An Interview with Richard Bulliet

In Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal RelationshipsRichard W. Bulliet engagingly recounts the dynamic relationship between humans and animals from prehistory to the present. In this interview he discusses the book and our ever-changing relationship with animals.nnQuestion: What is “postdomesticity”?nnRichard Bulliet: Postdomesticity refers to a group of attitudes and practices that arise in societies that rely heavily on animal products—meat, milk products, leather, etc.—while most people living in the society have no contact at all with the producing animals. Feelings of guilt and shame about animal slaughter in all its forms (hunting, meat-packing, fur harvesting, etc.) are central characteristics of postdomesticity. These feelings underlie an increasing sensitivity to animal rights and opposition to hunting, trapping, fur farming, and use of animals as experimental subjects. They also motivate people who have no relevant religious or cultural background as vegetarians to choose a vegetarian life-style. I call this “elective vegetarianism.”nnQ: When and where did postdomesticity begin?nnRB: As with many major historical developments, the emergence of postdomesticity cannot be pinned down to a specific year. Some of its trends, such as humane societies, “scientific” zoos, and pet shows, can be traced back to Victorian England. The major period of onset of postdomesticity in the United States, however, was the 1960s and 1970s. This is when animal liberation and elective vegetarianism began to make headway. And it is also the time when the general public began to take great interest in scientific efforts to narrow the distance between humans and animals, whether through trying to teach apes and dolphins to communicate or through field-work designed to show the complexity of animal social life in the wild.nAs for where this took place, postdomestic attitudes have spread most rapidly in England, the United States and Canada, and Australia and New Zealand. Continental Europe is only now following in the same path. Most other parts of the world (except Japan, which manifests a very different pattern of human-animal relations) still belong to the era of domesticity when domestic animals other than pets were more or less present in the lives of most people, and utilization of animal products was taken for granted.nnQ: What about pets?nnRB: Riding horses and companion animals, i.e., pets, have been part of human life for many centuries. In postdomestic societies, however,  there is a strong tendency to relate to pets as if they were almost human. This shows up in fiction based on the life-stories of pets, and in the growth of a pet industry based on breeding, showing, grooming, pampering, and memorializing animal companions. Humanization of animals, including in cartoons and children’s books, is one of the central practices of postdomesticity.nnQ: How do pornographies of blood and sex relate to postdomesticity?nnRB: The explosion in popular consumption of pornographies of sex and blood that began in the 1960s doubtless has multiple causes. An important aspect, however, was the almost total elimination of experience with animal reproduction and slaughter from the lives of most young Americans after World War II. Earlier generations living in domestic times had become accustomed from childhood to animals being brutalized and killed, and to animal reproduction. Though it was seldom acknowledged, these experiences accustomed young people to such scenes and ensured that throughout their lives they would regard bloodshed and sexual activity as part of the real carnal world. In postdomestic situations, children are protected from witnessing animal killing and sexual relations. Parents, perhaps rightly, consider such sights coarsening and inappropriate for children. The consequence, however, is a child’s first exposure to bloodshed and sexual activity coming increasingly from magazines, videotapes, wildlife documentaries, and erotic Web sites. This type of exposure locates sex and blood in the realm of the imagination, and this opens the door to further imaginative stimulation via pornographic images and slice-and-dice horror movies.nnQ: How does postdomesticity relate to earlier stages of human-animal relations? nnRB: Postdomesticity emerges from the extreme objectification of domestic animals in the late domestic era. By this, I am referring to animals being treated solely as sources of consumer products by the animal industry. Yet when the domestic era began some ten thousand years ago, this sort of material exploitation was much less important than traditions of considering animals as spiritual entities that carried over from the late predomestic era. Predomesticity was the previous period of tens of thousands of years when humans foraged for subsistence along with many other animal species. Hunting was a practice that involved a variety of rituals based on the idea of honoring the animals being hunted. Many gods were thought of as looking like or being represented by animals.nnIn the postdomestic era, there is a growing desire to recover predomestic attitudes that largely disappeared thousands of years ago. Far from being a simple consequence of modernization, postdomesticity involves vigorous efforts to understand and, if possible, reinstitute by-gone patterns of human-animals relations. This is the point at which postdomestic concerns intersect environmental and ecological movements. But this is also an area of growing interest for theologians. The scriptures on which Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are based have a strongly domestic outlook. Humans and animals are created separately and have different spiritual destinies. In addition, blood sacrifice of animals is considered a necessary religious rite, even though it often comes to be practiced symbolically. Buddhism and Hinduism have quite different traditions, but in practical terms, societies built around these faiths manifest many aspects of domestic objectification. (The Shinto religious tradition in Japan is unusual in retaining a strong belief in animal spirits.)nnQ: What is the future of human-animal relations? nnRB: A contradiction is growing between ever-increasing meat consumption worldwide—largely prompted by growing income levels—and increasingly assertive opposition to animal exploitation. There does not seem to be an obvious point of compromise between these trends. It is likely, therefore, that animal rights will gradually be incorporated into a “Western” philosophical viewpoint that is held out to the rest of the world as a mark of a higher standard of civilization. Analogies will doubtless be drawn to women’s rights, racial equality, and respect for minorities. This will probably be strongly resisted by societies that see animal rights advocacy as an effort to keep meat on the table in American homes, but limit meat-eating in the rest of the world. Thus I would expect human-animal relations to become a central matter of debate, both within the United States and internationally, in coming decades. At the same time, I expect to see ever more attempts to come to grips with the question of how humans, as an animal species, should ethically relate to other species. And I expect to see greatly expanded research on these questions among historians, anthropologists, and ethicists.

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