence of ‘free’ wage labor for the development of capitalism, and class conflict is identified as the motor of change in this respect. Maurice Dobb (1963) emphasizes a dynamic of class conflict through which serfs won their freedom, and agrarian transformation ultimately resulting in a basic division between the owners and non owners of capital. Rodney Hilton (1969, 1977, 1978) sees class struggle over feudal rent as the prime mover in the breakdown of feudalism, and highlights the English Peasant Revolt of 1381 as a defining moment in this process. Over time the gradual development of free tenures and a social structure differen-

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tiated between capitalist and wage-laborers emerged. For Robert Brenner: It is the outcome of class conflicts—the reaffirmation of the old property relations or their destruction and the consequent establishment of a new structure—that is ... the key to ...the transition from feudalism to capitalism (1976, 31).

Abracadabra! Anthropocentricism and Animals in Absentia Marxist accounts of the breakdown of feudalism and the development of capitalism are anthropocentric. The Marxist focus has been on class conflict and social differentiation amongst socioeconomic classes of humans. Nowhere in the Marxist debate about the transition have social relations between humans and other animals been fore-grounded or problematized. Indeed the analysis of the primitive accumulation of capital presented by Marx, together with the contributions by Marxist scholars to the ‘transition debate’ perform something like a vanishing trick on non-human animals. Slavery, Serfdom and Species in Medieval and Feudal England In his historical analysis of class relationships Marx provided an account of slavery in ancient societies such as Greece and Rome. His focus was on slavery as the exploitation of chattels by the ruling classes. Slavery was also a feature of the class structure in AngloSaxon England before the Norman Conquest (Pelteret 1995). Slaves, captured in war and, or, who had inherited the status, were bought and sold at market. As the property of slave owners, slaves in AngloSaxon England were, as in ancient Greece and Rome, forced to work in a variety of capacities for their slave masters. By the 12th century however slaves had disappeared in England, many becoming part of the class of human serfs. The account of slavery in early societies provided by Marx is one that is concerned with slavery as the exploitation of human chattels. However the exploitation of non-human animal chattels as slaves was widespread in the ancient world (Bostock 1993; Kalof 2007a; Kalof 2007b) and medieval Europe including Anglo-Saxon England (Salisbury 1994; Kalof 2007b; Resl 2007). The labor of animal slaves made a significant contribution to the economic infrastructure of early societies. ‘Domesticated’ animals such as cattle and horses were used as beasts of burden in the agricultural sphere, and horses were

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forced into the front line of military expansionism and war. Many ‘exotic’ species of non-human animals ended up in the menageries of the upper classes (Bostock 1993) and Roman amphitheaters such as the Colosseum, as forms of entertainment, and symbols of military conquest and political power and prestige. Animal slaves were, like human slaves, bought and sold at market, as were commodities extracted from them such as foodstuffs and raw materials for human use. Although the slavery of human chattels eventually disappeared in Greece and Rome, and died out in England after the Norman Conquest, the property status of non-human animals remained. As chattel property of the ruling species they were forced to work, and exploited for commodities and materials that could be extracted from them. As was the case with human slaves the slave master, to whom animal slaves were subject, could buy and sell them. He or she also had the power of life and death over them. Even so, the ‘conditions of enslavement’ for many non-human chattels was similar to that of the human unfree peasant serf in that surplus extraction beyond immediate subsistence took place within the manorial system where serfs lived and worked on land that belonged to the lord of the manor. Whilst their labor was enforced, the human serfs were not shackled and chained in the way that many human slaves had been. A fundamental feature of feudal society was that the direct producer—the peasant—was ... in possession of his (sic) own means of production, the necessary material labor conditions required for the realization of his labor and the production of his (sic) means of subsistence (Marx 1974, 790).

