In this paper I take up the call to expand the boundaries of social and physical landscapes in order to recognise the creative agencies of human and non‐human actors. In doing so, I wish to draw ...attention to the ways in which relations between both individuals and collectives combine to shape multi‐dimensional sociality in particular places. The place in question is a crocodile farm in tropical Australia. It is a curious place in that it was fostered by modes of objectification which serve to commoditise and conserve crocodiles at a species level with little attention to individuality. However, the particularity of crocodiles at the farming level compels their human handlers to make concessions to their demands. Crocodiles, by their refusals, attachments and individualities, elicit attention to their needs, which translates into practices and structures that are often at odds with profitability. In this way it is as much social processes as it is practicalities of producing skins which affect the farmed landscape and the beings it produces, creating a nexus of multispecies place‐making where individuals matter.
This paper expands the bounds of sociality to include crocodiles as agents of placemaking within a niche construction framework. In a farming context the particularity of crocodiles makes for practices and structures that not only shape but are shaped by their relations with humans.
Biologists studying large carnivores in wild places usually do so from a distance, using telemetry and noninvasive methods of data collection. So what happens when an anthropologist studies a clan of ...spotted hyenas, Africa’s second-largest carnivores, up close—and in a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants? In Among the Bone Eaters , Marcus Baynes-Rock takes us to the ancient city of Harar in Ethiopia, where the gey waraba (hyenas of the city) are welcome in the streets and appreciated by the locals for the protection they provide from harmful spirits and dangerous “mountain” hyenas. They’ve even become a local tourist attraction.
At the start of his research in Harar, Baynes-Rock contended with difficult conditions, stone-throwing children, intransigent bureaucracy, and wary hyena subjects intent on avoiding people. After months of frustration, three young hyenas drew him into the hidden world of the Sofi clan. He discovered the elements of a hyena’s life, from the delectability of dead livestock and the nuisance of dogs to the unbounded thrill of hyena chase-play under the light of a full moon. Baynes-Rock’s personal relations with the hyenas from the Sofi clan expand the conceptual boundaries of human-animal relations. This is multispecies ethnography that reveals its messy, intersubjective, dangerously transformative potential.
Biologists studying large carnivores in wild places usually do
so from a distance, using telemetry and noninvasive methods of data
collection. So what happens when an anthropologist studies a clan
of ...spotted hyenas, Africa's second-largest carnivores, up close-and
in a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants? In Among the Bone
Eaters , Marcus Baynes-Rock takes us to the ancient city of
Harar in Ethiopia, where the gey waraba (hyenas of the
city) are welcome in the streets and appreciated by the locals for
the protection they provide from harmful spirits and dangerous
"mountain" hyenas. They've even become a local tourist
attraction.
At the start of his research in Harar, Baynes-Rock contended
with difficult conditions, stone-throwing children, intransigent
bureaucracy, and wary hyena subjects intent on avoiding people.
After months of frustration, three young hyenas drew him into the
hidden world of the Sofi clan. He discovered the elements of a
hyena's life, from the delectability of dead livestock and the
nuisance of dogs to the unbounded thrill of hyena chase-play under
the light of a full moon. Baynes-Rock's personal relations with the
hyenas from the Sofi clan expand the conceptual boundaries of
human-animal relations. This is multispecies ethnography that
reveals its messy, intersubjective, dangerously transformative
potential.
TWO PERSPECTIVES ON ANIMAL MORALITY Willows, Adam M.; Baynes‐Rock, Marcus
Zygon,
December 2018, 2018-12-00, 20181201, Volume:
53, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Are animals moral agents? In this article, a theologian and an anthropologist unite to bring the resources of each field to bear on this question. Alas, not all interdisciplinary conversations end ...harmoniously, and after much discussion the two authors find themselves in substantial disagreement over the answer. The article is therefore presented in two halves, one for each side of the argument. As well as presenting two different positions, our hope is that this article clarifies the different understandings of morality in our respective fields and will help to offset confusion in interdisciplinary dialogue. In what follows, we each present our case. In the first section, Adam Willows argues that moral activity necessarily involves the use of reason, symbolic thought, and language and is on that basis an exclusively human affair. In the second, Marcus Baynes‐Rock discusses his experience of relationality with other creatures; a relationality which, he argues, creates a shared understanding of obligations which are characteristically moral.
We are in the Anthropocene. For millennia, human actions have been shaping the world to the degree that they are inscribed in the geological and ecological record. Recently, this has been occurring ...with increasing speed and influence. This means we need to be asking integrative and effective questions about the world and how we relate to and in it. Human niche construction has broad and deep effects not just on landscapes and environments, but on the myriad of other beings sharing space with us. Humans are self-appointed ecosystem managers and lead actors in seeking sustainability for planetary and local ecosystems. In order to accomplish this, we need to better understand how anthromes are shaped, inhabited and altered. To this end, we present two different examples of anthropogenic landscapes; one in Ethiopia and one in Bali, Indonesia. These are landscapes that are co-constructed by multiple species through complex webs of ecologies, economies and histories and represent the way that humans are drawn into relationships with non-humans; relationships which in turn alter landscapes.
