Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History

297 Pages·2010·3.61 MB·English

by  Dorothee Brantz

Beastly Natures
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Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:33:51.
Beastly Natures
Animals, Humans,
and the Study of History
edited by Dorothee Brantz
University of Virginia Press
Charlott esville & London
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Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:33:51.
University of Virginia Press
.de © 2010 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
vrese All rights reserved
r sth Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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riV fo Beastly natures : animals, humans, and the study of history / edited by
ytis Dorothee Brantz.
re p. cm.
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1 isbn 978-0-8139-2947-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8139-2995-8
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© (e-book)
thg 1. Human-animal relationships —History. 2. Animals—Social aspects—
irypo History. I. Brantz, Dorothee.
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ol85.b43 2010
590 —dc22 2009048790
Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:33:51.
CONTENTS
Introduction | Dorothee Brantz 1
PART I
An Anthropological History of Animals and the Environment
Does “Th e Animal” Exist?
Toward a Th eory of Social Life with Animals 17
susan j. pearson and mary weismantel
Touching Animals
Th e Search for a Deeper Understanding of Animals 38
Nigel Rothfels
Wolves in Sheep’s (and Others’) Clothing 59
Garry Marvin
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r sthg Acculturating Wild Creatures
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.sse Darwin in the Monkey Cage
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ain Th e Zoological Garden as a Medium of Evolutionary Th eory 81
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Changing Perceptions of a Charismatic Carnivore 127
Mark V. Barrow Jr.
Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:33:51.
PART III
Animals in the Service of Society
Nature Bridled
Th e Treatment and Training of Horses in Early Modern England 155
Peter Edwards
Th e Public and Private Lives of “First Dogs”
Warren G. Harding’s Laddie Boy and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fala 176
Helena Pycior
Th e Legacy of Laika
Celebrity, Sacrifi ce, and the Soviet Space Dogs 204
Amy Nelson
PART IV
Animating the City and the Countryside
Th e Horse in the Nineteenth-Century American City 227
Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr
“Poor Dumb Brutes” or “Friends in Need”?
Animals and River Floods in Modern Germany and the United States 246
.de Uwe Lübken
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r sth Counting Sheep in the English Lake District
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ir llA Rare Breeds, Local Knowledge, and Environmental History 264
.sse Harriet Ritvo
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Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:33:51.
Beastly Natures
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Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:33:51.
Introduction
Dorothee Brantz
“Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yester-
day or today is. It springs around, eats, rests, digests, jumps up again, and so
from morning to night and from day to day, with its likes and dislikes close-
ly tied to the peg of the moment, and thus neither melancholy nor weary.”1
Friedrich Nietzsche’s well-known treatise Th e Use and Abuse of History for
Life opens with this passage about herd animals’ quotidian existence and
concludes, somewhat enviously, with the observation that “the beast lives
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se fraction left over; it does not know how to play a part, hides nothing, and
r sthg appears in each moment exactly and entirely what it is. Th us a beast can be
ir llA nothing other than honest.”2
.sserP Nietzsche’s assertion that animals have no sense of the past echoes a
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vin Descartes’ mid-seventeenth-century dictum that animals possess neither
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.2 language nor soul and hence cannot be considered sentient.4 Descartes’ no-
1
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2 © tion that animals are mere automata laid the foundation for the exploitative
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iryp
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with the past also expresses a deep divide between the human and nonhu-
man: whereas the former possesses historical consciousness and, with it, the
1
Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:30:32.
dorothee brantz
ability to shape civilization, the latt er supposedly does not. While it is cer-
tainly true that animals have not consciously contributed to the formation of
the past, one must wonder if that also necessarily implies that they are not a
part of history. In other words, even if animals live without a sense of the past,
is it logical to conclude that they have played no role in the development of
human societies?
Judging by most historical scholarship, animals seem to have had no part
whatsoever in human history. Th is omission may, however, reveal more about