The condition of enslavement for many non-human animals was similar. Whilst ‘in possession’ of their own means of subsistence, they lived and worked, often unchained and unshackled, on land that belonged to the human whose chattel property they were. The representation of the medieval English countryside in literature, art and poetry has often evoked a bucolic idyll that belied the true nature of human and human-animal social relationships of the time. Completing a process that had begun in the late 14th century, the last remaining serfs in England were freed by Elizabeth I in the late 16th century. However, the freeing of bonded serfs in England did not extend to freedom for bonded beasts. The unfree labor of nonhuman animals continued to contribute to the feudal economy long

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after the emancipation of human serfs. Indeed, the reorganization of socioeconomic and political power relationships between different classes of humans brought about by the enclosure of land in England was constructed in and through speciesist relationships that deemed non-human animals the chattel property, slaves and serfs of humans. The enclosure of land was a key moment in the development of capitalism in England. Whilst Marxists have rightly castigated the suffering this caused dispossessed human peasants, neither Marx, nor the Marxist scholars engaged with the transition debate have given any consideration whatsoever to the significance of the enclosures for non-human animals. Enclosure is though a fecund metaphor with which to think about the relationship between human and non-human animals in capitalist society. It is also a description of what has actually occurred in terms of the carving up of social space between species. As Watts (2000, 293) observes “the relation between animals and modernity can be construed as a gigantic act of enclosure”. It was a process whose beginning was perhaps most visible with the enclosure of land from the late 15th century. Marking a reorganization of socioeconomic and political power relationships between different classes of humans, it also marked an extension and reorganization of the power of human beings in relation to nonhuman animals. As Benton observes: Enclosure...is significant not only as an aspect of the process whereby ‘free’ labour is created as a condition of the wage relation, but also as a condition of the reorganisation of the relations between labour, stock animals and ecological conditions…Along with the formal subsumption of labour goes an extension of the powers of the landowner to control and regulate both the activity of farm labour and the organicdevelopment and social aspects of the lives of stock animals...it makes sense…to extend the concept of ‘formal subsumption’ to this whole complex of wage labour, stock animals and ecological conditions, whose interrelations are reorganised and subjected to distinctive forms of regulation under commercial pressures (1993, 155-156).

Indeed I would argue that the formal subsumption of animals and extension of the power of the landowner over them marked the beginnings of both an increase in the numbers of non-human animal slaves in England, and the preconditions for an intensification of methods of production. It was a process that was constructed in and through already existing speciesist social relationships and one that furthered those social relationships.

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Marx, Capitalism and Slavery As we have seen, Marx identified the basis of the capitalist mode of production as formally ‘free’ wage labor and observed that “Wage labor arises out of the dissolution of slavery and serfdom...”’ (1973, 891). However Marx also recognized the role of human slavery for the primitive accumulation of capital and the development of capitalism. In 1847 he wrote: Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery,.. as credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance. Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy—the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America of the map of nations. Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World (1997a, 203-204).

Even so, Marx argued that slavery appeared within the capitalist system as an anomaly. It “appears as an anomaly, opposite the bourgeois system itself...” (1973, 464). The fact that we now not only call the plantation owners in America capitalists, but that they are capitalists, is based on their existence as anomalies within a world market based on free labor (1973, 513). In plantation colonies “where commercial speculations figure from the start and production is intended for the world market, the capitalist mode of production exists, only in a formal sense, since the slavery of Negroes precludes free wage-labor, which is the basis of capitalist production. But the business in which slaves are used is conducted by capitalists. The method of production which they introduce has not arisen out of slavery but is grafted on to it. In this case the same person is capitalist and landowner (1971, 302-303).

Marx points out that: The slave-holding states in the United States of North America...are associated with a world market based on capitalist production. No

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� matter how large the surplus product they extract from the surplus labor of their slaves in the form of cotton or corn, they can adhere to this simple, undifferentiated labor because foreign trade enables them to convert these simple products into any kind of use-value (1971, 243).

And: The character of the process of production from which (commodities) emanate is immaterial. They perform the function of commodities on the market, and enter into the cycles of industrial capital as well as into those of the surplus value carried by it (1978,189-90).

