Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T12:11:36.234Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

27 - Animals and More-Than-Representational Ethics

from Part IV - Intimate and Everyday Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

By
Rosie Jones McVey
Edited by
James Laidlaw
James Laidlaw
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

This chapter argues that anthropological studies of human relationships with animals can draw our attention towards – rather than away from – the importance of representation within human ethical lives. The chapter posits that the anthropological ethical turn and the animal turn are each orientated in different ways to the concept of ‘representation’. This means the two traditions speak at cross-purposes to one another, visible particularly in their distinctive innovations in relation to ‘personhood’. From the perspective of the ethical turn, the personhood (or agency) attributed to animals by multispecies ethnographers appears ethically thin. From the perspective of the animal turn, the ethicists’ focus on varied human-held forms of reflection risks repeating dualistic distinctions and portraying animals only as they appear within human accounts. Yet the chapter shows that these two emerging traditions can benefit from one another, in attending to ‘more-than-representational’ (not non-representational) aspects of ethics. These include (1) the material/embodied form of ethical representations, (2) the fact that ethical life often seems inherently hard to represent, and (3) varied ethical attitudes towards representation (such as the ‘honesty’ sometimes associated with lack of speech) that can be seen as and when people interact with their animals.

Keywords

animalsethicsmoralityanthropologymultispeciespersonhoodrepresentationagencyspeechnon-human
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics , pp. 677 - 705
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alger, Janet M. and Alger., Stephen F. 1999. ‘Cat Culture, Human Culture: An Ethnographic Study of a Cat Shelter’. Society & Animals, 7(3): 199–218.Google Scholar
Asquith, Pamela J. 1986. ‘Anthropomorphism and the Japanese and Western Traditions in Primatology’, in Else, J. G. and Lee, P. C. (eds.), Primate Ontogeny, Cognition, and Social Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 61–71.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2003. ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3): 801–31.Google Scholar
Bekoff, Marc and Pierce., Jessica 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Biehl, Joao. 2013. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Birke, Lynda. 2003. ‘Who – or What – Are the Rats (and Mice) in the Laboratory?’ Society & Animals, 11(3): 207–24.Google Scholar
Brandt, Keri. 2004. ‘A Language of Their Own: An Interactionist Approach to Human-Horse Communication’. Society & Animals, 12(4): 299–316.Google Scholar
Judith., Butler 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Candea, Matei. 2010. ‘“I Fell in Love with Carlos the Meerkat”: Engagement and Detachment in Human–Animal Relations’. American Ethnologist, 37(2): 241–58.Google Scholar
Candea, Matei. 2013. ‘Suspending Belief: Epoché in Animal Behavior Science’. American Anthropologist, 115(3): 423–36.Google Scholar
Carrithers, Michael. 2005. ‘Why Anthropologists Should Study Rhetoric’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11(3): 577–83.Google Scholar
Chua, Liana. 2018. ‘“Too Cute to Cuddle?”: Witnessing Publics’ and Interspecies Relations on the Social Media-scape of Orangutan Conservation’. Anthropological Quarterly, 91(3): 873–903.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2005. ‘Intelligences: Angelic, Animal, Human’, in Daston, L. and Mitman, G. (eds.), Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. New York: Columbia University Press:37–59.Google Scholar
Dave, Naisargi. 2012. Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology Of Ethics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Dave, Naisargi. 2014. ‘Witness: Humans, Animals, and the Politics of Becoming’. Cultural Anthropology 29(3): 433–56.Google Scholar
de Haro De San Mateo, Veronica and Marvin., Garry 2015. ‘The Bullfight in 21st Century Spain: Polemics of Culture, Art and Ethics’, in Nagai, Kaori et al. (eds.), Cosmopolitan Animals. London: Palgrave Macmillan: 93–106Google Scholar
Descola, Philippe and Pálsson, Gisli, eds. 1996. Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Despret, Vinciane. 2004. ‘The Body We Care For: Figures of Anthropo-Zoo-Genesis’. Body & Society, 10(2–3): 111–34.Google Scholar
Despret, Vinciane. 2013. ‘Responding Bodies and Partial Affinities in Human–Animal Worlds’. Theory, Culture & Society, 30(7–8): 51–76.Google Scholar
Despret, Vinciane. 2016. What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
de Waal, Frans B. M. 1999. ‘Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial: Consistency in Our Thinking about Humans and Other Animals’. Philosophical Topics, 27(1): 255–80.Google Scholar