history as an academic discipline than it does about the past itself. Aft er all,
how could human societies have survived without the food, materials, labor,
and entertainment that animals have supplied? What would the history of
agriculture, transportation, the arts and sciences, and even warfare look like
without animals? Nor does this omission refl ect a lack of sources: historical
records are fi lled with references to animals, att esting not only to their pres-
ence in but also to their signifi cance for human communities. Animals are
mentioned in legal documents and court records (until the eighteenth cen-
tury, they could even be prosecuted for committ ing crimes such as theft or
murder)5 as well as in parliamentary debates, civil ordinances, and munici-
pal records. Th ey are widely represented in visual documents, literary texts,
statistical databases, and all sorts of media records; traces of them remain in
countless diaries, memoirs, and personal papers.
Rather than a dearth of sources, the problem with animals and history
seems to be a question of agency. Th e academic discipline of history, in con-
trast to natural history, is premised on the notion of human agency. Accord-
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se some degree of control over the social relations in which one is enmeshed,
r sthg which in turn implies the ability to transform those social relations to some
ir llA degree.”6 Sewell also argues that the capacity for agency is inherent in all
.sserP humans, but he notes that the form such agency takes is highly specialized
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ytisre Historians have long debated the issue of historical agency. Th e succes-
vin sive stages of historiography mirror the continuous critical reconsiderations
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.2 of traditional concepts of power and social hierarchies and the concomitant
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2 © expansion of notions about historical agents and the transformative eff ects
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iryp
oC in the nineteenth century, history has steadily broadened its outlook from an
exclusionary focus on white male elites, diplomacy, and high culture to in-
corporate the poor, the illiterate, women, racial and religious minorities, and
2
Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:30:32.
Introduction
other historically disenfranchised social groups. Along with this expansion
of historical agents emerged a growing interest in everyday practices and the
broader parameters of social, political, cultural, and economic life. Viewed
from that perspective, it might seem inevitable that scholars would eventu-
ally turn their att ention to animals; but, if one follows Sewell’s defi nition, the
inclusion of the nonhuman in history requires a much greater intellectual
leap since animals do not possess the ability to directly transform human
structures and therefore cannot be considered historical agents.8 Incorporat-
ing animals into any historical narrative thus necessitates a radical rethink-
ing of the project of history, which is in many ways synonymous with the
project of modernity.
When the fi eld of history emerged as an academic discipline, it was estab-
lished as the study of human culture and society and thus intentionally juxta-
posed to natural history. Th is juxtaposition articulated the most fundamen-
tal premise of modernity: namely, the epistemological separation of nature
and culture.9 One notable consequence was the emergence of separate intel-
lectual traditions—the humanities on one hand and the natural sciences on
the other. As its name indicates, the humanities focused on “humans”—a
category that seemed for a long time quite narrowly conceived to include
only white male elites. By contrast, the study of animals was assigned to the
domains of natural history, biology, and the agricultural sciences. For histo-
rians, animals seemed to matt er only insofar as they supplied the material
resources necessary for the advancement of human societies. In that sense,
animals were comparable to grain or timber. While it is certainly true that
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se perspective cannot account for the complexity of humans’ historical engage-
r sthg ments with animals. For one, animals are not just a commodity; they are liv-
ir llA ing creatures. Indeed, it is precisely the recognition that animals cannot be
.sserP treated simply as a material resource that has led to ongoing confl icts and
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fo
ytisre wanted to treat animals as mere resources, this desire to instrumentalize
vin the nonhuman has been repeatedly challenged, and not least by the animals
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1
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2 © It is necessary to distinguish in this discussion between diff erent species
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iryp
oC have certainly played a much larger historical role than have octopi. Hence,
one cannot draw a strict dividing line between humans and animals, espe-
cially since humans are themselves biological animals. Genetically, several
3
Beastly Natures : Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz, University of Virginia
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443985.
Created from rutgers-ebooks on 2021-01-06 10:30:32.