Marx thought that eventually slavery would act as a brake on capitalist development. Like all other exploitative social systems, he viewed modern slavery as a system with a dynamic rise as productive forces developed, followed by stagnation, decline and overthrow. Whilst recognizing slavery facilitated primitive accumulation, Marx thought that it eventually became an economically backward institution dependent upon extensive increase of new territories with a naturally fertile soil. Slavery, Serfdom, Species and Capitalism Slavery has not disappeared though in contemporary capitalism. Not only are there an estimated 27 million human slaves across the globe, billions of non-human animals, deemed to be the chattel property of humans, are enslaved in an array of enterprises including food production, vivisection, sport and entertainment, and pet production. Although the conditions of enslavement on, for example, family farms or lifestyle blocks, may be more akin to serfdom for some of the animals concerned, and, despite affection that may exist between human owner and animal, animals remain the chattel property of humans for use and trade. Rather than disappearing, the number of slaves has actually increased in modern capitalist society. Moreover, rather than appearing as an anomaly opposite the capitalist system, the enslavement of non-human animals has become embedded in and an intrinsic component of the capitalist economy. As formally free wage labor has become the dominant form of human labor in the global capitalist economy, the numbers of non-human animal slave laborers has increased exponentially. Indeed, one is tempted to utter the heretical (in Marxist circles at least) claim that the unfree labor of non-human animals may have become as important for the workings of the

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Â�modern capitalist economy as the formally free labor of humans. This is not to say though that speciesism and non-human animal slavery are necessary preconditions for the development of capitalism. Nor is it to say that speciesism and non-human animal slavery is necessary for the workings of the capitalist economy. Neither speciesism nor non-human animal slavery are prerequisites for the emergence and development of capitalism. There is no a-priori reason that dictates the ancient speciesist practice of non-human animal slavery to be a fundamental component of modern capitalism. Theoretically at least, capitalism could have emerged and developed without speciesism and non-human animal slavery. However, the facts of the matter are that it did not. It turns out that the ‘ancient relic’ of non-human animal slavery is a key form of bourgeois power, being central to the makings of modern capitalism. Marx argued that in capitalist society slave owners are capitalist and extensive scholarship has shown that the European and American economies and the Industrial Revolution were to a significant extent built on the backs of human slave laborers (Williams 1964; Genovese 1973; Blackburn 1997). The same can be said of non-human animal slavery: many of the owners of non-human animal slaves in capitalist society are capitalists. Moreover, the capitalist economy in England and global capitalism has to a significant extent been built on the back of hooves, paws and claws. The enslavement of non-human animals was embedded in the primitive accumulation of capital and the development of agrarian capitalism in England. It was also embedded in the colonialism that accompanied the development of capitalism. And, whereas Marx thought that slavery depended upon the extensive increase of new territories with a naturally fertile soil, intensive industrial farming in the confined spaces of factories and feedlots has increased both the number of non-human animals living lives of slavery, and their productivity. National and multinational corporations have increasingly replaced traditional family farm systems. Though animal slaves living with serf like conditions in contemporary capitalist society may be able to express some if not all their normal range of behaviors, intensive industrial farming has subject billions of others to the same rigors of labor discipline imposed on human wage laborers. In the pursuit of labor productivity and profit, the scientific management system developed by Frederick Taylor to make human workers more efficient, and Fordist methods of mass production have been applied to non-human animals caught up in

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systems of industrial production (Harrison 1964; Mason & Singer 1990; Singer 1995; Franklin 1999; Patterson, 2002). Whereas human wage laborers subject to these systems are at least ‘free’ to leave or protest their conditions, non human animal slaves are not whipped to work, they are instead confined and incarcerated for a life sentence. Whilst national and multinational corporations and their shareholders have reaped the financial rewards, the entire economies of some nation states have been and are dependent on the enslavement of non-human animals. Not only are the products of non-human animal slaves commodities, the non-human animals themselves are commodities with both a use value and an exchange value. Breed, branded and tagged on farms that might be compared to slave compounds or concentration camps (Patterson 2002); in laboratories for scientific research; and puppy mills to supply the pet industry, they are bought and sold in the capitalist market place. Along with captured ‘exotic’ species—a practice long predating the development of capitalism and furthered by it—vast numbers of non-human animal slaves have to endure the suffering imposed upon them through short and long distance travel in what are effectively non-human animal slave ships (Spiegel 1996) of various kinds. As walking larders (Clutton-Brock 1988), and indeed walking wardrobes and warehouses, commodities derived from non-human animals provide food, clothing, raw materials and medicines as well as forms of entertainment for humans. As commodity producing commodities, non-human animal slaves are exploited proletarians. In the Poverty of Philosophy Marx observed that “Feudalism also had its proletariat—serfdom... The bourgeoisie begins with a proletariat which is itself a relic of the proletariat of feudal times” (1977, 209). Marx of course was talking about the human proletariat in capitalist society and its antecedent in serfdom. The antecedent of non-human animal slavery in capitalist society is the non-human animal slave/serf in feudal and ancient societies. Like human wage slaves, non-human animal slaves in factory farms and feed lots, research labs, zoos, aquaria, and circuses have been forcibly separated from their means of subsistence. Even where they experience serf like conditions on family farms and lifestyle blocks, they are dependent for their subsistence on their human owner on whose land they subsist. As beasts of burden, herders of sheep and cattle, wartime time cannon fodder, security workers, and commodity producing

