Human-Animal Relations

Zooarchaeological Analysis of the Indigenous Fishery at the Huu7ii Big House and Back Terrace, Huu-ay-aht Territory, Southwestern Vancouver Island

by Iain McKechnie

(2012) Zooarchaeological Analysis of the Indigenous Fishery at the Huu7ii Big House and Back Terrace, Huu-ay-aht Territory, Southwestern Vancouver Island. In Huu7ii: Household Archaeology at a Nuu-chah-nulth Village Site in Barkley Sound, by Alan D. McMillan and Denis E. St. Claire. Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.

This paper describes how fish overwhelmingly dominates the animal bone assemblage from the examined column sample... more This paper describes how fish overwhelmingly dominates the animal bone assemblage from the examined column sample deposits at the Huu7ii village site, the named ancestral village of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation. Fish represent 99.9% of all identified bone specimens and are present in every examined litre of sediment indicating the importance of fish in the everyday life of site occupants. The bone assemblage is numerically dominated by Pacific herring, which vastly outnumbers the next most abundant fish: anchovy, salmon, hake, greenling, dogfish, and rockfish as well as two-dozen other fish taxa. I conduct a series of descriptive, quantitative, and graphical analyses that seek to interpret resource harvesting practices at the two examined portions of the site: a very large house (17x35m) dating to the late-Holocene (ca. 1,500-400 yr BP) and mid-Holocene midden deposits recovered on a raised beach terrace (ca. 5,000-3,000 yr BP).

Broderick, L.G., 2012. Ritualisation (or The Four Fully-Articulated Ungulates of The Apocalypse). In Pluskowski, A. ed. The Ritual Killing and Burial of Animals: European Perspectives. Oxford: Oxbow Books. pp. 22-32

by Lee Broderick

Guest Column on Animal Shelters

by Nadine Dolby

published in Journal and Courier (Lafayette, Indiana) on April 10, 2012

discusses the differences between "limited access" and "open access" shelters discusses the differences between "limited access" and "open access" shelters

Review: Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers: American Hilltop Fox Chasing, by Thad Sitton

by Rob Boddice

Journal of American Studies (2012), 46 : E7

Review: What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present, by Joanna Bourke

by Rob Boddice

Dr Rob Boddice, review of What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present, (review no. 1199)
URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1199

Environmental Reconstruction in Microsociological Theory for Microsociological Reconstruction in Environmental Sociology

by Brad Brewster

PhD Dissertation. Completed in 2011. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Done under the supervision of Michael Mayerfeld Bell.

I survey a collection of pedagogical resources in environmental sociology, including syllabi, textbooks, readers, and... more I survey a collection of pedagogical resources in environmental sociology, including syllabi, textbooks, readers, and handbooks, to show that what’s being taught and perpetuated as environmental sociology, via field-defining theories, is actually environmental macrosociology, leaving out the micro. I argue that pedagogical and theoretical problems follow from such one-sidedness. To correct for this imbalance, I turn to social psychological philosopher George Herbert Mead and microsociological theorist of everyday life Erving Goffman, reconstructing their theories in environmental terms. I show that, contrary to how Mead is often taught in sociology courses as well as how he is often portrayed in environmental sociology, Mead’s broad intellectual interests extended beyond social psychology to the natural world. In doing so, an “environmental Mead” is developed from his socio-environmental thought for a community psychology in environmental sociology. Then, beginning with a partly critical discussion of his view of animals, I move into discussions of how Mead's anti-dualistic philosophy creatively combined social and natural in various ways when it came to his view of objects, of mind, and of nature. Unlike Mead, Goffman was singularly and narrowly interested in everyday social interaction. The problem, then, was how to modify Goffman to environmental uses without losing the distinctive character of Goffman’s work. I address this by formulating a pragmatic construct for exporting Goffman to domains he himself had never been. Along the lines of this construct, then, an “environmental Goffman” is developed from his frame analysis for an environmental sociology of everyday life. I, then, explore applications of Mead and Goffman to fields in environmental studies or closely related to environmental sociology, namely, exploring Goffman’s dramaturgical, ritual, and interaction analysis in terms of community sociology and Mead’s holistic thought by comparison to ecosystem ecology. As a next logical step from the socially contextual, embedded approaches of the self in the community in Mead’s thought and of the self in the social situation in Goffman’s thought, I move up to the next level of analysis, the small group itself, to bring group dynamics into the environmental and conservation social sciences.

The Making of the Human: Anthropocentrism in Modern Social Thought.

by Richie Nimmo

Chapter in Rob Boddice (ed) Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments, Brill publishers, Human-Animal Studies Series, Leiden: Netherlands, August 2011.

