Applied Medical Anthropology Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to do the following: Briefly explain how the biological processes of evolution and genetics impact human health and wellness. Describe how human migration, social behavior, and cultural values impact gene flow, genetic drift, sexual selection, and human reproduction. Define neuroanthropology. Provide two examples of culture-bound syndromes. Describe various ways in which political and economic forces impact health outcomes. Explain how globalization has increased the flow of pathogens and introduced new diseases and viruses. Members of the Breathe Project, including anthropologist Ruth Fauman-Fichman (behind the speaker), protest the pollution caused by a decrepit steel mill near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (credit: “US-Steel-Air-Pollution-1100712” Mark Dixon/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Anthropology is an adaptable field of study. Its principles, theories, and methods can easily be applied to real-world problem-solving in diverse settings. Medical anthropology is designed to be applied to the critical study and improved practice of medicine. Medical anthropology has been employed in corporate settings, has been used by doctors who want to reduce ethnocentrism or apply a holistic approach to medical research and medical education, and has informed the work of academics who want to effect policy changes. The following are but a few examples of applied medical anthropologists working to create change in the real world. Evolutionary Medicine and Health A final theoretical approach to medical anthropology, emerging from biological anthropology, is evolutionary medicine . Evolutionary medicine sits at the intersection of evolutionary biology and human health, using the framework of evolution and evolutionary theory to understand human health. Evolutionary medicine asks why human health evolved the way it did, how environments affect health, and how we continue to affect our health through a number of factors including migration, nutrition, and epigenetics. The story of human evolution is the story of gene flow and human migration. Each individual human carries specific gene combinations, and each human population carries with it a common set of genes. When people migrate, they bring those genes with them. If they have children, they pass those genes on in new combinations. Culture impacts population genetics in two ways: migration patterns and culturally defined rules of sexual selection impact the frequency of gene alleles , and thus genetic variation, in a human population. These genes often affect health outcomes, such as the likelihood of developing certain types of cancer or immunity to specific pathogens through exposure. The more frequently a human population interacts with other populations through migration, trade, and other forms of cultural exchange, the more likely it is that genetic material from one population will be introduced to the other. The current level of globalization makes it possible for genes to flow from one corner of the globe to another. Moving into a new culture, whether forced or voluntary, requires adaptation. Adapting one’s culture to new rules, new norms, and new expectations, as well as adapting one’s identity to being a minority or facing oppression or prejudice, can affect the health of the migration population. An obvious example of this is the effects of slavery on Africans brought to the Americas. This impact is shown not just on their genetics, discussed elsewhere in this chapter, but also in their cultures. Syncretized religions like Haitian Vodou, Candomblé, and other African-inspired religions show the ways in which African populations adapted their beliefs to survive contact with oppression and cruelty, evolving and sanitizing certain elements while embracing others. Populations that are physically isolated for long periods of time might experience negative effects from genetic drift as the frequency of rare alleles increases over time. Similarly, cultural groups that practice strict endogamy can experience negative effects from genetic drift. In isolation, populations can sometimes see a rise in the frequency of maladaptive gene variants, as in the case of Tay-Sachs disease found in ethnic minority populations that practice endogamy, such as Ashkenazi Jews or French Canadians. Among these populations, which have been relatively isolated from the populations around them, the genes that cause Tay-Sachs have become more common than in other populations. This suggests that isolation and segregation can result in unhealthy changes in a population’s gene pool. Another example of evolutionary medicine is the study of the effects of the development of agriculture and the growth of urbanization on human health. The development of agriculture caused human health to change in many ways. Food became more regularly available, but diet became less varied and the amount of work required to procure the food increased. The regular movement associated with a gathering and hunting lifestyle resulted in robust overall fitness, but people were also at a greater danger of succumbing to a fatal accident before reaching the age at which they successfully reproduced. Our current lifestyle, in which many sit behind a desk for eight hours a day, five days a week, damages our spines and overall health. While food availability in Western nations is second to none, people living in those societies struggle with health problems related to being overweight and underactive. Each lifestyle has its trade-offs, and evolution has, over the past ten thousand years, affected both modern and neolithic humans differently. Through evolutionary health, we