Animals, Society and Culture

1. Animals, Society and Culture Lecture 18 Understanding the social and cultural positioning of animals 2013-14

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. Personhood • Humans and non-humans have ontological equivalence • Humans and geese are outward forms of personhood • Unity underpins differentiation

6. 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

7. 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

8. Spanish royals hunting

9. CITES (Convention on Trade in Endangered Species)

10. 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).

11. Systems approach • Franklin – modernity and post-modernity • Bulliet – post-domesticity (domesticity began with shift to pastoralism, domestication)

12. 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)

13. Combining structure and agency • 5 sub-systems • Production relations (the economic) • Reproduction and Domestication • Governance • Violence • Cultures of exclusive humanism (Cudworth, 2011:70) • Anthroparchy

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Sheepdog trials

18. 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

19. 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)

20. 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

21. Student feedback and NSS • module evaluations available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/undergrad/current/moduleevaluation • If you are a finalist please complete the National Student Survey at http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/ (and there are a number of incentives!).