Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE CONSIDER THE LOBSTER ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 2004 For 56 years, the Maine Lobster Festival has been drawing crowds with the promise of sun, fun, and fine food. One visitor would argue that the celebration involves a whole lot more. he enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem of Maine’s lobster industry. What’s called the midcoast runs from Owl’s Head and Thomaston in the south to Belfast in the north. (Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable.) The region’s two main communities are Camden, with its very old money and yachty harbor and five-star restaurants and phenomenal B&Bs, and Rockland, a serious old fishing town that hosts the Festival every summer in historic Harbor Park, right along the water.1 RELATED LINKS The lush life of Kobe beef: Fact or Fiction? Investigative Report: a chicken's life, from coop to cooktop 1 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... Plus: Politics of the Plate Tourism and lobster are the midcoast region’s two main industries, and they’re both warm-weather enterprises, and the Maine Lobster Festival represents less an intersection of the industries than a deliberate collision, joyful and lucrative and loud. The assigned subject of this article is the 56th Annual MLF, July 30 to August 3, 2003, whose official theme was “Lighthouses, Laughter, and Lobster.” Total paid attendance was over 80,000, due partly to a national CNN spot in June during which a Senior Editor of a certain other epicurean magazine hailed the MLF as one of the best food-themed festivals in the world. 2003 Festival highlights: concerts by Lee Ann Womack and Orleans, annual Maine Sea Goddess beauty pageant, Saturday’s big parade, Sunday’s William G. Atwood Memorial Crate Race, annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths, and the MLF’s Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker near the grounds’ north entrance. Also available are lobster rolls, lobster turnovers, lobster sauté, Down East lobster salad, lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, and deep-fried lobster dumplings. Lobster Thermidor is obtainable at a sit-down restaurant called The Black Pearl on Harbor Park’s northwest wharf. A large all-pine booth sponsored by the Maine Lobster Promotion Council has free pamphlets with recipes, eating tips, and Lobster Fun Facts. The winner of Friday’s Amateur Cooking Competition prepares Saffron Lobster Ramekins, the recipe for which is available for public downloading at www.mainelobsterfestival.com. There are lobster T-shirts and lobster bobblehead dolls and inflatable lobster pool toys and clamp-on lobster hats with big scarlet claws that wobble on springs. Your assigned correspondent saw it all, accompanied by one girlfriend and both his own parents—one of which parents was actually born and raised in Maine, albeit in the extreme northern inland part, which is potato country and a world away from the touristic midcoast.2 For practical purposes, everyone knows what a lobster is. As usual, though, there’s much more to know than most of us care about—it’s all a matter of what your interests are. Taxonomically speaking, a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws used for subduing prey. Like many other species of benthic carnivore, lobsters are both hunters and scavengers. They have stalked eyes, gills on their legs, and antennae. There are dozens of different kinds worldwide, of which the relevant species here is the Maine lobster, Homarus americanus. The name “lobster” comes from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider. Moreover, a crustacean is an aquatic arthropod of the class Crustacea, which comprises crabs, shrimp, barnacles, lobsters, and freshwater crayfish. All this is right there in the encyclopedia. And an arthropod is an invertebrate member of the phylum Arthropoda, which phylum covers insects, spiders, crustaceans, and centipedes/millipedes, all of whose main commonality, besides the absence of a centralized brain-spine assembly, is a chitinous exoskeleton composed of segments, to which appendages are articulated in pairs. The point is that lobsters are basically giant sea-insects.3 Like most arthropods, they date from the Jurassic period, biologically so much older than mammalia that they might as well be from another planet. And they are—particularly in their natural brown-green state, brandishing their claws like weapons and with thick antennae awhip—not nice to look at. And it’s true that they are garbagemen of the sea, eaters of dead stuff,4 although they’ll also eat some live shellfish, certain kinds of injured fish, and sometimes each other. But they are themselves good eating. Or so we think now. Up until sometime in the 1800s, though, lobster was literally low-class food, eaten only by the poor and institutionalized. Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats. One reason for their low status was how plentiful lobsters were in old New England. “Unbelievable abundance” is how one source describes the situation, including accounts of Plymouth pilgrims wading out and capturing all they wanted 2 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... by hand, and of early Boston’s seashore being littered with lobsters after hard storms—these latter were treated as a smelly nuisance and ground up for fertilizer. There is also the fact that premodern lobster was often cooked dead and then preserved, usually packed in salt or crude hermetic containers. Maine’s earliest lobster industry was based around a dozen such seaside canneries in the 1840s, from which lobster was shipped as far away as California, in demand only because it was cheap and high in protein, basically chewable fuel. Now, of course, lobster is posh, a delicacy, only a step or two down from caviar. The meat is richer and more substantial than most fish, its taste subtle compared to the marine-gaminess of mussels and clams. In the U.S. pop-food imagination, lobster is now the seafood analog to steak, with which it’s so often twinned as Surf ’n’ Turf on the really expensive part of the chain steak house menu. In fact, one obvious project of the MLF, and of its omnipresently sponsorial Maine Lobster Promotion Council, is to counter the idea that lobster is unusually luxe or rich or unhealthy or expensive, suitable only for effete palates or the occasional blow-the-diet treat. It is emphasized over and over in presentations and pamphlets at the Festival that Maine lobster meat has fewer calories, less cholesterol, and less saturated fat than chicken.5 And in the Main Eating Tent, you can get a “quarter” (industry shorthand for a 1‰-pound lobster), a 4-ounce cup of melted butter, a bag of chips, and a soft roll w/ butter-pat for around $12.00, which is only slightly more expensive than supper at McDonald’s. Be apprised, though, that the Main Eating Tent’s suppers come in Styrofoam trays, and the soft drinks are iceless and flat, and the coffee is convenience-store coffee in yet more Styrofoam, and the utensils are plastic (there are none of the special long skinny forks for pushing out the tail meat, though a few savvy diners bring their own). Nor do they give you near enough napkins, considering how messy lobster is to eat, especially when you’re squeezed onto benches alongside children of various ages and vastly different levels of fine-motor development—not to mention the people who’ve somehow smuggled in their own beer in enormous aisle-blocking coolers, or who all of a sudden produce their own plastic tablecloths and try to spread them over large portions of tables to try to reserve them (the tables) for their little groups. And so on. Any one example is no more than a petty inconvenience, of course, but the MLF turns out to be full of irksome little downers like this—see for instance the Main Stage’s headliner shows, where it turns out that you have to pay $20 extra for a folding chair if you want to sit down; or the North Tent’s mad scramble for the NyQuil-cup-size samples of finalists’ entries handed out after the Cooking Competition; or the much-touted Maine Sea Goddess pageant finals, which turn out to be excruciatingly long and to consist mainly of endless thanks and tributes to local sponsors. What the Maine Lobster Festival really is is a midlevel county fair with a culinary hook, and in this respect it’s not unlike Tidewater crab festivals, Midwest corn festivals, Texas chili festivals, etc., and shares with these venues the core paradox of all teeming commercial demotic events: It’s not for everyone.6 Nothing against the aforementioned euphoric Senior Editor, but I’d be surprised if she’d spent much time here in Harbor Park, watching people slap canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children. Lobster is essentially a summer food. This is because we now prefer our lobsters fresh, which means they have to be recently caught, which for both tactical and economic reasons takes place at depths of less than 25 fathoms. Lobsters tend to be hungriest and most active (i.e., most trappable) at summer water temperatures of 45–50°F. In the autumn, some Maine lobsters migrate out into deeper water, either for warmth or to avoid the heavy waves that pound New England’s coast all winter. Some burrow into the bottom. They might hibernate; nobody’s sure. Summer is also lobsters’ molting season—specifically earlyto mid-July. Chitinous arthropods grow by molting, rather the way people have to buy bigger clothes as they age and gain weight. Since lobsters can live to be over 100, they can also get to be quite large, as in 20 pounds or more—though truly senior lobsters are rare now, because New England’s waters are so heavily trapped.7 Anyway, hence the culinary distinction between hard- and soft-shell lobsters, the latter sometimes a.k.a. shedders. A soft-shell lobster is one that has recently molted. In midcoast restaurants, the summer 3 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... menu often offers both kinds, with shedders being slightly cheaper even though they’re easier to dismantle and the meat is allegedly sweeter. The reason for the discount is that a molting lobster uses a layer of seawater for insulation while its new shell is hardening, so there’s slightly less actual meat when you crack open a shedder, plus a redolent gout of water that gets all over everything and can sometimes jet out lemonlike and catch a tablemate right in the eye. If it’s winter or you’re buying lobster someplace far from New England, on the other hand, you can almost bet that the lobster is a hard-shell, which for obvious reasons travel better. As an à la carte entrée, lobster can be baked, broiled, steamed, grilled, sautéed, stir-fried, or microwaved. The most common method, though, is boiling. If you’re someone who enjoys having lobster at home, this is probably the way you do it, since boiling is so easy. You need a large kettle w/ cover, which you fill about half full with water (the standard advice is that you want 2.5 quarts of water per lobster). Seawater is optimal, or you can add two tbsp salt per quart from the tap. It also helps to know how much your lobsters weigh. You get the water boiling, put in the lobsters one at a time, cover the kettle, and bring it back