What is it to be human? This is not an exclusively modern question, but it is a question that modernity has both asked... more What is it to be human? This is not an exclusively modern question, but it is a question that modernity has both asked and answered in a particular way, and its answer permeates the age; it is the basis of the form of order which defines the modern world. In this paper I undertake a critique of the pervasive modern notion that human beings are both separate from and elevated above the nonhuman world – which I refer to as humanist discourse, and point to its key role in the ontological and epistemic formation of modernity. I argue that humanist discourse involves an ongoing process of boundary-making in which the human ‘subject’ is essentialized or ‘purified’ by being separated from the multiple nonhuman ‘objects’ with which in reality it is always inextricably bound up, whether organic nature, nonhuman animals, inorganic matter or technologies. I posit the essentialist logic of this othering as both integral to modernity and generative of an anthropocentric worldview in which human beings alone possess ‘agency’, with the nonhuman world reduced to a mere stage for human action.

Extending this critique, I then suggest that such essentialism has profoundly shaped modern ways of knowing, so that our categories of thought and perception tend to render us insensible to the deeply heterogeneous and hybrid nature of our complex world. This is a matter of ontological security, for in the face of such heterogeneity the human being turns out to be less the ‘measure of all things’ and more a mere nodal moment in webs of more-than-human and often highly contingent relations. These humanist processes of othering are not merely misleading then, they are also necessary to sustain what are ultimately the theological underpinnings of modern notions of what it is to be human. To substantiate this, I trace humanist discourse through nineteenth century social theory, showing how in various ways it deeply structured modern notions of ‘the social’, such as not only to define the horizons of possibility of subsequent social thought, but also of lived social order.

Loving-knowing” women and horses: Symbolic connections, real life conflicts and “natural horsemanship

by Nikki Savvides

Communication as a Solution to Conflict: Fundamental Similarities in Divergent Methods of Horse Training

by Nikki Savvides

“No to the Bear”: Contested Power and Truths behind the Reintroduction of Brown Bears into the French Pyrenees

by Tony Knight

I should probably rewrite the abstract - it was done far too quickly! :-)

At this beginning of the twenty-first century, global climate and biodiversity, including human survival, are... more At this beginning of the twenty-first century, global climate and biodiversity, including human survival, are seriously threatened. Fuelled by culturally constructed anthropocentric ‘needs’, the unrelenting march of neoliberal capitalism dramatically manifests dichotomous views and discourses on the environment and sustainable development. Always complex, and often conflictual, the human-environment relationships which are constructed within this neoliberal paradigm are being seriously challenged. If we are to avert potentially dangerous escalations deriving from such tensions, it is essential that environmental anthropology actively engages in the issues, and confronts the necessary cultural and environmental changes which are already becoming evident.

This dissertation examines these issues in the French Pyrenees, where a conservation programme to reintroduce the brown bear is seriously impacting traditional transhumant pastoralism, already menaced by global politico-economic pressures. I explore the potential contribution of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to the investigation of power, science, and politics by examining the opposing, generally uniform, and largely reified arguments which create a nature-culture conflict. In this way, ANT helps illuminate the otherwise heavily disguised underlying realities which exist/emerge between those who reject the bear’s reintroduction, essentially small-scale farmers and shepherds, and the supporters of the programme who generally have no coherent understanding of the techniques or needs of transhumant farming, or even of mountain life. I argue that government-imposed systemic solutions will require a more egalitarian and accepting cultural framework which demonstrates a greater valorisation of the natural and social environment, while accepting different understandings of scientific and local truths. In short, it is essential to see through human-animal conflicts to the human-human conflicts hidden behind, and which inevitably get in the way of successful holistic natureculture futures.

Notes from the Underground: Caves and People in the Mesolithic and Neolithic Karst

by Dimitrij Mlekuz

To be published in "Caves in Context:The Cultural Significance of Caves and Rockshelters in Europe", edited by Knut-Andreas Bergsvik and Robin Skeates. Oxbow books, 2012.
You can preorder it directly from Oxbow: http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/92020//Location/Oxbow

Caves are not only unique sedimentary environments with good preservation of archaeological material, but as... more Caves are not only unique sedimentary environments with good preservation of archaeological material, but as archaeological record from caves testify – also special places where distinct activities were performed. What makes caves special? What makes them different from open air locales? How do caves act back on humans? How do humans and caves mutually constitute each other and create a sense of self and belonging in the world? This chapter touches these themes using examples from the archaeological record of the Karst in northeast Italy and western Slovenia. By exploring the ‘affordances’ that caves provide we can focus on the social and contextual role they played in the practical tasks of past people. Caves are not passive backdrops for the activities that people perform, they are not natural places, and they do not satisfy the generic needs of people such as ‘shelter’. We can understand caves as material culture where dwelling occurs. And, by focusing on the process of dwelling that they enable through the affordances they provide, they help us to challenge the dichotomies of the natural and built environment, or of the mundane and the sacred.