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Â�commodities, they are exploited in the same way that “free” wage labor is exploited. Marx identified the commodity labor power as the source of profit in the capitalist economy. The commodity labor power is able to produce more than its own value, or costs of subsistence. The value of labor power (wages) and the commodity value of non-human animals is determined like any other commodity in capitalist society, by the labor time socially necessary for its production—i.e. cost of food and shelter to enable subsistence and reproduction. Only a portion of the working day is taken up producing the value of the commodity labor power. The surplus labor is appropriated by capital as surplus value, (Marx 1977b) and transformed into varying amounts of profit, depending on the organic composition of capital, i.e. how much capital is invested in the constant capital of plant/machinery and the variable capital of wages (Marx 1976). I would argue that the same formula applies to non-human animal slave labor as a source of profit. As commodities animal slave laborers are able to produce more that their value or costs of subsistence. Only a portion of the non-human animal slave’s working day is necessary labor—needed to produce the non-human animals cost of subsistence. Just as the labor expended by the wage laborer beyond necessary labor becomes surplus labor appropriated by the capitalist as surplus value, so too is the remaining surplus labor performed by the non-human animal slave appropriated by the slave owning capitalist as surplus value. Marx’s analysis of the source of profit pierced beneath the apparently mysterious and magical appearances conjured up by capitalist social relations. Even so, Marx provided no account of the animal vanishing trick, indeed he has been one of the tricksters involved in perpetuating that disappearing act. However, both the philosophical underpinnings of Marx’s social theory as well as Marx’s own analysis of the ‘magic’ of modernity can help to account for the invisibility of non-human animals in the Marxist account of the transition to, and subsequent development of, capitalism. The Secrets of the Vanishing Trick Modernity’s Magician—The Humanist Speciesist Humanism, as a philosophy placing human beings center stage in the historical development of culture and civilization, has a long

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Â�history in Western society, and was a formative and abiding influence on Marx’s work. In Marx’s social theory humans were the heroes of history because of their species being. Marx posited a species dualism between humans and other animals, a dualism that has been discussed in some detail by Ted Benton (1988; 1993). In his early works, such as the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx (1975) portrayed non-human animals as being characterized by fixity: their way of existing in the world being relatively unchanging. His view was that where non-human animals act upon nature, they do so to meet their own needs and the needs of their offspring. However Marx argued that humans are able to produce in accordance with the needs of their own species, and, in accordance with the standard of every other species. Marx portrayed humans as freely and self-consciously interacting with nature. Pointing to the socially coordinated interaction with nature adopted by humans, he observed that forms of human social coordination are subject to historical change. Ethological studies however have demonstrated the complexity of the social life of other species and the diverse ways in which they too interact with and adapt to their environments. Many non-human animal species have developmental and learning potentials, collective powers and collective potentials. There is also evidence of the cultural transmission of learned skills amongst non-human animals (Benton 1993). I agree with Benton that Marx was wrong about animals. But I also think that his wrongness, combined with his enormous influence on forms of critical thinking and political engagement, has contributed to animals being ‘hidden from history’ and theory making, much like women were until recent times. Whilst not necessarily in circumstances of their own choosing, for Marx it is human beings who make history. With a view of history as the history of class struggles, The Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels 1977) gives a history of class society since the Middle Ages, including the movement from feudalism to capitalism. The conflicting classes that include lord and serf, bourgeois and proletarians and free men and slaves are socioeconomic classes made up of humans. The serf, slave and proletarian underdogs are always humans in drag. I would also argue that the humanist philosophical framing of Marx’s concepts of estrangement and alienation contributed to the vanishing trick. Benton (1988; 1993) refers to the way in which the humanist philosophical framing of those concepts in Marx’s work