up to a boil. Then you bank the heat and let the kettle simmer—ten minutes for the first pound of lobster, then three minutes for each pound after that. (This is assuming you’ve got hard-shell lobsters, which, again, if you don’t live between Boston and Halifax, is probably what you’ve got. For shedders, you’re supposed to subtract three minutes from the total.) The reason the kettle’s lobsters turn scarlet is that boiling somehow suppresses every pigment in their chitin but one. If you want an easy test of whether the lobsters are done, you try pulling on one of their antennae—if it comes out of the head with minimal effort, you’re ready to eat. A detail so obvious that most recipes don’t even bother to mention it is that each lobster is supposed to be alive when you put it in the kettle. This is part of lobster’s modern appeal: It’s the freshest food there is. There’s no decomposition between harvesting and eating. And not only do lobsters require no cleaning or dressing or plucking (though the mechanics of actually eating them are a different matter), but they’re relatively easy for vendors to keep alive. They come up alive in the traps, are placed in containers of seawater, and can, so long as the water’s aerated and the animals’ claws are pegged or banded to keep them from tearing one another up under the stresses of captivity,8 survive right up until they’re boiled. Most of us have been in supermarkets or restaurants that feature tanks of live lobster, from which you can pick out your supper while it watches you point. And part of the overall spectacle of the Maine Lobster Festival is that you can see actual lobstermen’s vessels docking at the wharves along the northeast grounds and unloading freshly caught product, which is transferred by hand or cart 100 yards to the great clear tanks stacked up around the Festival’s cooker—which is, as mentioned, billed as the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker and can process over 100 lobsters at a time for the Main Eating Tent. So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S.: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice? As you may or may not know, a certain well-known group called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals thinks that the morality of lobster-boiling is not just a matter of individual conscience. In fact, one of the very first things we hear about the MLF …well, to set the scene: We’re coming in by cab from the almost indescribably odd and rustic Knox County Airport9 very late on the night before the Festival opens, sharing the cab with a wealthy political consultant who lives on Vinalhaven Island in the bay half the year (he’s headed for the island ferry in Rockland). The consultant and cabdriver are responding to informal journalistic probes about how people who live in the midcoast region actually view the MLF, as in is the Festival just a big-dollar tourist thing or is it something local residents look forward to attending, take genuine civic pride in, etc. The cabdriver—who’s in his seventies, one of apparently a whole platoon of retirees the cab company puts on to help with the summer rush, and wears a U.S.-flag lapel pin, and drives in what can only be called a very deliberate way—assures us that locals do endorse and enjoy the MLF, 4 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... although he himself hasn’t gone in years, and now come to think of it no one he and his wife know has, either. However, the demilocal consultant’s been to recent Festivals a couple times (one gets the impression it was at his wife’s behest), of which his most vivid impression was that “you have to line up for an ungodly long time to get your lobsters, and meanwhile there are all these ex–flower children coming up and down along the line handing out pamphlets that say the lobsters die in terrible pain and you shouldn’t eat them.” And it turns out that the post-hippies of the consultant’s recollection were activists from PETA. There were no PETA people in obvious view at the 2003 MLF,10 but they’ve been conspicuous at many of the recent Festivals. Since at least the mid-1990s, articles in everything from The Camden Herald to The New York Times have described PETA urging boycotts of the MLF, often deploying celebrity spokespeople like Mary Tyler Moore for open letters and ads saying stuff like “Lobsters are extraordinarily sensitive” and “To me, eating a lobster is out of the question.” More concrete is the oral testimony of Dick, our florid and extremely gregarious rental-car guy, to the effect that PETA’s been around so much in recent years that a kind of brittlely tolerant homeostasis now obtains between the activists and the Festival’s locals, e.g.: “We had some incidents a couple years ago. One lady took most of her clothes off and painted herself like a lobster, almost got herself arrested. But for the most part they’re let alone. [Rapid series of small ambiguous laughs, which with Dick happens a lot.] They do their thing and we do our thing.” This whole interchange takes place on Route 1, 30 July, during a four-mile, 50-minute ride from the airport11 to the dealership to sign car-rental papers. Several irreproducible segues down the road from the PETA anecdotes, Dick—whose son-in-law happens to be a professional lobsterman and one of the Main Eating Tent’s regular suppliers—articulates what he and his family feel is the crucial mitigating factor in the whole morality-of-boiling-lobsters-alive issue: “There’s a part of the brain in people and animals that lets us feel pain, and lobsters’ brains don’t have this part.” Besides the fact that it’s incorrect in about 11 different ways, the main reason Dick’s statement is interesting is that its thesis is more or less echoed by the Festival’s own pronouncement on lobsters and pain, which is part of a Test Your Lobster IQ quiz that appears in the 2003 MLF program courtesy of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council: “The nervous system of a lobster is very simple, and is in fact most similar to the nervous system of the grasshopper. It is decentralized with no brain. There is no cerebral cortex, which in humans is the area of the brain that gives the experience of pain.” Though it sounds more sophisticated, a lot of the neurology in this latter claim is still either false or fuzzy. The human cerebral cortex is the brain-part that deals with higher faculties like reason, metaphysical self-awareness, language, etc. Pain reception is known to be part of a much older and more primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandins that are managed by the brain stem and thalamus.12 On the other hand, it is true that the cerebral cortex is involved in what’s variously called suffering, distress, or the emotional experience of pain—i.e., experiencing painful stimuli as unpleasant, very unpleasant, unbearable, and so on. Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge that the questions of whether and how different kinds of animals feel pain, and of whether and why it might be justifiable to inflict pain on them in order to eat them, turn out to be extremely complex and difficult. And comparative neuroanatomy is only part of the problem. Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience, we do not have direct access to anyone or anything’s pain but our own; and even just the principles by which we can infer that others experience pain and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain involve hard-core philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics. The fact that even the most highly evolved nonhuman mammals can’t use language to communicate with us about their subjective mental experience is only the first layer of additional complication in trying to extend our reasoning about pain and morality to animals. And everything gets progressively more abstract and convolved as we move farther and farther out from the higher-type mammals into cattle and swine and dogs and cats and rodents, and then birds and fish, and finally invertebrates like lobsters. 5 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... The more important point here, though, is that the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of gourmet wish to think hard about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, it’s not just that lobsters get boiled alive, it’s that you do it yourself—or at least it’s done specifically for you, on-site.13 As mentioned, the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, which is highlighted as an attraction in the Festival’s program, is right out there on the MLF’s north grounds for everyone to see. Try to imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival14 at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killing Floor or something—there’s no way. The intimacy of the whole thing is maximized at home, which of course is where most lobster gets prepared and eaten (although note already the semiconscious euphemism “prepared,” which in the case of lobsters really means killing them right there in our kitchens). The basic scenario is that we come in from the store and make our little preparations like getting the kettle filled and boiling, and then we lift the lobsters out of the bag or whatever retail container they came home in …whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen. However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming).15 A blunter way to say this is that the lobster acts as if it’s in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether and to take one of those little lightweight plastic oven timers with them into another room and wait until the whole process is over. There happen to be two main criteria that most ethicists agree on for determining whether a living creature has the capacity to suffer and so has genuine interests that it may or may not be our moral duty to consider.16 One is how much of the neurological hardware required for pain-experience the animal comes equipped with—nociceptors, prostaglandins, neuronal opioid receptors, etc. The other criterion is whether the animal demonstrates behavior associated with pain. And it takes a lot of intellectual gymnastics and behaviorist hairsplitting not to see struggling, thrashing, and lid-clattering as just such pain-behavior. According to marine zoologists, it usually takes lobsters between 35 and 45 seconds to die in boiling water. (No source I could find talked about how long it takes them to die in superheated steam; one rather hopes it’s faster.) There are, of course, other fairly common ways to kill your lobster on-site and so achieve maximum freshness. Some cooks’ practice is to drive a sharp heavy knife point-first into a spot just above the midpoint between the lobster’s eyestalks (more or less where the Third Eye is in human foreheads). This is alleged either to kill the lobster instantly or to render it insensate—and is said at least to eliminate the cowardice involved in throwing a creature into boiling water and then fleeing the room. As far as I can tell from talking to proponents of the knife-in-the-head method, the idea is that it’s more violent but ultimately more merciful, plus that a willingness to exert personal agency and accept responsibility for stabbing the lobster’s head honors the lobster somehow