SMEARED SOOT AND BLACK BLOOD: REINTRODUCING THE BROWN BEAR TO THE PYRENEES AND ITS FESTIVALS

by Patrick Mabey

A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Environmental Humanities
Department of English
August 2007

Currently underway in the Pyrenees Mountains is a reterritorialization that raises numerous polemical issues including... more Currently underway in the Pyrenees Mountains is a reterritorialization that raises numerous polemical issues including the nature of place-making, the influence politics
and economy have on human-wildlife interactions, perceptions of wildlife, and environmental ethics and justice. The human-bear interface throughout Pyrenean history,
alongside the present international 2006-2009 Restoration and Conservation Plan between France, Spain, and Andorra, reveals a complex and deeply entrenched coinhabitation,
decimation, and reintroduction hundreds of thousands of years in the making. With nineteen to twenty-three bears currently inhabiting the mountain range, and another ten more transplants from Slovenia projected over the next three years,
Pyrenean brown bear populations have the potential to resurge. Yet, this repopulation must be negotiated within economic and recreational contexts such as transhumance,
logging, hunting, skiing, and highway construction, and historical contexts including anthropocentric ideologies, a commerce of ursine fur and fat, political land
reorganization, and taxation.
Using first-hand experience at the Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste Bear Festival in 2004 as a narrative frame, this creative explication uses various types of French and English literature and individual voices to represent the Pyrenean body. Interdisciplinary lenses, including ethnography, anthropology, biology, history, economy, and politics have been used to bring about a multifaceted perspective on the Pyrenean topocosm. In part, this work focuses on the need for a reconstruction of ecocentric, regional and global Bear Ceremonial practices, especially in the context of performance art and festivals, in order to welcome bear repopulation.
The future survival of the Pyrenean-Slovenian brown bear depends upon a synthesis of characteristics seen in shepherds, bear exhibitors, hunters, and aboriginal
ecocentric beliefs. A new pattern of thinking and myth-making is presently happening, in which new festivals are engaging in a discourse infused with biology and the needs of
bears. Organizations involved in the direct sale of bioregional staples such as the Fromage Pé Descaous, a cheese imprinted with a bear’s paw, are not only yielding increased profits, but are bridging the gap between ecology and economy. Because of its
economic importance, and its relevance to both international species initiatives and bioregional festivals, the hope of this thesis is discovery and application.

Both Subject and Object: herding, inalienability, and sentient property in prehistory

by David Orton

World Archaeology 42(2):188-200

This paper advocates a social approach to domestic animals in prehistory, one which situates herding practices in... more This paper advocates a social approach to domestic animals in prehistory, one which situates herding practices in their (human) social context while also recognising the status of animals of social beings in their own right. Domestic animals, it is argued, represent sentient property in the sense that despite being incorporated as ‘objects’ into property relations between humans they remain subjects whose social world overlaps with that of humans. This tension between the status of domestic animals as subject and as object is played out in highly context-specific ways, being linked both to human social organisation and to material/geographical aspects of herding practices. These ideas are used to develop a model for the role of cattle in a process of social change that took place during the later Neolithic Vinča period in the central Balkans.

The BBC Natural History Unit: Instituting natural history film-making in Britain

by Jean-Baptiste Gouyon

published in 'History of Science', 2011, Vol.49 (4): 425-451.

This paper is a discussion of the way natural history film-making got institutionalised on television as a culture of... more This paper is a discussion of the way natural history film-making got institutionalised on television as a culture of knowledge production, in Great Britain in the post-war period. It is centred on an examination of the establishment and the development of the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU), and how they positioned themselves in relation to the rising discipline of ethology and its practitioners. The paper starts in 1953, when the first natural history television programme was broadcast, and ends in 1979, when Life on Earth, the natural history series still considered a milestone in the NHU history, was aired. The paper highlights the notion of observation, and technologies of visualisation, as pivotal for the process under discussion. Emphasising the mastery of film technol-ogy became central to the fashioning of the natural history film-maker’s identity in contrast to the field researcher’s. The analyses bear on published insiders’ accounts, archival sources retrieved at the BBC written archives centre, and audio-visual material. The study makes use of methodological tools developed in visual anthropology. The visual artefacts produced by natural history film-makers are addressed as tools, with which things are done, and around which social relationship are negotiated. The paper suggests that the development of natural history film-making on British television in the post-war period can be seen as an attempt by naturalists to protect their culture from the threat posed by the development of the science of ethology, the NHU being fashioned as a new haven for natural history.