Donovan, Josephine and Adams, Carol J., eds. 2007. The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Dransart, Penelope, ed. 2013. Living Beings: Perspectives on Interspecies Engagements. London: A&C Black.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. 2008 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by Swain, Joseph Ward. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Faubion, James D. 2001. ‘Toward an Anthropology of Ethics: Foucault and the Pedagogies of Autopoiesis’. Representations, 74(1): 83–104.Google Scholar
Faubion, James D. 2011. An Anthropology of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1997. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Game, Ann. 2001. ‘Riding: Embodying the Centaur’. Body & Society, 7(4): 1–12.Google Scholar
Greenebaum, Jessica. 2004. ‘It’s a Dog’s Life: Elevating Status from Pet to “Fur Baby” at Yappy Hour’. Society & Animals, 12(2): 117–35.Google Scholar
Greenhough, Beth and Roe., Emma 2010. ‘From Ethical Principles to Response-Able Practice’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28(1): 43–5.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Heywood, Paolo. 2017. ‘Making Difference: Queer Activism and Anthropological Theory’. Current Anthropology, 59(3): 314–31.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf. 2006. ‘Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism As Strategies for Knowing (or Not Knowing) the World’. Ethnos, 71(1): 21–32.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf. 2017. ‘Dithering While the Planet Burns: Anthropologists’ Approaches to the Anthropocene.’ Reviews in Anthropology, 46(2–3): 61–77.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Alexandra. 2009. ‘Disambiguating the “Guilty Look”: Salient Prompts to a Familiar Dog Behaviour’. Behavioural Processes, 81(3): 447–52.Google Scholar
Hurn, Samantha. 2012. Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim. 2002. ‘From Trust to Domination: An Alternative History of Human-Animal Relations’, in Aubrey, M. and Serpell, J. (eds.), Animals and Human Society. London: Routledge: 13–34.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim. 2006. ‘Rethinking the Animate, Re-animating Thought’. Ethnos, 71(1): 9–20.Google Scholar
Irvine, Leslie. 2004. If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection with Animals. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Jones McVey, Rosie. 2017. ‘Responsible Doubt and Embodied Conviction: The Infrastructure of British Equestrian Horse/Human “Partnership”’. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 35(2): 96–110.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 1997. ‘From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and Their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 39(4): 674–93.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2010. ‘Minds, Surfaces, and Reasons in the Anthropology of Ethics’, in Lambek, Michael (ed.), Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2014. ‘Affordances and Reflexivity in Ethical Life: An Ethnographic Stance’. Anthropological Theory, 14(1): 3–26.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2018. ‘On Semiotic Ideology’. Signs and Society, 6(1): 64–87.Google Scholar
Knight, John. ed. 2005. Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Kopnina, Helen. 2017. ‘Beyond Multispecies Ethnography: Engaging with Violence and Animal Rights in Anthropology’. Critique of Anthropology, 37(3): 333–57.Google Scholar
Kulick, Don. 2017. ‘Human–Animal Communication’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 46: 357–78.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2002. ‘For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8(2): 311–32.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2010. ‘Ethical Traditions in Question: Diaspora Jainism and the Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements’, in Pandian, A. and Ali, D. (eds.), Ethical Life in South Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 61–80.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2013. The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2014. ‘Significant Differences’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1): 497–506.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2017. ‘Fault Lines in the Anthropology of Ethics’, in Mattingly, C., Dyring, R., Louw, M., and Schwarz, W. T. (eds.), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life. Oxford: Berghahn Books: 174–96.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James and Mair, Jonathan. 2019. ‘Imperfect Accomplishment: The Fo Guang Shan Short-Term Monastic Retreat and Ethical Pedagogy in Humanistic Buddhism’. Cultural Anthropology, 34(3): 328–58.Google Scholar
Lambek, Michael. 2010. ‘Toward an Ethics of the Act’, in M. Lambek, (ed.), Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action. New York: Fordham University Press: 39–63.Google Scholar
Leach, Edmund. 1964. ‘Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse’, in Lenneberg, E. (ed.), New Directions in the Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 23–63.Google Scholar
Lloro-Bidart, Teresa and Russell., Constance 2017. ‘Learning Science in Aquariums and on Whalewatching Boats: The Hidden Curriculum of the Deployment of Other Animals’, in Mueller, Michael P., Tippins, Deborah J., and Stewart (eds.), Arthur J., Animals and Science Education. New York: Springer: 41–50.Google Scholar