and entitles one to eat it. (There’s often a vague sort of Native American 6 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... spirituality-of-the-hunt flavor to pro-knife arguments.) But the problem with the knife method is basic biology: Lobsters’ nervous systems operate off not one but several ganglia, a.k.a. nerve bundles, which are sort of wired in series and distributed all along the lobster’s underside, from stem to stern. And disabling only the frontal ganglion does not normally result in quick death or unconsciousness. Another alternative is to put the lobster in cold salt water and then very slowly bring it up to a full boil. Cooks who advocate this method are going mostly on the analogy to a frog, which can supposedly be kept from jumping out of a boiling pot by heating the water incrementally. In order to save a lot of research-summarizing, I’ll simply assure you that the analogy between frogs and lobsters turns out not to hold. Ultimately, the only certain virtues of the home-lobotomy and slow-heating methods are comparative, because there are even worse/crueler ways people prepare lobster. Time-thrifty cooks sometimes microwave them alive (usually after poking several extra vent holes in the carapace, which is a precaution most shellfish-microwavers learn about the hard way). Live dismemberment, on the other hand, is big in Europe: Some chefs cut the lobster in half before cooking; others like to tear off the claws and tail and toss only these parts in the pot. And there’s more unhappy news respecting suffering-criterion number one. Lobsters don’t have much in the way of eyesight or hearing, but they do have an exquisite tactile sense, one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs that protrude through their carapace. “Thus,” in the words of T.M. Prudden’s industry classic About Lobster, “it is that although encased in what seems a solid, impenetrable armor, the lobster can receive stimuli and impressions from without as readily as if it possessed a soft and delicate skin.” And lobsters do have nociceptors,17 as well as invertebrate versions of the prostaglandins and major neurotransmitters via which our own brains register pain. Lobsters do not, on the other hand, appear to have the equipment for making or absorbing natural opioids like endorphins and enkephalins, which are what more advanced nervous systems use to try to handle intense pain. From this fact, though, one could conclude either that lobsters are maybe even more vulnerable to pain, since they lack mammalian nervous systems’ built-in analgesia, or, instead, that the absence of natural opioids implies an absence of the really intense pain-sensations that natural opioids are designed to mitigate. I for one can detect a marked upswing in mood as I contemplate this latter possibility: It could be that their lack of endorphin/enkephalin hardware means that lobsters’ raw subjective experience of pain is so radically different from mammals’ that it may not even deserve the term pain. Perhaps lobsters are more like those frontal-lobotomy patients one reads about who report experiencing pain in a totally different way than you and I. These patients evidently do feel physical pain, neurologically speaking, but don’t dislike it—though neither do they like it; it’s more that they feel it but don’t feel anything about it—the point being that the pain is not distressing to them or something they want to get away from. Maybe lobsters, who are also without frontal lobes, are detached from the neurological-registration-of-injury-or-hazard we call pain in just the same way. There is, after all, a difference between (1) pain as a purely neurological event, and (2) actual suffering, which seems crucially to involve an emotional component, an awareness of pain as unpleasant, as something to fear/dislike/want to avoid. Still, after all the abstract intellection, there remain the facts of the frantically clanking lid, the pathetic clinging to the edge of the pot. Standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid/escape the painful experience. To my lay mind, the lobster’s behavior in the kettle appears to be the expression of a preference; and it may well be that an ability to form preferences is the decisive criterion for real suffering.18 The logic of this (preference p suffering) relation may be easiest to see in the negative case. If you cut certain kinds of worms in half, the halves will often keep crawling around and going about their vermiform business as if nothing had happened. When we assert, based on their post-op behavior, that these worms appear not to be suffering, what we’re really saying is that there’s no sign that the worms know anything bad has happened or would prefer not to have gotten cut in half. 7 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... Lobsters, however, are known to exhibit preferences. Experiments have shown that they can detect changes of only a degree or two in water temperature; one reason for their complex migratory cycles (which can often cover 100-plus miles a year) is to pursue the temperatures they like best.19 And, as mentioned, they’re bottom-dwellers and do not like bright light: If a tank of food lobsters is out in the sunlight or a store’s fluorescence, the lobsters will always congregate in whatever part is darkest. Fairly solitary in the ocean, they also clearly dislike the crowding that’s part of their captivity in tanks, since (as also mentioned) one reason why lobsters’ claws are banded on capture is to keep them from attacking one another under the stress of close-quarter storage. In any event, at the Festival, standing by the bubbling tanks outside the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, watching the fresh-caught lobsters pile over one another, wave their hobbled claws impotently, huddle in the rear corners, or scrabble frantically back from the glass as you approach, it is difficult not to sense that they’re unhappy, or frightened, even if it’s some rudimentary version of these feelings …and, again, why does rudimentariness even enter into it? Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in? I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest. Does that comparison seem a bit much? If so, exactly why? Or what about this one: Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices? My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings;20 and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I have not succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient. Given this article’s venue and my own lack of culinary sophistication, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navelgazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory? These last couple queries, though, while sincere, obviously involve much larger and more abstract questions about the connections (if any) between aesthetics and morality, and these questions lead straightaway into such deep and treacherous waters that it’s probably best to stop the public discussion right here. There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other. FOOTNOTES: 1 8 of 12 There’s a comprehensive native apothegm: “Camden by the sea, Rockland by the smell.” 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... 2 N.B. All personally connected parties have made it clear from the start that they do not want to be talked about in this article. 3 Midcoasters’ native term for a lobster is, in fact, “bug,” as in “Come around on Sunday and we’ll cook up some bugs.” 4 Factoid: Lobster traps are usually baited with dead herring. 5 Of course, the common practice of dipping the lobster meat in melted butter torpedoes all these happy fat-specs, which none of the Council’s promotional stuff ever mentions, any more than potato-industry PR talks about sour cream and bacon bits. 6 In truth, there’s a great deal to be said about the differences between working-class Rockland and the heavily populist flavor of its Festival versus comfortable and elitist Camden with its expensive view and shops given entirely over to $200 sweaters and great rows of Victorian homes converted to upscale B&Bs. And about these differences as two sides of the great coin that is U.S. tourism. Very little of which will be said here, except to amplify the above-mentioned paradox and to reveal your assigned correspondent’s own preferences. I confess that I have never understood why so many people’s idea of a fun vacation is to don flip-flops and sunglasses and crawl through maddening traffic to loud hot crowded tourist venues in order to sample a “local flavor” that is by definition ruined by the presence of tourists. This may (as my Festival companions keep pointing out) all be a matter of personality and hardwired taste: The fact that I just do not like tourist venues means that I’ll never understand their appeal and so am probably not the one to talk about it (the supposed appeal). But, since this note will almost surely not survive magazine-editing anyway, here goes: As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it’s only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let’s-look-honestlyat-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way—hostile to my fantasy of being a real individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation travel:) To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing. 7 Datum: In a good year, the U.S. industry produces around 80 million pounds of lobster, and Maine accounts for more than half that total. 8 N.B. Similar reasoning underlies the practice of what’s termed “debeaking” broiler chickens and brood hens in modern factory farms. Maximum commercial efficiency requires that enormous poultry populations be confined in unnaturally close quarters, under which conditions many birds go crazy and peck one another to death. As a purely observational side-note, be apprised that debeaking is usually an automated process and that the chickens receive no anesthetic. It’s not clear to me whether most gourmet readers know about debeaking, or about related practices like dehorning cattle in commercial feedlots, cropping swine’s tails in factory hog farms to keep psychotically bored neighbors from chewing them off, and so forth. It so happens 9 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... that your assigned correspondent knew almost nothing about standard meat-industry operations before starting work on this article. 9 The terminal used to be somebody’s house, for example, and the lost-luggage-reporting room was clearly once a pantry. 10 It turned out that one Mr. William R. Rivas-Rivas, a high-ranking PETA official out of the group’s Virginia headquarters, was indeed there this year, albeit solo, working the Festival’s main and side entrances on Saturday, August 2, handing out pamphlets and adhesive stickers emblazoned with “Being Boiled Hurts,” which is the tagline in most of PETA’s published material about lobster. I learned that he’d been there only later, when speaking with Mr. Rivas-Rivas on the phone. I’m not sure how we missed seeing him in situ at the Festival, and I can’t see much to do except apologize for the oversight—although it’s also true that Saturday was the day of the big MLF parade through Rockland, which basic journalistic responsibility seemed to require going to (and which, with all due respect, meant that Saturday was maybe not the best day for PETA to work the Harbor Park grounds, especially if it was going to be just one person for one day, since a lot of diehard MLF partisans were off-site watching the parade (which, again with no offense intended, was in truth kind of cheesy and boring, consisting mostly of slow homemade floats and various midcoast people waving at one another, and with an extremely annoying man dressed as Blackbeard ranging up and down the length of the crowd saying “Arrr” over and over and brandishing a plastic sword at people, etc.; plus it rained)). 