The birth of a research animal: Ibsen‟s The Wild Duck and the origin of a new animal science

by Hub Zwart

H. Zwart (2000) The birth of a research animal: Ibsen‟s The Wild Duck and the origin of a new animal science. Environmental Values, 9 (1), 91-108.

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen’s famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast... more What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen’s famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen’s play stages the clash between a scientific and a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal’s behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings.

Review of Animal Revolution, by Richard D. Ryder

by Lorenzo Peña

Isegoría, Nº 4 (Madrid: Octobre 1991), pp. 220-23.
ISSN 1130-2097

KEYWORDS:
non-human animals, speciesism, animal rights, Tom Regan, utilitarianism, consequentialism, Peter... more KEYWORDS:
non-human animals, speciesism, animal rights, Tom Regan, utilitarianism, consequentialism, Peter Singer, animal liberation.

Abstract::
Este libro milita en el campo de los partidarios de la existencia de deberes hacia los animales no humanos. Ofrécenos una descripción histórica de cómo ha ido evolucionando la actitud de nuestras sociedades con relación al tratamiento de los no humanos. En esa descripción hay referencias al debate filosófico reciente. Desde el punto de vista teorético, el libro es un poco deficiente en su discusión del especismo, pues prefiere no abogar por la existencia de derechos de los animales, optando por una postura intermedia entre aquellos filósofos como Tom Regan que afirman tales derechos y quienes proponen un enfoque utilitarista o al menos consecuencialista, como Peter Singer. Otra debilidad teorética del libro es su abstención de discutir en detalle los argumentos de los adversarios del movimiento de liberación animal.

What can bodies do? Bodies and caves in the Karst Neolithic

by Dimitrij Mlekuz

To be published in Documenta Praehistorica 37 (2011)

This paper discuses ways in which bodies – human and animal – were produced in the Neolithic of the Karst. Bodies are... more This paper discuses ways in which bodies – human and animal – were produced in the Neolithic of the Karst. Bodies are seen as cumulative processes shaped by forces of encounters with the material world, rather than as biological givens. Thus, the paper focuses on the process of embo- diment mediated with other bodies and landscape, especially important places such as caves. It ex- plores the unique ways in which caves affect bodies, and how these affected bodies created new socie- ties. In the Neolithic Karst, everyday contacts and interactions between humans, animals, the land- scape and caves and rock shelters profoundly changed all the participants. A new hybrid society emerged, consisting of human and non-human bodies.

Enigmatic Scenes of Intimate Contact with Dogs in the Old Kingdom

by Beverley Miles

published in the Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology (BACE) 21 (2010), 71-88.

A Ruptured Fjord — The Spatial Politics of Extinction

by Hugo Reinert

Under review (2011). Book chapter.

Drawing on a case study of landscape-level protection measures implemented in a fjord in the Norwegian Arctic, this... more Drawing on a case study of landscape-level protection measures implemented in a fjord in the Norwegian Arctic, this chapter explores the concept of rupture as a productive opening on the complex social, spatial and biopolitical dynamics of more-than-human landscapes. Moving between scales, the argument examines a series of disruptions associated with the efforts of ecologists to protect a highly endangered migrant goose population breeding in the area. Measures intended to protect the geese alienated local stakeholders, and rising hostilities culminated in 2010 with hunters threatening to ‘reclaim the fjord’ by exterminating the entire population. At the time this was dismissed as empty posturing — but with a population of approximately 30 individuals, it was nonetheless also a plausible threat. The chapter examines how conservationists working with the species mediated and translated a ‘goose perspective’ into the political sphere, focusing particularly on the use and interpretation of data from satellite tracking. The argument touches on various framings of the issue, including its positioning within highly politicised discourses of local autonomy and territorial sovereignty, before tracing the problem back to a conceptual ambivalence in the very notion of landscape, as formulated for example in the European Landscape Convention — that is, an unresolved oscillation between landscape-as-ground and landscape-as-perspective. While humans and nonhumans alike are vested with the power to shape and affect the material landscape, the constitutive power to define a landscape as a landscape, through acts of perception, remains a (largely) human prerogative. Ultimately therefore, I suggest that the efforts of ecologists to comprehend, represent and reorganise the fjord from a ‘goose perspective’ disrupted the operation of landscape as a device that institutes and preserves an anthropocentric distribution of political power. The controversy thus draws attention to ruptures not only in a specific landscape, but in the concept of landscape itself.

Overview of Research, in, The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence

by Nik Taylor