can track these changes and their adaptations. With human migration and the concentration of human populations in urban areas, disease has grown exponentially. Pathogens can now spread like wildfire across the world. In the past, disease has had a devastating effect on human populations. As just one example, the Black Death killed over a third of Europe’s population, spreading via Silk Road merchants and the conquests of the Mongol Empire. Today we see yearly flare-ups of influenza and Ebola and are still dealing with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that caused nations to close borders and people within nations to limit social contact with one another. Globalization not only makes it possible for pathogens and pandemics to spread, but also allows nations to cooperatively distribute vaccines and coordinate methods to contain viruses. Nations can now share medical data to help develop treatments and help one another in efforts to isolate and quarantine the sick and infected. On the other hand, international cooperation can hamper local response and prevent cities, provinces, states, and nations from acting in their own best interest. World Health Organization (WHO) workers gear up to enter an Ebola ward in Lagos during the 2013–2016 Ebola pandemic. (Credit: Bryan Christensen/CDC Global/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) At the heart of each of these areas of study is epigenetics , or the change of the expression of a gene during a single human lifetime. Often prompted by environmental exposure and mutations over a lifetime, epigenetic shifts are heritable changes in a person’s DNA that are phenotypical, meaning that they are linked to outwardly expressed traits. For example, studies show that people exposed to smoking in childhood tend to be shorter in adulthood. Similarly, trauma can stunt growth or increase the likelihood of developing specific maladaptations. The development of sickle cell anemia in the African American community has been linked to epigenetic adaptation to slavery in the United States, according to a 2016 study by Juliana Lindenau et al. This and other studies suggest that trauma can be inherited and can last generations. Epigenetics show evolution at work in real time, affecting both individuals and future generations. Culture and the Brain The human brain is a fascinating research topic, both medically and culturally. Different cultures conceptualize the brain, its functions, and its health differently. Biomedicine and ethnomedicine systems view human physiology in distinct ways, and these two systems typically have very different explanatory models for understanding the brain and its role in psychology and neurology. Anthropologists are interested in both of these explanatory models and the ways they influence treatment. Some topics of particular interest to medical anthropologists include how psychology affects biology and health, the stigma of mental health across cultures, addiction, culture-bound syndromes, and experiences and illnesses related to stress. Daniel Lende and Greg Downey brought together these topics under the heading of neuroanthropology , an emerging specialty that examines the relationship between culture and the brain. As highlighted during the discussion of the cultural systems model, the acceptance of psychology is highly variable by culture. Societies that rely upon biomedicine are more apt to embrace psychological approaches to mental health problems. Encouraging other cultures to apply psychology and psychiatry sometimes requires an anthropologist’s touch. One challenge for a medical anthropologist is convincing people who do not believe in mental health challenges that acknowledging and treating mental health issues is a better approach than ignoring them. India’s slow but eventual acceptance of psychology is described by Rebecca Clay in a 2002 article. In this case, psychology was gradually normalized and accepted through a combination of Indian medical theory and psychological treatments and diagnoses. This culturally based path toward normalization indicates the need for cultural understanding and a nuanced approach by medical anthropologists. Culturally specific nuance is especially important in understanding what anthropologists call culture-bound syndromes. Culture-bound syndromes refer to unique ways in which a particular culture conceptualizes the manifestations of mental illness, whether as physical and/or social symptoms. The condition is a “cultural syndrome” in that it is not a biologically based disease identified among other populations. A prominent example is susto , a syndrome in Latino societies of the Americas. First documented by Rubel , O’Nell , and Collado-Ardon (1991), susto is stress, panic, or fear caused by bearing witness to traumatic experiences happening to other people around you. Originating with Indigenous groups in the Americas, this panic attack–like illness was seen as a spiritual attack on people and has a number of symptoms ranging from nervousness and depression to anorexia and fever. Cultural syndromes are not limited to non-Western societies, however. According to anthropologist Caroline Giles Banks (1992), anorexia nervosa , an eating disorder where the person does not eat in order to stay thin in accordance with the beauty standards in the United States and Europe, is a prime example of a culture-bound syndrome. Only in these cultures, with specific pressures on weight and beauty applied to women and men, does anorexia nervosa appear. But as these beauty standards spread with globalization and the spread of media from these cultures, so does the disease. Cultural syndromes are not restricted to cultures that prefer biomedicine or ethnomedicine: they are