11 The short version regarding why we were back at the airport after already arriving the previous night involves lost luggage and a miscommunication about where and what the local National Car Rental franchise was—Dick came out personally to the airport and got us, out of no evident motive but kindness. (He also talked nonstop the entire way, with a very distinctive speaking style that can be described only as manically laconic; the truth is that I now know more about this man than I do about some members of my own family.) 12 To elaborate by way of example: The common experience of accidentally touching a hot stove and yanking your hand back before you’re even aware that anything’s going on is explained by the fact that many of the processes by which we detect and avoid painful stimuli do not involve the cortex. In the case of the hand and stove, the brain is bypassed altogether; all the important neurochemical action takes place in the spine. 13 Morality-wise, let’s concede that this cuts both ways. Lobster-eating is at least not abetted by the system of corporate factory farms that produces most beef, pork, and chicken. Because, if nothing else, of the way they’re marketed and packaged for sale, we eat these latter meats without having to consider that they were once conscious, sentient creatures to whom horrible things were done. (N.B. PETA distributes a certain video—the title of which is being omitted as part of the elaborate editorial compromise by which this note appears at all—in which you can see just about everything meat--related you don’t want to see or think about. (N.B.2Not that PETA’s any sort of font of unspun truth. Like many partisans in complex moral disputes, the PETA people are -fanatics, and a lot of their rhetoric seems simplistic and self-righteous. Personally, though, I have to say that I found this unnamed video both credible and deeply upsetting.)) 14 Is it significant that “lobster,” “fish,” and “chicken” are our culture’s words for both the animal and the meat, whereas most mammals seem to require euphemisms like “beef” and “pork” that help us separate the meat we eat from the living creature the meat once was? Is this evidence that some kind of deep unease about eating higher animals is endemic enough to show up in English usage, but that the unease diminishes as we move out of the mammalian order? (And is “lamb”/“lamb” the counterexample that sinks the whole theory, or are there special, biblico-historical reasons for that equivalence?) 10 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... 15 There’s a relevant populist myth about the high-pitched whistling sound that sometimes issues from a pot of boiling lobster. The sound is really vented steam from the layer of seawater between the lobster’s flesh and its carapace (this is why shedders whistle more than hard-shells), but the pop version has it that the sound is the lobster’s rabbitlike death scream. Lobsters communicate via pheromones in their urine and don’t have anything close to the vocal equipment for screaming, but the myth’s very persistent—which might, once again, point to a low-level cultural unease about the boiling thing. 16 “Interests” basically means strong and legitimate preferences, which obviously require some degree of consciousness, responsiveness to stimuli, etc. See, for instance, the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, whose 1974 Animal Liberation is more or less the bible of the modern animal-rights movement: “It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is.” 17 This is the neurological term for special pain receptors that are (according to Jane A. Smith and Kenneth M. Boyd’s Lives in the Balance) “sensitive to potentially damaging extremes of temperature, to mechanical forces, and to chemical substances which are released when body tissues are damaged.” 18 “Preference” is maybe roughly synonymous with “interest,” but it is a better term for our purposes because it’s less abstractly philosophical—“preference” seems more personal, and it’s the whole idea of a living creature’s personal experience that’s at issue. 19 Of course, the most common sort of counterargument here would begin by objecting that “like best” is really just a metaphor, and a misleadingly anthropomorphic one at that. The counterarguer would posit that the lobster seeks to maintain a certain optimal ambient temperature out of nothing but unconscious instinct (with a similar explanation for the low-light affinities about to be mentioned in the main text). The thrust of such a counterargument will be that the lobster’s thrashings and clankings in the kettle express not unpreferred pain but involuntary reflexes, like your leg shooting out when the doctor hits your knee. Be advised that there are professional scientists, including many researchers who use animals in experiments, who hold to the view that nonhuman creatures have no real feelings at all, only “behaviors.” Be further advised that this view has a long history that goes all the way back to Descartes, although its modern support comes mostly from behaviorist psychology. To these what-look-like-pain-are-really-only-reflexes counterarguments, however, there happen to be all sorts of scientific and pro-animal-rights countercounterarguments. And then further attempted rebuttals and redirects, and so on. Suffice to say that both the scientific and the philosophical arguments on either side of the animal-suffering issue are involved, abstruse, technical, often informed by self-interest or ideology, and in the end so totally inconclusive that as a practical matter, in the kitchen or restaurant, it all still seems to come down to individual conscience, going with (no pun) your gut. 20 Meaning a lot less important, apparently, since the moral comparison here is not the value of one human’s life vs. the value of one animal’s life, but rather the value of one animal’s life vs. the value of one human’s taste for a particular kind of protein. Even the most diehard carniphile will acknowledge that it’s possible to live and eat well without consuming animals. PHOTOGRAPH BY CLARITA BERGER / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION keywords seafood, best of gourmet, david foster wallace, ingredients, travel 11 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_th... CHASE® Slate(SM) Card CreditCards.CHASE.com/… $0 Intro Balance Transfer Fee for 60 Days & No Annual Fee. Apply Now! 12 of 12 7/27/13 1:27 PM Animal Rights Author(s): R. G. Frey Source: Analysis, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Jun., 1977), pp. 186-189 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Committee Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3327349 Accessed: 06-02-2020 05:16 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press, The Analysis Committee are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Analysis This content downloaded from 128.195.69.187 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:16:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ANIMAL RIGHTS By R. G. FREY I THElargely question of whether animals possess rights' is once again topical, as a result of the recent surge of interest in animal welfare and in the moral pros and cons of eating animals and using them in scientific research.2 If animals do have rights, then the case for eating and experimenting upon them, especially when other alternatives are available, is going to have to be that much stronger; and those who engage in and support these practices are going to be increasingly beleaguered. Animal rights may not give vegetarians and animal liberationists all that they want, but the existence of such rights would unquestionably strengthen the cases of both camps. Arguments to show that animals do have rights, therefore, are at a premium. In what follows, I want to suggest that the most important such argument fails. II The argument in question consists in using the cases of babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled to force the inclusion of animals within the class of right-holders. Those who use the argument proceed this way: they first cite the many and various criteria by which philosophers and others have tried to show why human beings possess rights but animals do not, and then claim of each and every one of these criteria that it would exclude babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled as right-holders; since we all agree that babies and the severely mentallyenfeebled do have rights, each and every one of the criteria must be rejected as a criterion for the possession of rights. The form of the argument, then, is as follows: (i) Each and every criterion for the possession of rights that excludes animals from the class of right-holders also excludes babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled from the class of rightholders; (2) Babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled, however, do have rights and so fall within the class of right-holders; 1 I refer here and throughout this paper, and in this I align myself with all the current writing on the subject of animal rights, to moral rights. 2 See, for example, J. Feinberg, 'The Rights of Animals and Future Generations', in W. Blackstone (ed.), Philosophy and Environmental Crisis (Athens, Georgia, 1974); S. & R. Godlovitch, J. Harris (eds.), Animals, Men and Morals (London, 1971); A. Linzey, Animal Rights (London, 1976); T. Regan, 'The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. V, 1975, PP. 181-214; T. Regan, P. Singer (eds.), Animal Rights and Human Obligations (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1976); P. Singer, 'Animal Liberation', The New York Review of Books, vol. XX, no. 5, April 5, 1973, PP, 17-21; P. Singer, Animal Liberation (London, 1976). 