Animals, Society and Culture

Lecture 18Understanding the social and cultural positioning of animals

2013-14

Lecture outline Explanations relying on

structures/systems – macro-level, societal explanations

Explanations looking at micro-level interactions

Explanations which question the idea of an explanation at all

Draw out their different implications for understandings of personhood, agency, selfhood, society

Science studies (or STS) Critique of modernist distinction

between culture and nature, human and animal, masculine and feminine, rational and emotional – dualist ontology

Sociology linked to modernity Culture and society about humans,

nature and biology about animals

Hunter-gatherers No opposition between nature and

culture, body and mind Engage with the world and each other

as entire persons not disembodied minds

Interagentivity – beings with capacity for independent action

Contrasts with intersubjectivity – engagement of minds

Personhood

Humans and non-humans have ontological equivalence

Humans and geese are outward forms of personhood

Unity underpins differentiation

Structural explanations Hunter-gatherer – egalitarian human-

animal relationships, animal personhood Pastoralists – domination but care and

protection too Agricultural – animals as source of power,

prime movers Industrial capitalist – intensive

exploitation, animals not seen as persons

Nibert

Oppression of animals rooted in socio-economic structure of society

Expressed culturally and ideologically Economic exploitation of animal other Social power reflected in politics and the

state Ideology of speciesism which legitimates

exploitation and domination

Spanish royals hunting

CITES (Convention on Trade in Endangered Species)

Interlocking systems of oppression ‘the oppression of various devalued

groups in human societies is not independent and unrelated; rather the arrangements that lead to various forms of oppression are integrated in such a way that the exploitation of one group frequently augments and compounds the mistreatment of others’ (Nibert, 2002:4 cited in Cudworth, 2011:49).

Systems approach

Franklin – modernity and post-modernity

Bulliet – post-domesticity (domesticity began with shift to pastoralism, domestication)

Agency

Nibert doesn’t consider agency Relation between agency and

structure central to sociology Relations of inequality provide

context for action, agency is shaped by positioning in social relations (Carter and Charles, 2011)

Combining structure and agency

5 sub-systems Production relations (the economic) Reproduction and Domestication Governance Violence Cultures of exclusive humanism

(Cudworth, 2011:70)

Anthroparchy

Human domination Non-human animals can’t bring about

social change Dependent on humans to challenge the

social domination of species Can’t exercise collective agency but can

exercise individual agency (Carter and Charles, 2011)

Individual and structures linked through notion of agency

Micro-level analyses

Phenomenology – interagentivity Symbolic interaction - animals

have sense of agency ‘capacity for self-willed action’ (Irvine, 2004) -

Focus on inter-subjectivity ANT – agency is an effect, ability to

have an effect within a network

Decentres the human Hybrids Relationships between material objects

and symbolic concepts – material semiotics (Hurn, 2012)

Sheepdog trial can be seen as network which includes Human shepherd Flock of sheep Sheepdog Pen Crook

Sheepdog trials

Where does this leave us?

Various explanations Some challenge very idea of society

constructed in opposition to nature Networks important rather than

patterned social relations Decentre the human, dismantle the

species barrier

Summary (1) Macro/ societal level explanations (capitalism,

post-modernity, post-domesticity, anthroparchy) Micro-level explanations Importance of connecting up macro and micro-level

explanations through notion of agency Different ways of understanding/defining agency

As relating to positioning in system of social relations (Archer, Carter and Charles, Cudworth)

As being a property of actants in network which have effects (ANT)

As being capacity for self-willed action (Irvine) As being capacity for independent action (Hurn,

Ingold)

Summary (2) These explanations and analyses recognise that the social

is multi-species and try to de-centre the human – post-human

Sociology, and social sciences more generally, are part of the shift in human-animal relations identified by Franklin and Bulliet as dating from the 1970s and as relating to:

Distancing of urban populations from animal reproduction and slaughter

Animal rights movements which challenge exclusion of animals from moral community

Scientific evidence of animal cognition, intentionality, emotion etc

This undermines species barrier (which was set up by religion,

philosophy and science) questions the division of the world into society and culture, on

the one hand, and nature, on the other

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