Locke, Piers. 2017. ‘Elephants As Persons, Affective Apprenticeship, and Fieldwork with Nonhuman Informants in Nepal’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(1): 353–76.Google Scholar
Lorimer, Jamie. 2013. ‘More-Than-Human Visual Analysis: Witnessing and Evoking Affect in Human-Nonhuman Interactions’, in Coleman, Rebecca and Ringrose, Jessica (eds.), Deleuze and Research Methodologies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 61–78.Google Scholar
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Emily. 2013. ‘The Potentiality of Ethnography and the Limits of Affect Theory’. Current Anthropology, 54(S7): S149–S158.Google Scholar
Massumi, Brian. 1995. ‘The Autonomy of Affect’. Cultural Critique, 31: 83–109.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2008. ‘Reading Minds and Telling Tales in a Cultural Borderland’. Ethos, 36(1): 136–54.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2012. ‘Two Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Morality’. Anthropological Theory, 12(2): 161–84.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2016. ‘Accounting for Oneself and Other Ethical Acts: Big Picture Ethics with a Small Picture Focus’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(1): 433–47.Google Scholar
Milton, Kay. 2005. ‘Anthropomorphism or Egomorphism? The Perception of Non-Human Persons by Human Ones’, in Knight, J. (ed.), Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacy. Oxford: Berg: 255–71.Google Scholar
Mullin, Molly H. 1999. ‘Mirrors and Windows: Sociocultural Studies of Human-Animal Relationships’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28(1): 201–24.Google Scholar
Nadasdy, Paul. 2007. ‘The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human–Animal Sociality. American Ethnologist, 34(1): 25–43.Google Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2009. ‘Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15(1): 1–18.Google Scholar
Noske, Barbara. 1989. Humans and Other Animals: Beyond the Boundaries of Anthropology. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Noske, Barbara. 1997. ‘Speciesism, Anthropocentrism, and Non-Western Cultures’. Anthrozoös, 10(4): 183–90.Google Scholar
Parreñas, Rheana ‘Juno’ Salazar. 2012. ‘Producing Affect: Transnational Volunteerism in a Malaysian Orangutan Rehabilitation Center’. American Ethnologist, 39(4): 673–87.Google Scholar
Plumwood, Val. 2005. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Raffles, Hugh. 2007. ‘Jews, Lice, and History’. Public Culture, 19(3): 521–66.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2008. ‘On Not Knowing Other Minds: Confession, Intention, and Linguistic Exchange in a Papua New Guinea Community’. Anthropological Quarterly, 81(2): 421–9.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2013. ‘Beyond the Suffering Subject: Toward an Anthropology of the Good’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(3): 447–62.Google Scholar
Rose, Deborah Bird. 2013. ‘Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Interactions in the Sentient World’. Environmental Humanities, 3(1): 93–109.Google Scholar
Rumsey, Alan. 2010. ‘Ethics, Language, and Human Sociality’, in Lambek, M. (ed.), Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action. New York: Fordham University Press: 105–22.Google Scholar
Sagan, Dorion. 2013. ‘Introduction: Umwelt after Uexküll’, in Von Uexküll, Jakob, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1–35.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Kenneth J. 1994. ‘The Caring Sleuth: Portrait of an Animal Rights Activist’. Society & Animals, 2(2): 145–65.Google Scholar
Shir-Vertesh, Dafna. 2012. ‘“Flexible Personhood”: Loving Animals As Family Members in Israel’. American Anthropologist, 114(3): 420–32.Google Scholar
Song, Hoon. 2011. Pigeon Trouble: Bestiary Biopolitics in a Deindustrialized America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Sykes, Karen M. 2014. ‘Moral Reasoning’, in Fassin (ed.), D., A Companion to Moral Anthropology. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons: 169–86.Google Scholar
Tambiah, Stanley J. 1969. ‘Animals Are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit’. Ethnology, 8(4): 423–59.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985. Philosophical Papers 1: Human Agency and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thrift, Nigel. 2008. Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Throop, C. Jason. 2010. Suffering and Sentiment: Exploring the Vicissitudes of Experience and Pain in Yap. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Van Dooren, Thom, Kirksey, Eben, and Münster., Ursula 2016. ‘Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness’. Environmental Humanities, 8(1): 1–23.Google Scholar
Whatmore, Sarah. 1997. ‘Dissecting the Autonomous Self: Hybrid Cartographies for a Relational Ethics’. Environment and planning D: Society and Space, 15(1): 37–53.Google Scholar
Willerslev, Rane. 2007. Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×