186 This content downloaded from 128.195.69.187 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:16:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ANIMAL RIGHTS 187 (3) Therefore, each and every one criteria must be rejected as a criterio Obviously, this argument is essentially does not aim so much to establish d animals have rights as to establish t excluding criteria for the possession o exclude as well babies and the severely the implication of the negative thesis criterion for the possession of rights tha mentally-enfeebled within the class of animals within the class of right-holde as a criterion must be discarded, for o objectionable result: If we accord moral rights on the basis of newly born children, "low grade" ment and so on? Logically, accepting this c diminished, moral rights.' Instances of this argument abound, an rationality or of a language, the rec obligations, the possession of a cultur pation within societal and communa interests (where this connotes that som one cares or exhibits concern about S, to do something about and even to thin about S), etc., are all rejected as criteri I want to suggest that the present hinges upon premiss (z), that is, up and the severely mentally-enfeebled possession of rights is concerned. Prem and requires defence; but the best def specifically exclude animals from the c either premiss (z) cannot be defende animal-excluding criterion for the p babies and the severely mentally-en important argument for animal rights III Is it so very clear that babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled do have rights-do have rights, that is, without the addition of further arguments which themselves exclude animals as right-holders ? For example, consider again the rationality requirement: 1 A. Linzey, Animal Rights (London, 1976), p. 24. This content downloaded from 128.195.69.187 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:16:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 188 ANALYSIS Only Given beings a which suitably are restr severely mentally-enfee beings and so from the simply have no rights animals also are not rat Now there are three a babies and the severely holders and so to defen excludes Fido from this class. (i) One might try to include the baby by means of the potentiality argument: the baby is potentially rational. Of course, the baby is not at present rational, and if actual rationality is insisted upon, then the baby has no rights. On the other hand, the potentiality argument does separate the case of the baby from that of Fido, who is not conceded even potential rationality. (2) One might try to include the severely mentally-enfeebled by means of the similarity argument: in all other respects except rationality and perhaps certain mental accomplishments, the severely mentallyenfeebled betray strong similarities to other members of our species, and it would and does offend our species horribly to deprive such similar creatures of rights. If this argument is rejected, on the ground that rationality is the requirement for possessing rights and other similarities are beside the point, then the severely mentally-enfeebled do not have rights. On the other hand, the similarity argument does separate the severely mentally-enfeebled from Fido, who does not bear anything like (even) sufficient physical similarities to ourselves to warrant similar inclusion. Animal liberationists, of course, will also object to the similarity argument on the ground that it smacks strongly of speciesism. For it does enshrine, if not advocate, active discrimination against other species in favour of our own. (3) One might try to include both babies and the severely mentallyenfeebled by means of the religious argument: babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled possess immortal souls. If this argument is rejected, on the ground that, even if they possess immortal souls, beings must also possess rationality in order to have rights, or on the ground that there is no good evidence for the existence of such souls, then neither babies nor the severely mentally-enfeebled possess rights. On the other hand, the religious argument does separate both from Fido, who is not conceded an immortal soul by the argument's proponents. The upshot is this. Unless one of these three arguments is accepted, we have no basis upon which to differentiate the cases of babies and the This content downloaded from 128.195.69.187 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:16:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ANIMAL RIGHTS 189 severely mentally-enfeebled from that of anim arguments are rejected, and there are serious o follows on the requirement under consideratio mentally-enfeebled and animals are alike in In other words, the best defences of premiss ( that the premiss cannot sustain the weight put of these three arguments is accepted, so that mentally-enfeebled are held to fall within the we find that that argument itself specifically class of right-holders. In other words, prem every animal-excluding criterion for the poss babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled. For these reasons, then, I conclude that eith defended or else premiss (i) is simply false, s most important argument in behalf of animal University of Liverpool ? R. G. FREY 1977 1 I am grateful to the editor and to my colleagues H. M. Robinson and P. Helm for comments and suggestions. This content downloaded from 128.195.69.187 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:16:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Humanity of Animals and the Animality of Humans: A View from Biological Anthropology Inspired by J. M. Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello" Author(s): Agustin Fuentes Source: American Anthropologist, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), pp. 124-132 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3804738 Accessed: 05-01-2020 06:15 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms American Anthropological Association, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms AGUSTIN FUENTES The Humanity of Animals and the An Humans: A View from Biological Anth Inspired by J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello ABSTRACT In his novel Elizabeth Costello (2003), J. M. Coetzee's title character espouses philosophical perspectives on cruelty and the human condition in a series of fictionalized lectures. In particular, she takes on the question of human cruelty to animals. As novelist, Coetzee relies on lyrical statements about the nature of cruelty, analogies between the atrocities of fascism and factory farms, and ethical elitism to address these issues. In this article, I use anthropological data to investigate such constructed notions of "human cruelty" and "human nature." I end with a discussion of cross-cultural variation in animal use by humans and of thecurrentanimal rights movement. The goal of this article is to engage, anthropologically, perspectives on cruelty in human natures and our relations with other animals. [Keywords: biocultural, cruelty, human-animal relations, physiology] The comparison I have just drawn between myself and tures in 1997-98 and later reprinted in The Lives of Animals Kafka's ape might be taken as such a lighthearted remark meant to set you at ease, meant to say I am just an ordinary person, neither a god nor a beast. (1999). In the lectures-chapters, Coetzee takes the podium ?Elizabeth Costello (Coetzee 2003) SOhuman BEGINS lecture of cruelty A andfictionalized animal suffering. The sentence on places the title character of J. M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello (2003) in the philosophically liminal zone of the human being, neither fully tied to the earth as an animal or beast nor liberated and ephemeral as a deity. This placement reflects a central question about being human: Where the very real topic as the fictionalized novelist Costello to discuss the ethics and philosophies surrounding the rights of other animal and the nature of human behavior toward them. In addition to the reprint of those two chapters, a series of responses to them by a philosopher, a historian, a literature professor, and a primatologist were compiled in The Lives of Animals (Gutmann 1999). However, missing from the commentary on Coetzee's text (Gutmann 1999) is a discussion of what it means to be animal or human in a biological sense. theologians, biologists, and social scientists have variously In The Lives of Animals, even the primatologist Barbara Smuts (1999) uses a personal experiential discourse to claim a shared personhood rather than focusing on the physiological and biostructural homologies between herself and the focused on this Aristotelian trinity (the animal, the hu? baboons she studies. She argues for a shared humanity of man, and the deific) and attempted to understand the rela? tions among them. Because these relations have often been This perspective is reminiscent of Donna Haraway's Com- do we fit in the panoply of life? Novelists, philosophers, conceived hierarchically in Western thought?with God(s) having power over humans who, in turn, hold sway over animals?questions of appropriate use of such power inevitably arise: Does the hierarchical power relation between humans and animals, for example, exempt us from moral responsibility toward them? Is cruelty to other organisms an essential aspect of human nature? At the heart of Coeztee's novel is a pair of chapters originally delivered by Coetzee as his Princeton Tanner lee- animals (or at least a personhood), based on shared empathy. panion Species Manifesto (2003). Although Haraway does introduce a biocultural context by considering the integration of biological and cultural facets of the relationships, her ar? ticle is a description of two species (dogs and humans) sharing a conjoined history rather than an exploration of their shared biology. Arguing for chimpanzee rights, the prima? tologist Roger Fouts does emphasize the chimpanzee's evolutionary relationship with humans (Fouts and Mills 1997). However, he also relies on personal experiential discourse American Anthropologist, Vol. 108, Issue 1, pp. 124-132, ISSN 0002-7294, electronic ISSN 1548-1433. ? 2006 by the American Anthropol Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of Calif Press's Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Fuentes ? Humanity of Animals and Animality of Humans 125 rather than detailed discussions of biological homologies to make his case. In each case, these authors acknowledge that there is a shared biology between humans and other organisms but rely almost exclusively on empathy and per? sonal sensations of "closeness" or a single aspect of evolutionary unity to argue for a personhood for nonhumans. Is this the best mode of inquiry to understand the relation? ships between humans and other animals? Coetzee him? self raises the issue of what discourse best sheds light on such questions (philosophy vs. poetry, in his case). Here, I hope to demonstrate that a discourse that integrates aspects of mammalian biology with human evolutionary histo? ries and cultural perceptions is core to understanding these relationships. Marjorie Garber, also in The Lives of Animals, asks, "Is the comparison of human beings to animals venal? Patronizing? A mode of false consciousness? A blasphemy?" (1999:81). Is Costello succumbing to "the seduction of analogy" in comparing the slaughter of cattle to the holocaust? (1999). I ask, by contrast, can we equate humans with ani? mals (or animals with humans) in more than a metaphoric sense? There are, of course, actual similarities between hu? mans and other animals that are grounded in biological homology, and not just literary analogy or emotional attachment that can illuminate these issues.1 What do they imply about our actual and ethical relations with other an? imals? Can we, as Smuts suggests, open ourselves to seeing other animals as "animal persons'' (1999)? What can a sci? entific approach to this question?as opposed to a humanis- tic one?add to our perception of "animal personhood" and our understanding of how humans treat animals? What are the human-animal homologies that might