What is an Animal?

An Understanding of Animals as Persons within the Animist Ontology

The category of animal is, at its heart, a source of ambivalence: animals are considered radically different from humans, and yet we also see ourselves as animals. The anthropological discipline has traditionally distinguished animals from the human, cultural realm, as its stated purpose is the study of humans (Nadasdy, 2007). However, an examination of the animist ontologies held by indigenous hunting groups challenges this theoretical boundary to offer new ways of thinking about what an animal is. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro describes animism as “an ontology which postulates the social character of relations between humans and non-humans: the space between nature and society is itself social” (1998 cited by Costa & Fausto, 2010: 94). Animals can be argued to be persons in the animist ontology due to their position as agentive social actors within an entangled web of life.

Traditional Euro-American ontological assumptions and anthropological approaches to animals have worked together to construct a human-animal divide, which views animals as non-persons. This distinction has been central in constructing human identity and has a long history in Western thought. Ancient thinkers agreed, to varying degrees, that animals had no consciousness and were simply a resource to be used by humans: Aristotle viewed humans as separate from animals on the basis of their rationality and ability to think and reason; René Descartes argued that animals have no consciousness and are simply ‘animated machines’; and Thomas Acquinas viewed animals as purely instinctual and without sentience. These views were influenced by the Christian teaching that humans were superior to animals and that God had created animals for the use of human beings. Consequently, animals have been categorically identified and deemed fundamentally different and inferior to humans, placed in the realm of nature while humans are situated in the realm of culture. These ideas have influenced traditional anthropological approaches to animals. Functionalist and symbolic approaches do not view animals as social actors or consider them in their own right, instead considering them only in terms of their practical and instrumental value to humans - "one group of anthropologists explore[s] the ways in which animals are good to eat and another group explore[s] the ways in which they are good to think or imagine" (Shanklin, 1985: 379). However, this understanding of animals is far from universal, and should be questioned. Animist ontologies offer an alternative view, challenging dominant Western understandings by instead considering animals as persons due to their status as social actors in an intrinsically social world.

Animist ontologies define animals as persons by recognising them as social actors. Within the animist ontology the world is an ever-evolving meshwork in which organisms are not seen as self-contained units but instead as “ever ramifying web[s] of lines of growth” which become interwoven with one another (Ingold, 2006: 13). All organisms are wrapped up in a constant entangled becoming with one another; they are embroiled in social relationships and can hence be seen as social actors. In her study of the Melanesian ‘dividual’, Marilyn Strathern (1988: 13) suggests that a person is made through social relationships, “constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationships that produce them”. The animist ontology therefore implies that, by virtue of social entanglements, the realm of culture is not restricted to humans and persons can take multiple forms other than humans. This is reflected in the attribution of an identical interiority to nonhumans and humans in animism. The fact that animals differ “not through their souls … but through their bodies” justifies their personhood, endowing them with intersubjectivity, the ability to communicate and other cultural attributes (Descola, et al., 2013: 129). The status of animals as persons is made clear in ethnographies of indigenous groups, where animals are agentive, social beings who have communicative relations with humans.

Tim Ingold (2006) perceives each life as analogous to a rhizome, constituted within a meshwork (Photo by Camille Brodard on Unsplash)

Ethnographies of animistic indigenous hunting groups provide evidence that animals are persons by demonstrating that they are social actors capable of reciprocal and communicative relations. Paul Nadasdy (2007: 29) discusses how Northern hunting peoples view animals as “other-than-human people” because they engage in long-term reciprocal exchange relations with humans in hunting. Animals are seen as gifting themselves to hunters, and hunters repay this debt by performing ritual practices, such as instructions against speaking ill about animals (Nadasdy, 2007). These actions of reciprocity are social and can therefore only take place between persons, serving to bind “persons to one another through the creation and maintenance of social relations” (Nadasdy, 2007: 29). Therefore, as “social beings who are active and conscious participants in the exchange process”, animals are understood to be people (Nadasdy, 2007: 29). Furthermore, in his ethnography on the Upper Amazonian Runa, Eduardo Kohn discusses how animals are persons by virtue of their semiotic capacity. The Runa understand all beings as engaging with the world as selves who have a point of view, particular disposition and ambitions (Kohn, 2007). As such, nonhumans are capable of representation in “basic nonsymbolic sign processes” which are embodied and inherent (Kohn, 2007: 5). This understanding of semiosis as being intrinsic to all life suggests “a continuity … between human and nonhuman modes of representation” (Kohn, 2007: 6). The essential ability of animals to communicate both with one another and with other species contributes to the belief that animals are capable of thought and should be considered persons. These indigenous understandings of personhood and animals have important implications for the way that we think about and approach nonhuman subjects in anthropology.

