‘The Tame and the Wild’: How animals reshaped cultures on both sides of the Atlantic
Animal husbandry is the root cause of Westerners viewing so-called livestock as objects. It enabled people to disconnect meat, hides, and other 'products' from living, feeling, thinking animals. When Indigenous people in Greater Amazonia initially encountered European-style animal husbandry, they were absolutely disgusted, but not because they were vegetarians or vegans. Rather, for them, to eat a being whom one had fed — the essence of livestock husbandry — was abhorrent.
MARC BEKOFF: Dr. Marcy Norton’s new book ‘The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals After 1492’ on the history of human-animal relationships, places wildlife and livestock at the center of the story and shows how different views of animals reshaped people on both sides of the Atlantic. Marcy answers a few questions about her must-read revision of humans, animals, and cultural change:
MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?
MN: My book challenges the idea that treating animals as livestock is a natural and normal way to interact with other creatures. A lot of people—scholars included—assume that animal domestication leading to livestock husbandry is a necessary stage of development for cultural progress. Instead, I show that across Indigenous America—I focus on Greater Amazonia (lowland South America and the Caribbean) and Mexico—humans developed very different kinds of relationships with other animals.
More specifically, I explore “familiarization”—a word that describes the process of taming wild animals from almost every imaginable kind of species: most commonly, parrots and monkeys, but also manatees, raccoons, capybara, coati, deer, iguana, rattlesnakes, jaguars, coyotes, tapir, peccaries, ducks, and many other types of birds. Hunters brought home the orphans of prey, or sometimes expressly captured young animals. They were then nurtured and tamed, usually by women, so that they became beloved kin. European travelers wrote admiringly of Indigenous people’s taming abilities and also marveled at the freedom possessed by familiarized animals; they noted that they would often wander or fly into the forest, and then come back at night. These animals did not have jobs like European hunting dogs or war horses.
MB: So are you saying they kept pets?
MN: While these tamed animals resemble our modern pets, they are not the same. First, unlike the vast majority of our pets, namely dogs and cats, these animals began their lives in the wild, not as domesticates. And, even more importantly, they belonged to species that in other contexts, were often hunted. Once the animals were fed—the paramount form of nurturing—eating them was off-limits. For this reason, when Indigenous people in Greater Amazonia initially encountered European-style animal husbandry, they were absolutely disgusted, but not because they were vegetarians or vegans. Rather, for them, to eat a being whom one had fed—the essence of livestock husbandry—was abhorrent…
MB: Can you talk more about how you explore animal subjectivity?
MN: This question of animal subjectivity is another major theme of the book. Subjectivity—which I use interchangeably with personhood—is the term we use to describe the idea of an individual animal having emotional and analytic faculties, such as the capacity to reason or grieve, and distinctive desires and perspectives. The question of animal subjectivity has been mostly the domain of scientists (such as yourself!) who study animals in laboratories or in the wild. I approach the question differently: I ask what cultural conditions foster or hinder humans’ abilities to recognize the subjectivity of other animals?
In my view, animal husbandry is the root cause of Westerners viewing so-called livestock as objects. For instance, I found that the slaughterhouse (where laborers kill animals) as an institution separate from the butcher (where consumers buy meat) emerged much earlier than people realize, around 1500. By concealing the operation of killing animals, the slaughterhouse, along with other husbandry practices, enabled people to disconnect meat, hides, and other “products” from living, feeling, thinking animals. SOURCE…
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