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involves a fundamental opposition between animal and human nature: … the estrangement of labor reduces human life to the condition appropriate to non-human animals and, within human life, inverts the relation between the human and the animal (Benton 1993, 25).

Marx saw estranged or alienated labor as reducing humans to the level of animals, driving them to seek satisfaction in the instinctive, biological drives and functions such as eating, procreating and sleeping shared by all animal species. Moreover, Benton points out that Marx’s humanism and species dualism prevented him from seeing how alienation was applicable to non-human animals as well as human ones. As Benton observes, the “... philosophical framing of Marx’s concept of estrangement renders the extension of that analysis beyond the human case as literally unthinkable. This form of humanism conceptualizes the needs of animals as instinctual and fixed in a way that simply leaves no room for a morally significant difference to emerge between mere existence and thriving, or living well...” (1993, 59). We should not then be surprised that the role of non-human animals as slaves and exploited proletarians do not figure in the Marxist account of the transition to and development of capitalism. Nor is it a matter that Benton includes in his attempt to excavate the progressive potential of Marx’s social theory for nonhuman animals. One of the significant social evils of modernity—the slavery and alienation of non-human animals, treated as mere meansends objects,—remains opaque. Magic, Miracle Machines and Modernity Marxist social theory does however offer an analysis of the opaque, illusory, magical qualities of social relationships in modernity. The analysis of commodity fetishism and reification provide a penetrating and searing critique of the mystification of the commodity form as a form of modern magic. In capitalist society the value of a commodity is regarded as being intrinsic to the commodity, rather than a reflection of the amount of social labor embedded in it. At the same time, social relations between individuals are experienced as material relationships between things. The human quality of individuals is lost, and social relationships appear as an endless circulation of commodity ‘things’. The overall effect of the endless circulation of commodities and the apparent dominance of exchange in capitalist

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society is that commodities appear to be independent of social relationships. Exchange conceals the social relations involved. Marx’s analysis of the wage form illustrates this well: The exchange of wages is seen as an exchange of things rather than an exploitative social relationship between a class of capitalists and a class of proletarians. In capitalist society non-human animals, bought and sold as commodities, and the commodities that are extracted from them, are subject to the same process of reification that Marx demystified in his analysis of the wage form and the workings of the capitalist economy. Reification conceals the social relationships that construct animals as property. Marx was well aware that property is not a ‘thing’ but a social relationship. In The German Ideology for example Marx discusses ownership in terms of the way in which social relationships are organized in and through the division of labor in society. Marx perceives ownership as “... the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labor” (my emphasis) (1977, 161). This definition is very broad indeed. Material, instruments and products of labor have varied over time and geographically. Beasts, birds, and reptiles would not have been considered property by Neolithic or forager peoples. Nor would the sky, sea or land. Before the development of agriculture, humans did not perceive non-human animals and the natural world in which they were embedded as ‘things’. Anthropologists and historians have documented and describe how humans in non-agricultural and pre-industrial societies perceive animals and nature as sentient, intelligent, and endowed with soul or spirit (Ingold 2000, chap 7; Mason 2005, chap 2). There is nothing intrinsic or preordained that makes beasts, birds, reptiles, the sky, sea, or land property ‘things’. They only become property ‘things’ within specific social and historical contexts. Contemporary legal scholars such as Francione (1995) have detailed some of the consequences of the property status of non-human animals. However Marx never questioned their property status. He saw non-human animals as part of the forces and means of production, along with land and machinery. As part of the means of production and instruments of labor, Marx’s mules became to