Animals, Society and Culture

Lecture 5: From beasts of burden to

fashion accessories2013-14

Lecture outline 1. The use of animals as ‘prime movers’,

up to and during industrialisation and how working animals and animals that were destined for slaughter were gradually removed from cities.

2. Shift away from animals as sources of power to animals as pets, companions and fashion accessories.

3. How this shift has been understood sociologically.

Prime movers Prime movers are ‘those machines which

receive energy directly from natural sources, and transmit it to other machines which are fitted for doing the various kinds of useful work’ (Thurston cited in Greene, 2008: 219).

The kinds of energy are: fossil fuels, falling water, wind, the tides, electricity and muscle action

Prime movers that transform this energy into power are: animal bodies, heat engines, water wheels, tidal machines, windmills, electrical engines (Greene, 2008: 218-9).

Animals in towns ‘In the towns of the early modern period

animals were everywhere, and the efforts of municipal authorities to prevent the inhabitants from keeping pigs or milking their cows in the street proved largely ineffective…. In 1842 Edwin Chadwick found that fowls were still being reared in town bedrooms and that not just dogs but even horses lived inside town houses.’ (Thomas, 1984: 95)

Working animals ‘Of course, working-animals of every

kind were extensively used during the first century and a half of industrialisation. Horses, donkeys, even dogs, were employed in woollen mills, breweries, coal mines, and railway shunting-yards. Horses did not disappear from the streets until the 1920s or from the farms until the 1940s. But, long before that, most people were working in industries powered by non-animal means’ (Thomas, 1984: 182).

Horses at Work Ann Norton Greene (2008) Horses at

work, Harvard University Press Horses are a form of technology ‘Through the process of domestication

horses became living machines. For five millennia humans have been modifying horses by breeding them for size, strength, speed, temperament, and appearance so that they would be more useful in transportation, work, warfare and sport.’ (Green, 2008:4)

Horse power Steam engines replaced long-distance

hauling, but in the process dramatically increased the number of horses used for short-distance haulage.

Electric power replaced the use of horses in mass transit.

The internal combustion engine and the automobile ‘came close to replicating the horse as a prime mover’ – offered more power and in the form of ‘separate, self-propelled prime movers’ (Green, 2008:8).

Draft animals Horses, oxen and mules (donkeys in Europe) Oxen were used in the pioneering settler

areas to clear and break new ground – work that was too hard for horses.

‘Paintings by Harvey Thomas Dunn and novels by Willa Cather, both of whom grew up in prairie settlements, detail the use of oxen in the initial work of clearing, plowing, hauling, and transportation, and the change to horses that occurred after the first work of settlement was complete’ (Greene, 2008:41).

Horse population In 1840 there were 4.3 million horses

and mules in the US. By 1910 this had risen 6 times to 27.5 million – almost twice rate of human population growth.

In 1850 one horse for every 5 humans, in 1900 one horse for every 3 humans.

Horse became more important with industrialisation rather than less – important for transport and as source of power for industrial processes in agriculture and industry.

Transport

Roads Canals Railways

Southwold stagecoach1860

Mechanisation Horses were integral to the growth of the

industrial city and the mechanisation of agriculture in America.

In cities they were integral to transport and to manufacturing.

‘Horses provided virtually all the power for the internal circulation of the city because no other prime mover could compete with them technologically’ (Greene, 2008: 170).

Horses in manufacturing There were horse treadmills providing power for

small enterprises which allowed those with a limited amount of capital to engage in mechanised production.

Horses drove brick making machines and saws. They excavated foundations and lifted materials

into place. Horse powered cranes loaded and unloaded

ships, they powered dredging pumps in harbours and hauled in nets full of fish.

Horses were used by municipal authorities in fire, police and public health and in crowd control.

Agriculture During the 1830s and 1840s mechanisation

brought horses into agriculture. ‘It is commonly assumed that horses were

always used in agriculture, but before the invention and availability of mechanical agricultural implements in the middle decades of the 19th century, most farm work was performed by humans using hand labour and a few horses.’ (Greene, 2008:189)

Horses used with new ploughs and other farm machinery, through the use of treadmills they produced power needed for threshing, baling, winnowing etc. The combination of horses and machinery increased productivity.

