ANIMALS AND SOCIETY: AN INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-ANIMAL STUDIESChapter 2: Animal-Human Borders

Copyright Margo DeMello and Columbia University Press, 2012

Animals and Humans: The Great Divide

1. What is the border between human and (other) animal?

2. Is this a “real” or constructed border?  

3. And on what does this border rest?

4. What makes humans, and non-humans, so different?

Non-Western Understandings 

Cultures which blur the human-animal boundary 

•Animism: a worldview that finds that humans, animals, plants, and inanimate objects all may be endowed with spirit.•Hunter gatherers saw humans and animals as related, and humans are as much a part of nature as are animals.•There are many societies which have animals as creator figures•A variety of cultures have animal gods or spirits which can manifest themselves in either human or animal form.•Other cultures had gods which were part human, part animal

Cultures which blur the human-animal boundary 

•Animals play a role in the kinship systems of people around the world, generally as totems—important genealogical figures to whom members of a clan trace their ancestry, and who provide protection. •Other cultures believe that the souls or spirits of the dead are incarnated in animals. •Transmigration, in which a person transforms into an animal, is a common belief in both shamanistic cultures and cultures with a belief in witchcraft. •The Hindu belief in pantheism—that the natural and human worlds are one and the same—is reflected in the notion not only of reincarnation of all species, but of the interconnectivity of all species.•Why then does the Western system that we subscribe to remove humans from the realm of animals?

Speciesism and the Rise of the Human-Animal Border 

The Rise of the Human-Animal Boundary 

1. The Domestication of Animals, which led to animals being seen as creatures to be owned and controlled

2. In the West, a number of philosophies emerged to then explain and justify this new reality

The Human-Animal Boundary 

•Aristotle: animals lack rationality•Old Testament: animals lack a soul; were not created in God’s image•The Great Chain of Being: all life created in a hierarchy•Aquinas: without souls, animals are simply things•Descartes: animals as automata•Kant: animals lack rationality as well as a moral code

Evolution and the Continuity between the Species 

The Continuity Between Species 

•Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: all species are related, and all derive from the same source

•Linnaeus’ Systenuz Naturae: humans are in the primate order

•Tyson demonstrated anatomical similarities between human and ape

The Continuity Between Species 

•Today, animal behaviorists and ethologists show that there is no radical break between the emotional and intellectual capacities of humans and non-humans. Instead, there is a continuity of capacities.

•Genetics, too, shows how closely related some animal species are to humans.