Tim Ingold (1980) describes how the Skolt Lapps in Finnish Lapland see reindeer as sacrificing themselves to the hunter - they are understood to be acting with intent and are recognised as persons (Photo by Robert Kalinagil on Unsplash).

If we allow ourselves to seriously consider the animist understanding of animals as persons, we must decentre the human and make space for the nonhuman within anthropology by using intra-species mindfulness. It is only appropriate that, if anthropology is the study of persons and social relationships, it must include animals and consider them sentient and intelligent social actors in their own right. Kohn makes the proposal for an “anthropology of life”, which expands “the reach of ethnography beyond the boundaries of the human” by considering the consequences of our perpetual entanglement with other entities (2007: 3). Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut (2014) demonstrate how this can be achieved practically through their use of intra-species mindfulness in their ethnography on urban bees. They define intra-species mindfulness as a “practice of speculation about non-human species that … [attempts] at getting at, and with, another species in order to move outside of our human selves” (Moore & Kosut, 2014: 520). Though they recognised the impossibility of experiencing the phenomenal world specific to the bee (the bee umwelt), they argued that they could still access “the ontology of bees” through an embodied ‘being with’ the bee (ibid.: 536). This embodied engagement allowed them to develop “new modes of … attention and awareness” which gave them a sense that their “‘native’ humanness [was] decentered” - an understanding that they were “co-constituted with bees” and a newfound focus on the suffering of bees (ibid.: 520-536). As such, I suggest that intra-species mindfulness can be used as an ethical method to move anthropology away from the construction of rigid boundaries between the human and animal and towards an understanding of species as entangled and relationships enmeshed (ibid.).

To conclude, in animist ontologies an animal is defined as a person due to the nature of their interiority and sociality, challenging traditional Western views of animals as non-persons. An animist ontology understands all beings as entangled in a continual and reciprocal process of becoming with other organisms, and therefore classifies animals as persons; social actors who exist in the realm of culture alongside humans. This is illustrated in Nadasdy and Kohn’s ethnographies of indigenous hunting peoples, where animals are cognisant participants in exchange relations and selves with the capacity for semiotic communication. This prompts a reconsideration of the place of the animal in anthropology, shifting ethnography towards an intra-species mindfulness that enlightens us to the entangled nature of being. By seriously considering animals as persons we are able to challenge the divides between the human and animal, as well as nature and culture. The connection “to a broader world of life” changes what it means to be both human and animal and prompts us to be more mindful of the ways in which ideas of difference shape the treatment of different entities (Kohn, 2007: 5).

Works Cited

Costa, L. & Fausto, C., 2010. The Return of the Animists: Recent Studies of Amazonian Ontologies. Religion and Society , 1(1), pp. 89-109.

Descola, P., LLoyd, J. & Sahlins, M., 2013. Animism Restored . In: Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago, Illinois U.S. ; London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 129-143.

Ingold, T., 2006. Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos, 71(1), pp. 9-20.

Kohn, E., 2007. How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement. American Ethnologist, 34(1), pp. 3-24.

Moore, L. J. & Kosut, M., 2014. Among the colony: Ethnographic fieldwork, urban bees and intra-species mindfulness. Ethnography, 15(4), pp. 516-539.

Nadasdy, P., 2007. The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human-Animal Sociality. American Ethnologist, 34(1), pp. 25-43.

Shanklin, E., 1985. Sustenance and Symbol: Anthropological Studies of Domesticated Animals. Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 14, pp. 375-403.

Strathern, M., 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley, Calif. ; London: University of California Press.