In this paper I review the literature on the evolutionary origins of phobias and describe the current state of research on the neurobiology and developmental origins of ophidiophobia-fear of snakes. ...In doing so I compare experimental evidence related to evolutionary explanations for snake fears and phobias which are outlined in Seligman's Preparedness Theory and Isbell's Snake Detection Theory. These theories have been tested extensively using a variety of experimental paradigms aimed at determining the "innateness" of snake fears, the neural pathways involved in fear responses to snakes, and the perceptual biases associated with snake stimuli. However, in the vast majority of these experiments, the stimuli presented are photographs of snakes rather than the real thing. I argue that this point of methodology, while ironically supportive of the findings, is based on some assumptions about cognition and consciousness which run counter to neuroscience. In understanding human responses to snakes, we need to understand better the interplay between cognition and consciousness and how these represent a pluralism of mind in which perception is much more than we think.
Abstract
In this paper, we draw attention to human-horse relations among the Oromo of West Shewa and the importance that men in particular ascribe to horses known as farrda mia. These horses are not ...a distinct breed; they attain their status through a process of selection based on attractiveness and mutual compatibility with their owners. Farrda mia are important in ceremonies, racing, and personal prestige to the degree that they constitute a cognitive affective unity with the men they allow on their backs. The relationships between Oromo men and their horses evoke novel conceptions of identity. Through reciprocal trust, exclusivity, naming, and performance, Oromo men and their horses constitute cognitive, affective centaurs that challenge conceptions of self- contained, self-embodied, human individuals.
A Social Ecology of Stingless Bees Fijn, Natasha; Baynes-Rock, Marcus
Human ecology : an interdisciplinary journal,
04/2018, Volume:
46, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Here we highlight two ontologically different modes of care and management of endemic stingless bees in Australia. While Indigenous Yolngu and backyard beekeepers both engage in caring for stingless ...bees, neither way of living with bees would classically be defined as 'domestication', yet bees are encompassed within the 'home', or domns. This requires a different perspective in relation to the kinds of multispecies connections between humans and other beings. We propose that the key difference between Aboriginal Australians hunting for sugarbag on country and beekeeping in the backyard is in the way bee populations are maintained and in the degree of ecological separation from the surrounding environment. For Yolngu the domus is the bush. Backyard beekeeping involves modes of care that separate bees from outside predators, pests and other detrimental elements, while the Yolngu relationship with bees is primarily concerned with maintaining the integrity of the surrounding ecology, or the homeland.
Spotted hyenas and humans often come into conflict where they coexist in the landscape. Usually the conflicts involve hyena predation on livestock and retaliatory killings by humans; however, direct ...attacks on humans by rabid or otherwise healthy hyenas do occur. These in turn compound the problems associated with reconciling protection of hyenas with the needs and safety of humans. This paper was motivated by a series of attacks which occurred in the town of Kombolcha in the Hararge Region of eastern Ethiopia. The attacks and the responses of the local people were an extension of a wider conflict across the region where children are occasionally attacked and hyenas killed. Yet hyenas persist in the region. I suggest here that an understanding of the mechanisms which permit hyenas to coexist with humans in the Hararge region extend beyond food availability and access to breeding sites for hyenas. There is an added dimension which stems from the remnants of a traditional belief system that the local people held prior to conversion to Islam. This entails that hyenas are conceived of as beneficial to the human population due to their propensity to kill and consume unseen spirits, and their capacity to act in accordance with human societal values. As long as the human population does not transgress any boundaries, the hyenas will not have cause to attack them. Meanwhile the hyenas need to restrict their activity times, rely entirely on anthropogenic foods, and refrain from preying on people and livestock. These kinds of detailed explorations of ethno-historical and socio-ecological aspects of human-animal relations can better inform efforts at mitigating human-wildlife conflict in Hararge region and beyond.
The multispecies commons is the kind of place in which human–animal entanglements are made most explicit. It is where social, biological and historical processes are so inextricably entwined with ...wider ecological processes as to be inseparable. Here I describe one such place: the area outside a gate in the ancient, defensive wall around the historic city of Harar, Ethiopia. It was at this place that a solitary, poisoned hyena set in motion a series of events which culminated in a conflict between two hyena clans; a conflict in which the local humans were participants. To gain an understanding of the events I follow the threads of histories, landscapes, territoriality and social engagement between species to reveal how this place demands interdisciplinary study. It dramatically exemplifies the ways in which humans and non-humans are entangled in more-than-social processes through which they co-shape each others’ worlds. The multispecies commons explicitly deconstructs limited conceptions of the social and weaves them back together with multiple other threads that coalesce to create a greater, tangled web of ecological processes.
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