help us open up a scientific discussion about animal "personhood"? And finally, is cruelty toward other life forms a basal part of humanity? BEING BATS AND THE PERSONHOOD OF ANIMALS ence of sharing the feeling with another creature, which is what Costello values. From an anthropological view, it is an indicator of human uniqueness that the bat cannot reciprocate. "Being" human implies using human language, symbolic and metaphorical discourse, and a complex and "ratcheted" culture, none of which have true homologues in other organisms (Doniger 1999; Tomasello 1999).2 To "be" the bat, we use our own experiences, perceptions, and cultural contexts: We can only "be" a bat anthropomorphically and psychologically. Thus, paradoxically, the very sympathetic imagination that allows us to engage in "bat- beingness" is what prevents us from ever truly knowing what it is to be a bat, because we have this trait but they lack it. Our sympathetic imagination does, however, allow us to extend the notion of "personhood" beyond our species and to use this expanded conception to extend rights to an? imals or to call for their humane treatment. This thinking seems to be the basis of Smuts's call to understand animals as persons. In arguing for the use of the term person to refer to other animals, Smuts defmes it as "any animal, human or nonhuman, that has the capacity to participate in personal relationships, with one another, with humans, or both" (Smuts 1999:108). But this definition seems to beg the following question: What is a personal relationship? I suggest a notion of "shared personhood" can be derived from some aspects of human-animal biology and evolutionary history. For example, humans and other animals do share the capability to exhibit complex social interactions and patterns of social tradition (Galef 1992; McGrew 1998; Tomasello 1999). Evidence suggests that primates and other mammals (and some birds) are capable of complex cognitive mapping of their physical and social environ? ment (Pepperberg 1987; Tomasello 1999). They are able to know "what" is "where" in their environments and who (by individual) is in their social groups or social range and who is not. They are able to recognize familiar individuals in their own species (and sometimes in other species) and The character Costello sees humane treatment of?indeed, they exhibit variable social relationships with those individ? uals. Many gregarious social mammals are able to engage in respect for?animals arising from a sympathetic imagi? vertical (dominance-power) and horizontal (affiliation) re? nation: thinking ourselves "into the being of another" lationships amongst group members.3 Some can even pre(Coetzee 2003:80). Costello challenges the philosopher dict the behavior of conspecifics (and sometimes individu? Thomas NageTs contention that although we imagine what from other species) via observable and detectable cues it would be like to be a bat, we can never truly "be" aals bat, just as a bat can never know what it is to be human. We lack and the accumulation of life experiences. the "mind" of the bat as it lacks ours. Costello retorts that The appearance of social traditions (behaviors that are we both have souls, have "being," and that we can "thinkpassed via social facilitation rather than acquired by direct ourselves into the being of another. There are no boundsgenetic or physiological development) is well documented to our sympathetic imagination" (Coetzee 2003:80). Per? in nonhuman primates and is referred to by some as cul? haps both are true. As mammals we can "be" the bat at the ture (McGrew 1998; Whiten et al. 1999). These patterns of level of shared homologous structures and, thus, to an ex? behavior are said to occur in some other animals as well tent, shared physical experiences. Bats and humans do share (Galef 1992). Such patterns of social tradition are examsubstantial parts of their physical selves. We can also "think ples of both homology and analogy. A case-by-case comourselves into the bat" per Costello because there are few? parison is needed to understand their relationships with if any?bounds to human imagination (see Gibson 2005 for human behavior, but interindividual relationships involved a review of neural plasticity). But imagining what it would in the transmission of social traditions indicate a commonfeel like to be a bat is not the same as the actual experi- ality with human culture.4 This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 126 American Anthropologist ? Vol. 108, No. 1 ? March 2006 The physiology of certain behavioral responses in mammals supports this argument for homologous personhood: Personhood, then, is recognition of a shared interpretation of and response to interactions with environmental and so? cial stimuli caused by common physiological and related The anatomy of fear includes the dilation of pupils, dilation of bronchioles in the lungs, a spike in blood pressure and heart rate, breakdown of glycogen in the liver, flooding of the bloodstream with adrenalin, contraction of the spleen, preparation to void the bladder and colon, constriction of the capillaries in the stomach and gastrointestinal tract, and the pilo-erection of hair. [Hart and Sussman 2005:78] This stress response that we call "fear" is a common pattern in all mammals: A stressor inhibits the parasympathetic nervous system through primitive brain struc? tures including the amygdala (Hart and Sussman 2005; Sapolsky 2004, 2005).5 This inhibition extends to the digestive, growth, and reproductive hormones; meanwhile, the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated initiating the release of a cascade of glucocortocoids and catecholamine hormones (summarized in Sapolsky 1995, 2004, 2005). The same basic physiological reaction occurs in a zebra when biological systems. IS CRUELTY TOWARD OTHER LIFE FORMS AND EACH OTHER A BASAL PART OF HUMANITY? When organisms that are able to share an interpersonal relationship inflict harm on each other, it can be under? stood as "cruelty." Cruelty must be viewed as distinct from general responses to motion or hunger such as in a generalized predator-prey relationship between a frog and a fly or a lion and a zebra. The character Elizabeth Costello be- lieves that much of the food eaten every day in the United States is the product of cruelty; indeed, writers from Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle in 1906 (1981), to Eric Schlosser (2001) have discussed the cruelty to both humans and nonhuman animals in the meatpacking and processing plants across the United States. Is this pattern of cruelty part and parcel of our humanity? Discussing Jonathan Swift's being attacked by a lion, a baboon when surprised by a leopard, and a human when involved in a car accident. Chronic Gulliver's Travels with its elegant, rational, horselike vege- stressors elicit some of the same physiological responses. Although adaptive in an acute stress situation, these re? sponses can be quite deleterious if maintained over long Yahoos, Costello says Swift's fable suggests that "embracing the status of man has entailed slaughtering and enslaving a race of divine or else divinely created beings and bringing down on ourselves a curse thereby" (Coetzee 2003:103). Such descriptions pervade Western thinking about human- periods of time (Sapolsky 1995, 2004, 2005). Studies of both physical and psychosocial stress show that humans are extremely prone to chronic stressors (see Sapolsky 2004, 2005 for review); furthermore, a variety of health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, can arise as a direct result. Pri- tarian Houyhnhnms and humanlike, beastly, carnivorous animal interactions. Whether in the thinking of Saint Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, Niccolo Machiavelli or Thomas Hobbes, Charles Darwin or E. O. Wilson, prominent cruelty and competition are frequently seen at mates and rodents show the same pattern of response and the concomitant increase in cardiac disease and related ailthe core of being human (Cartmill 1993; Darwin 1871; MacKinnon and Fuentes 2005; Sussman 1999; Wilson ments (Sapolsky 2004, 2005).6 However, individuals?both 1975). In more recent times, these traits have been assumed humans and other animals?vary in the extent to which they are affected by chronic stress under similar situations. even to drive human evolutionary success (Fuentes 2004; This variation appears tied to elements of an individual an? Sussman 1999). Writers consistently describe a basal state of "animality" that we as humans can either rise above in imal 's temperament and personality style (Sapolsky 2005). Reproductive systems and behavior long thought to be our good works or sink into in our cruelty. But is this the case? Is cruelty toward other life forms and each other a distinct in humans also reflect a variety of homologous components. Social sex detached from reproductive posbasal part of humanity? Several supplementary questions sibility, physiological patterns in physical attraction, andarise from this basic one: Does biological distance from an? other organism make it easier for humans to treat it cruelly? hormonally facilitated behavioral bonding are all aspects Is it cruelty if we do not identity with the harmed creature's of sexual behavior found across various groups of mam? mals including humans (Carter 2003; Dixson 1998; Zuksensations? Is it crueler to harm those with whom we do 2002). Specific patterns of physiological and behavioral in? identity?7 teractions between caretakers (mothers or otherwise) and It is clear that other organisms with physiologies similar to ours can experience what we would recognize as fear and infants resulting in complex webs of interpersonal social and physical relationships are documented across primates pain. The fact that we share the sensation of fear and a po- and some other mammals (McKenna et al. 1993). Com- tentially personal relationship with many other animals? bined, the various biological systems I have just described especially animals that we regularly use in ways that do facilitate a pattern of interactions that I argue can be de?cause them harm and distress?has pronounced implicascribed as participation in personal relationships between tions for assessing human cruelty. If we know these organ? "persons"?whether animal or human. In other words, isms I suffer at our hands, why do we continue to perform these behaviors? suggest a broad definition of personhood, in which the commonality between humans and some other animals arises If cruelty is willfully or knowingly causing pain or dis? from similar physiologies and shared sensory modalities. tress to others, it is by definition interactive (involving This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Fuentes ? Humanity of Animals and Animality of Humans 127 the interactions of at least one human and one or more Aggression is neither simply defined nor easily quantified (MacKinnon and Fuentes 2005). In addition, recent survey humans or other animals) and contextual (happening in research indicates that primates engage in relatively little some behavioral situational context). Although the poten? tial to act cruelty is a human universal, the actual exhibition aggressive behavior overall. This suggests that the majorof cruelty