Automobile ‘For the first time in history there was a

mechanical alternative to animal power that replicated both its scale and its self-propelled versatility….electricity and internal combustion represented a revolution in the ways people perceived and consumed energy.’ (Greene, 2008:246)

Between 1910 and 1920 number of urban horses dropped by nearly 50%.

Exclusion from cities Horses and other large animals (cows, pigs,

sheep) excluded from cities - part of the separation of urban from rural, culture from nature that was taking place in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Result of this process is that some animals – cats and dogs – have been turned into pets and are legitimate city dwellers whereas livestock are ‘matter out of place’ and should be expelled to the rural world.

Matter out of place Philo, C (1998) ‘Animals, geography, and the city:

notes on inclusions and exclusions’ in Wolch, J and Emel, J (eds) Animal Geographies, Verso

Having large beasts mingling on the same roads and sticking their heads into shops was seen as dangerous.

The presence of livestock in the city was associated with immorality – gin shops, public houses, degeneracy of neighbourhood linked to presence of animals.

Animal sexuality a problem.

Separation of urban and rural ‘During the 19th century the horse was the

center of a masculine world of work, associated with status and manly virtue. In the 20th century the horse became the centre of a feminine world of play associated with young girls.’ (Greene, 2008: 277-8)

Horses now used for recreation and sport rather than work.

She’s describing a shift in role of animals – no longer source of power, involved in production, but associated with leisure and consumption.

Animals and consumption

Animals as commodities to be bought and sold and got rid of when no longer wanted

Fashion accessories – Tinkerbell and Paris Hilton

D. Redmalm (2011) Why look at Tinkerbell? in J Bull (ed) Animal movements moving animals, Uppsala University Centre for Gender Research

The Paris Hilton effect The Tinkerbell-Hilton diaries ‘First of all toy dogs like myself have it harder than

you probably think. Folks pay a lot of lip service to care and love and how special we all are, but the fact is there’s a long waiting list for very wealthy potential owners all vying for a select few of us, so right from birth we’re raised and constantly groomed by our breeders to be the most profitable fashion accessory that we can be for their very exclusive clientele. If it turns out that you’re not cute enough, or cute in the wrong way, you get sent either to the pound or to ‘visit’ some guy in Wyoming who sells novelty taxidermy […] That’s a lot of pressure to be adorable’ (Redmalm, 2011: 126)

Fashion accessories

Explaining transformation

Franklin – modernity and post-modernity

Bulliet – domesticity and post-domesticity

Franklin Shift in human-animal relations since the

1970s Before this relations between humans and

animals were sympathetic but instrumental and anthropocentric, human progress was privileged

After this more empathetic, decentred relationships, stronger emotional and moral content, humans no longer privileged

Post-modernity

Misanthropy Ontological insecurity Risk reflexivity

Bulliet

Pre-domesticity Domesticity Post-domesticity

Post-domesticity Late 20th century emergence of alternative

view point – greater interest in and empathy with animals of all sorts and a questioning of the primacy of human interests in the human-animal relationship.

These changes are peculiar to the English-speaking world (Britain, US, Australia and Canada) and this needs some explanation.

He looks for it in historical processes (he’s a historian) and argues that post-domesticity is most advanced where there is no recent history of pastoralism.

Bulliet’s argument New forms of human-animal relations

linked to the separation of most of human population from animal reproduction and animal slaughter

The commodification of animals in meat production

The separation and commodification much more effective where there’s no recent tradition of pastoralism

Associated with greater empathy with animals

Summary Animals – especially horses – were a critical source

of power during the process of industrialisation – horse power was a necessary basis for the success of mechanisation in agriculture and industry.

Now animals are not used in production but are consumed – for leisure and food – there’s been a shift from animal involvement in production to their involvement in consumption – from beasts of burden to fashion accessories.

3. This is explained by Franklin as a shift from modernity to post-modernity, by Greene as being gendered (masculine world of work to feminine world of play), by Bulliet as a shift to post-domesticity.