as diverse as human culture itself. A related concept gaining ground in psychology is known as cultural concepts of distress , or CCD. These concepts, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) 5, “refer to ways that cultural groups experience, understand, and communicate suffering, behavioral problems, or troubling thoughts and emotions” (American Psychiatric Association 2013). In sum, CCD is used to describe how a culture explains and conceptualizes the unique manifestation of mental illness as physical and/or social symptoms. The psychobiological dynamic of health —the measurable effect of human psychology on physical health—is a primary tool used by medical anthropologists to study health. The psychobiological dynamic of health helps anthropologists evaluate the efficacy of health-related treatments that may not accord with those used in their home culture. For example, ritual healing has real measurable effects on people, both the patient and those in attendance during the ritual, as long as they believe that the ritual has healing power. Similarly, for those who share a cultural belief in the power of such practices, being prayed over by a priest or blessed with holy water can offer effective healing power. Psychological belief grants healing efficacy. The same principle applies to biomedicine, as illustrated by the placebo/nocebo effect. Of course, belief alone cannot entirely negate the harmful or helpful effects of medicine or any other substance. Another area in which psychology and health intersect is the experience and effects of stress, a human universal. Indeed, it is well established that mental stress can make someone physically sick. The work of anthropologist Robert Sapolsky (2004) analyzes the evolution of the human body to adapt to, use, and heal from stress. His analysis suggests that stress pushes humans to both physical and mental limits, that these limits differ in different humans, and that being pushed up against limits due to stress can result in growth. The human ability to adapt to stress is a difference from other primate species, and it likely developed over millions of years of evolution. While human bodies have evolved with stress and have sometimes grown as a result of stress, we were not evolved to withstand chronic stress over extended periods of time. Chronic stress induces a high rate of stress-related diseases, such as heart disease, indicating the limits of even evolution to adapt to long-term stressors. Addiction is another area in which medical anthropologists have done significant work, analyzing how culture and biology contribute to addiction. Addiction comes in many forms and affects multiple measures of health. Medical anthropologist Angela Garcia tackles addiction in her book The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande (2010), which explores the intersection of race, class, immigration status, and dispossession with drug addiction and the ability to treat it. Focusing on a small town on the Rio Grande and specifically a clinic within that town meant to treat addiction, she tracks the trajectory of a number of patients and the factors that contributed to their addiction. Her analysis highlights the status of these patient as immigrants, minorities, and outsiders, which prevent reentry into society for many. Similarly, João Biehl’s work Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment (2103) analyzes the effects of dispossession and homelessness on social health, looking specifically at the role of drugs in the highlighted zone. His exploration of vita , a place where people are “left to die” when their addiction or mental illness becomes too much of a burden, shows the cultural effects of mental health and addiction on Brazilian society and the struggles of the individuals abandoned there. In both works, the role of drugs is highlighted, exploring how cultures symbolically characterize problematic drug use and addiction and attach a stigma to admitting a problem and seeking treatment. The works also explore how drugs are justified and understood, illustrating both how drugs change the biochemistry of the brain and how the human mind characterizes the drugs, each shaping one another. Reproduction Reproductive health is another area in which medical anthropologists have made significant contributions by applying their knowledge and methods to real medical practices. Medical anthropologists have studied reproduction in many cultures, analyzing the practices, beliefs, and treatment of those who are pregnant, their children, and their supporting network. Another area of interest has been the ritualization of pregnancy. Robbie Davis Floyd (2004) has done work on birth as a rite of passage and the role of the midwife in modern birth practices around the world, with a focus on medicalized birth in the United States. Her work highlights ways in which the experience of birth is made more complicated by policy. Midwives are shown to decrease the chances of complications in births, yet in many places they are denied a role in the birthing process. Regardless of patient preference and the documented success of midwives, in most settings in the United States doctors and medical professionals are given preference over midwives. Floyd argues that this preference sometimes puts the patient at risk. In the Western biomedical system, doctors are preferred and imbued with authoritative knowledge , which is a sense of legitimacy or perceived authenticity. Women of color are much more likely to die in childbirth, according to a 2019 study by the CDC. This disparity is a central focus of the research of Dána-Ain Davis. (credit: “Figure 1: Pregnancy-Related Deaths per 100,000 Live Births by Racial/Ethnic Group, 2007-2016” by