to ourselves or other animals varies in its form ity of primates' energetic output is in social interactions that are not competitively aggressive in content or context or function and has been explained in significantly differ? (Sussman and Garber 2004). If this is the case, then hyent ways: (1) as a manifestation of human bestiality, (2) as potheses that rely on a primatewide, apewide, or even a the result of adaptation in the human evolutionary past, or human-and-ape proclivity for aggression (and its concomi(3) as understandable only through cultural contextualizatant cruelty) are both overly simplistic and without a strong tion. I propose that cruelty is best understood by exploring the variable natures of being human. grounding in available data (Fuentes 2004; MacKinnon and Fuentes 2005; Sussman and Garber 2004). So when hu? mans exhibit extreme aggression, especially in the context IS CRUELTY AN ASPECT OF HUMAN NATURES? of cruelty to ourselves and other species, it is unlikely that this behavior is the result of a primate or apewide adaptive Although there are general patterns in human behavior and universal elements of human biology, there are also pattern. vari? Among able human behavioral patterns or natures. Variations on the most salient advances in evolutionary biol? andof ecology is the role of niche construction. It is bea theme may be the best way of presenting the ogy core being human, because behavioral variation and multilevel coming increasingly evident that organisms not only have an impact social complexity is our species's hallmark (Erlich 2002;on their immediate environments but also, in McKinnon and Silverman 2005; Potts 2004). part, shape the selection pressures that they face (Laland et al. 2001; Odling-Smee et al. 2003). Humans exhibit more If we do not have a single general "nature" as humans dramatic patterns of niche construction than other organ? but, nevertheless, cruelty occurs across the human species, isms in the extent of their overall environmental impact is it then a part of our natures? Did engaging in cruelty to? and evo? broad scope of the subsequent changing selective pres? ward humans and other animals provide some specific lutionary benefit such that as a behavior it would, over sures time, (Odling-Smee et al. 2003). There is widespread evidence that the human niche is characterized by social coorbecome a significant component of our adaptive toolkit? and cooperation and that this frequently involves For example, a major aspect of human cruelty is thedination exhibi? the manipulation of structural and biotic aspects of the ention of aggression toward other humans or animals. Are pat? vironment (Fuentes 2004; Knauft 1994; Odling-Smee et al. terns of human aggression derived from an innate cruelty? 2003; that Richerson and Boyd 1998; Watanabe and Smuts 2004; Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson (1996) propose Wilson and Sober 1994). Human cooperative social interac? humans (and our close primate relatives, the apes) are chartions have acterized by an inherent "demonism" such that the con- affected the environments humans inhabited, altering the very structure and pressures within those en? sistent use of aggression can be an evolutionary beneficial vironments and, in turn, shaping the selection pressures strategy. Over time, this would have resulted in the frequent humans and the other animals sharing the environuse of aggression in cruel acts toward competingon human males and females and toward other animals in the context ment. It is likely that what allowed us to successfully construct our niche and evolve with it were the following: (1) of hunting, resulting in a universality of cruelty in human beings (Wrangham and Peterson 1996; see also Washburn the type.and complexity of cooperation, on a level beyond that found in other primates and the other hominins, and and Lancaster 1968).8 This fits well with long-held theo? (2) rapid behavioral plasticity and innovation, both of retical propositions of such philosophers as Hobbes and which were facilitated by cooperation and social coordinaHerbert Spencer, as well as the hunting-aggression philoso- phies of the physical anthropologists Raymond Dart tion and (see also Odling-Smee et al. 2003; Richerson and Boyd 1998; Sussman and Chapman 2004; Watanabe and Smuts Sherwood Washburn. Their combined premise is that com? 2004). petition amongst individual humans and aggression asso? ciated with successful hunting drives the evolution of our So, although humans have a long-term vested interest in cooperative and affiliative interactions in addition to behavioral patterns such that cruelty emerges as a salient factor in being human (Cartmill 1993; Sussman 1999). the ubiquitous aspects of competition that characterize liv? ing organisms, we are still left with the problem that mod? The ability to exhibit aggression successfully is part ern humans frequently engage in behaviors that willfully or of our evolutionary heritage. Functions such as protection knowingly cause pain or distress to others, possibly even as of one's own life and those of offspring and group mem? a component of our adaptive strategies of niche construc? bers, access to or protection of territory, access to mates and food, and the establishment of dominance relation? tion. In fact, the scale of suffering that we cause to other or? ships are important venues for aggression in the social liv- ganisms (and to ourselves) is unparalleled in other animals. ing pattern that characterizes primates. However, defining Whether killing and processing of millions of chickens or a universal aggression in the primates can be elusive, be? cows in factory farms, or the wide-scale slaughter of fellow cause diverse types of aggression can achieve similar ends. humans in wars and civil conflicts throughout the globe, This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 128 American Anthropologist ? Vol. 108, No. 1 ? March 2006 we as a species engage daily in acts of cruelty at a level not possible in previous times. HOW SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND HUMAN CRUELTY TO OTHER ANIMALS? vocalizations (Cormier 2002, 2003). This extreme exampl of integration between humans and their pets illustrate how one human society can include other animals as partners in the society (personhood) and at the same time consume them. Do the Guaja consider this cruel? The anthro? pological record is replete with a diverse array of "pet keep Just as we humans have no single nature, we alsoing" havepatterns that defy simple categorization as "causin pain no one single way of relating to other animals. There and is, distress" (cruelty) to animals. Hunting seen through the anthropological lens also thus, nothing ubiquitously cruel or clearly consistent in our paints a diverse picture of human relations to other an patterns of exploitation, use, and cohabitation with other imals. In the Eurocentric world, hunting has become species. Ethnographic data present a complicated and con- textualized view of human-animal relationships that focus deniesfor many seeking to identify loci of human cruelty toward simple description, classification, or label (Fukuda 1997; other animals and prevent it (Fukuda 1997; Ket Mullin 1999; Rothfels 2002; Vialles 1994). Rather than2002; see- Marvin 2002; Mullin 1999; Noske 1997). Some ar? gue for distinctions between subsistence hunting to satisf ing all contemporary humans as Costello's "participants in nutritional requirements and "sport" hunting for pleasure a crime of stupefying proportions against animals" (Coetzee or social status, and the classification of animals as symbo 2003:114), anthropologists have been able to demonstrate versus that humans do not engage in a cohesive pattern of cru?sustenance (Mullin 1999; Shanklin 1985). In eithe case, elty toward other animals.9 Instead, our relationships runthe taking of animals during a hunt can be considere an act of inflicting pain and distress (as the go the gamut from consumption to cohabitation and fromintentional pet of the hunt is generally to trap and kill the quarry). How keeping to hunting and blood sports. ever, again the anthropological lens reveals a diverse array "Pet keeping" is common across many societies, but the of their perspectives from the people doing the hunting and thei patterns and perspectives in which humans engage perceptions of its cruelty. "pets" vary cross-culturally. In many Western societies, pets Molly Mullin (1999) reviews a body of anthropological are seen alternately as consumer goods ("my pet"), as means assessments of hunters and hunting to demonstrate a com of constructing identities (a pit bull owner vs. a toy poo- plexity in hunting patterns and context that is not explic dle owner), or as companions and as members of a family; in purely economic or nutritional terms. Instead, human pets are made the focus of nurturing and caretakingble behav? perceptions of what they do while hunting vary accord ior and sometimes given specific funerary rites on death to the cultural contexts. According to R. A. Brightma (Desmond 2002; Mullin 1999). In addition, there is ing usually (1993), a distinction made in Western societies between "pet" an?an individual's interpretations of his actions ma imals, "consumption" animals, and "wild" animals."preclude How? stable representations of causality or sociality in ever, these labels, which influence the treatment of the an? hunter-prey relations" (as quoted in Mullin 1999:209).1 Garry imals so designated, are not always assigned to the sameMarvin (2002) emphasizes this perspective in h overview species across cultures or static over time (Isenberg 2002; of fox hunting in England with explicit analyses the roles Kete 2002; Mullin 1999). The pattern of pet keeping and in- and contextualized meanings for human and an? imal participants. Although it is true that during hunting clusion within the family structure extends beyond Western humans do cause pain and distress to their prey, the mean societies as well (Cormier 2003; Descola 1994). For example, and intent in the human endeavor varies across tim Loretta Cormier's (2003) work on the Guaja foragers ing of the and in space, precluding a simple assessment of hunting Amazon illustrates the complexity involved in including one's social realm animals that one also eats. even "sport" hunting?as ubiquitously cruel in the gaz the human participants (see also Cartmill 1993; Ingo The Guaja, a Tupi-Guarani speaking group, display of a re1994). markable and intense inclusion of nonhuman primates of Another area of human-animal interactions wherein many species into their social fabric. Young monkeys whose cruelty is seen as rampant is the so-called "blood sports." parents are killed for food will be brought to the village In general, these are contexts in which humans use (and and "adopted." Women will bathe, breastfeed, and "wear" generally kill or substantially harm) animals not specifically (carry) the monkeys (Cormier 2002, 2003). The Guaja have for (of consumption but, rather, for social enjoyment, finana complex cosmology that involves ritual cannibalism cial and gain, status acquisition, or potential stress relief (Kete howler monkeys). Although this pattern of carrying 2002; Mullin 1999). Such sports include bull fighting, bull raising monkeys has a considerable cost in terms of en? baiting, ergy, movement, and foodstuffs, the returns go beyond the rodeos, cock fighting, and cock throwing. In the majority purely social. Young girls (and, to a lesser extent, boys) fre- of these instances, the animals involved are killed or but maimed as a result of the "sport." Most anthropological quently practice mothering not only with their siblings analyses also with infant monkeys, with some girls as young as five of these "sports" have focused on the participating humans' utilization of the blood sport and the animals years old being the primary caretakers of infant monkeys. involved as "mirrors" or representatives of themselves and Boys gain important hunting experience through exposure their cultural discourse or dissonance (Dundes 1994; Mullin to monkey movement and behavioral patterns, including This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Fuentes ? Humanity of Animals and Animality of Humans 129 1999; Pink 1997). Although there is unarguably pain and distress caused to the animal participants in these games, there is debate over the contingent and contested mean? ings that these practices have for the human participants (Mullin 1999). Do the human participants see these behaviors as "cruel"? The animals in these "sports" experience pain and suffering. However, the human participants may see themselves engaged in socially positive behavior, with? by human conceptualizations and agreements and are not equally or uniformly distributed across human cultures. Substantial historical and anthropological analyses sug? gest that the animal rights movement is itself an important arena for examining the complex and multiple perspectives that humans have in regards to their relations with other an? imals and with themselves (Kete 2002; Mullin 1999; Stibbe 2005). The philosopher Peter Singer, well-known pioneer in the U.S. animal rights movement and one of Coetzee's in- out cruel intent. The bullfighter may employ a sympathetic imagination to identity with the personhood of the bull at terlocuters in The Lives of Animals (1999), argues for a radical the same time he causes him to suffer. egalitarianism between humans and animals. Singer opines How are we to explain our use of animals in a di- that the Jeffersonian principle of equality?the taking in verse array of forms, some cruel some not? Coetzee hasof the interests of the being, whatever those interests must Costello provide an appropriate anthropological answer:be?should apply to all organisms whether human or non"We are managers of ecology" (2003:99). This does not im- human (Singer 1985, 1990). ply a utilitarian-creationist perspective that other life on Singer explicitly ties the quest for animals' rights to the this planet was put here for humans to exploit, or a Spense-Enlightenment project of human rights (Kete 2002). In a re? view of the history of animal rights movements, Kathleen rian "might makes right" ideal implying that because we can exploit other life we should. Rather, I suggest that theKete has argued, by contrast, that in a large sense the mod? viewing of the complex array of relationships between hu?ern animal welfare movement emerged in the context of mans and other animals is enlightened by an understandingcomplex socioeconomic and political ecologies of Western of niche construction as a human adaptive pattern. That is,Europe in the 1800s where "the kindness to animals came part of our evolutionary success is tied to manipulation of to stand high in the index of civilization. It formed a part of the environment and the organisms in it, with a greater de-the project of civilization. The barbarian others?the urban gree of impact than other animals. As technology ratchets working classes, the continental peasants, southern Euroup and populations increase in size, our patterns of inter? peans, Irish Catholics, Russians, Asians, and Turks?were actions with other animals, especially in the context of ex-defined in part by their brutality to beasts" (Kete 2002:26). ploitation, increase in scale. However, as evident from this In examining dog-human relationships and Western per? brief review, different cultures and contexts produce diverse spectives on dogs, Donna Haraway demonstrates that these representations of relationships between humans and ani? relationships are products of cultural histories and biolog? mals. We share a personhood with some animals, but what ical manipulation-coevolution between the species pro? ducing a cultural context of "significant otherness" be? that means in a human evolutionary and cultural context tween them (Haraway 2003). These examples support the varies across place, time, and technology. contention that our perceptions of other animals are inextricably intertwined with our cultural contexts and inter"BUT ARE THEY COETZEE'S ARGUMENTS?" pretations of biological histories. There is not a biologically path of interaction between humans and ani? I have chosen in this article to highlight two aspectsdetermined that mals. Rather, a complex set of biological and cultural con? I see as emerging frorh Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello regardtexts and histories intertwine to produce people's visions of ing the humanity of animals and the animality of humans. these relationships and what they might imply about hu? Both (1) the issues of animal personhood and (2) the is? mans' sues of human cruelty are complex questions, the answers and animals' rights. approaches introduce a biological and to which can be in part informed through biological Anthropological an? ethnographic complexity into the philosophical argument thropology. But Coetzee also takes up the question of an? imal rights. What do anthropologists have to add posited to thisby the fictional Costello, Singer, and others. The indiscussion? corporation of evolutionary perspectives, including niche construction and adaptation, and the ethnographic exam? Barbara Noske (1993, 1997) criticizes anthropologists ples for not taking the animals' perspectives in our approaches to of pet keeping, hunting and other relationships be? tween humans and animals defy unilateral moralizing per? understanding human-animal relationships and for a gen? spectives. The current morality-equality argument takes eral ignoring of animal welfare in such relationships. Molly place largely amongst Western elites wherein the use and Mullin (1999) suggests that animal rights activists are likely interaction with animals is frequently in a context of luxto find the relevant anthropological and historical stud? ies of human-animal relationships (such as those reviewed ury. Human cultures rarely employ the simple dualism of and there is not a uniform or ubiquitous here) "at least partly unsatisfying" (Mullin 1999:217).human-animal But cross-cultural concept of "cruelty" toward animals. In fact, rights (or just claims, or titles, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral) are human interpretations of the roles and values one might argue that there is no uniform or ubiquitous cross cultural concept of "cruelty" toward humans either. that we and other organisms have within our cultures. An? The movement toward globally sanctioned human rights imal rights (and human rights), by definition, are granted This content downloaded from 128.195.69.26 on Sun, 05 Jan 2020 06:15:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 130 American Anthropologist ? Vol. 108, No. 1 ? March 2006 may be a necessary prequel to serious discussions and implementations of animal rights.11 Aspects of modern human demography and technol? for relating to other animals. Part of being human invol niche construction and a dramatic and intimate engage ment with and alteration of our environment. However, as tions as factory farms, biomedical testing facilities, drag-net fishing, and sport hunting are contexts in which modern humans exploit and engage their surroundings. These tech- "managers of ecology" (to use Costello's phrasing), we also have an important responsibility. Given our history of s cess as a species based on modification of the environmen we are tasked with the consequences that come with this e deavor. We are in a time of rapidly changing demograph and technological contexts, and we need to be all the mor nological contexts for multilevel environmental impact and their concomitant alterations of selective pressures on our? selves and other organisms were not available in the recent one another and on other animals. It is my hope that pub lic decisions and discourse on these issues will begin to dr past. These facets are not delimited by, or directly emergent from, any specific underlying cruelty but instead may more substantially from anthropological approaches, in a dition to literary and philosophical influences. ogy may facilitate the appearance of novel or increasingly violent venues for inflicting pain and distress on other or? ganisms (and each other). Such relatively modern innova- be one of the many expressions of our habit for extreme ecological management through extensive niche construction. We are not inherently cruel, but we do have the tools and capabilities to be extremely cruel (Erlich 2002). This distinction is important as it places the responsibility for human behavior in human hands. It also forces the recog? nition that the patterns and interpretation of our relation? ship with other animals changes over time and place. To best understand those changes, we must employ a diverse anthropological toolkit. CONCLUSION conscious of the fact that our actions have an impact Agustin Fuentes Department of Anthropology, Universit of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 NOTES Acknowledgments. I wish to thank Devi Snively and my former st dents Nicholas Malone, James Loudon, Charles Spano, and Sar Beckler for many years of discussion on this topic. I am grateful Fran Mascia-Lees for inviting me to participate in this collecti of articles, and I thank Fran Mascia-Lees, Patricia Sharpe, Mayu Shimose, Nicholas Malone, and two anonymous AA reviewers f extensive commentary and suggestions on drafts of this article. I want to say at the outset that that was not how my 1. A simple example of biological homology would be the ar remark?the remark that I felt like Red Peter (Kafka's bones of a human and a bat (similar because of their shared mam ape)?was intended. I did not intend it ironically. malian It ancestry); an example of biological analogy would be t meant what it says. [Coetzee 2003:62] wings of a bat and a butterfly (similar because of their functio flight). 2. Tomasello (1999) reviews the "ratcheting" concept in culture as a mechanism for distinguishing human culture from cultural pat? the beginning of this article. She means that when she states terns in other organisms. This concept suggests that humans are distinct in their ability to pool cognitive resources contemporanethat she feels like the ape, she truly feels like the ape. I agree ously and to build on each other's cognitive inventions over time, and often also feel like an ape. The first portion of this arti? patterns not yet effectively documented in any other organisms. Here Coetzee's Costello clarifi...
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