US Government Accountability Office (GAO)/flickr, Public Domain) The work of Dána-Ain Davis (2019) on medical racism and inequalities in the health care system shows structural violence at work. Based on analysis of statistics and vivid ethnographic examples, Davis found that women of color experienced significantly higher rates of complications, including higher death rates for both mothers and infants, than White mothers and babies. Davis concludes that cultural bias and systemic racism are woven into the US health care system. These are often unacknowledged biases, unrecognized by those perpetrating them in the medical profession. Davis advocates for better policy to address these inequalities and help mothers maintain control over their bodies and the birthing process. Dána-Ain Davis 1958- Personal History: Born in New York City, Dána-Ain Davis earned her PhD from City University of New York. Her work focuses on poverty, policy, and feminism, with a specific interest in urban areas of the United States. She is currently a professor of anthropology at Queens College (part of the City University of New York system). In addition to her teaching, she promotes change in policy and society through activism and her work in numerous political communities. Before enrolling in college, Davis worked widely in publishing, broadcasting, and nonprofit work. She has worked for the Village Voice newspaper, the YWCA, the Village Center for Women, and Bronx AIDS Service. This work grounded her deeply in her community and the issues facing women, and in particular Black women in urban communities such as hers. These skills would aid her as she earned her PhD and began publishing her academic work. She is the editor of Feminist Anthropology , a new journal focused on feminist anthropological work; sits on the editorial boards for Cultural Anthropology and Women’s’ Studies Quarterly ; and in the fall of 2021 became the chair of her department. Area of Anthropology: cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, public anthropology, feminist anthropology, urban anthropology Accomplishments in the Field: Davis’s first book, Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform: Between a Rock and a Hard Place , was published in 2006 and focuses on the intersection of gender, race, and economic realities. The book also features her work with the theory of political economy , which looks at how economic conditions, law, and policy affect wealth distribution across groups, in this case how economic conditions disadvantage Black women. Davis then worked on two edited volumes focused on feminism and gender, entitled Black Genders and Sexualities (2012) and Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America (2013), before publishing Feminist Ethnography: Thinking through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities (2016) about feminism anthropology and ethnographic work. Davis’s next work, Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (2019) fits more squarely into the realm of medical anthropology. This work examines the numerous issues that face women of color in regard to pregnancy and birth. Like her previous work, her latest book intersects with activism, aiming to improve medical and social justice for mothers and children. Importance of Their Work: Activism sits at the heart of Davis’s work, which has won numerous awards for promoting justice and change. Her academic and activist work has helped inform new policy changes at the local, state, and national levels. Her work informs continuing work in urban studies, feminist theory and practice, reproductive health for women of color, and welfare reform. The Inequalities of Health Attempting to address the inequalities of health care is a primary application of the work of critical medical anthropologists. Inequalities are apparent in relation to COVID-19, the global pandemic that has left no corner of the world untouched. A number of agencies in the United States, including the National Institutes of Health and the American Civil Liberties Union, have determined that Black and Latinx populations have been most negatively affected by the virus, both in health outcomes and overall deaths per capita relative to their portion of the population. Several states have emphasized the need to ignore personal safety for the sake of economic “health,” essentially stating a willingness to sacrifice workers so their economic prospects do not falter. Meanwhile, people working on the front lines faced what is tantamount to class violence, as they could not afford to stay safely at home and social distance; indeed, it can be argued that later this class violence still applied, as the divide between remote working and those forced to work on-site created a stark contrast. The health of “essential workers” is put at risk. Aside from health care professionals, the category frequently falls along class lines, with the majority of “essential workers” employed in the service industry, in factories, or making deliveries. Economic inequalities and lack of access to health care providers both play a role in these trends. Similarly, the World Health Organization has highlighted how poorer countries have had their access to the many forms of COVID-19 treatment and prevention restricted by the demands of richer countries like the United States and Australia. Another area in which medical anthropologists have documented health-related inequalities in the United States is access to nutritious foods. It has been well established that poor access to foods, particularly highly nutritious, diverse foods, can negatively affect health. People who live in food deserts, which are areas lacking access to good food, are more likely to develop debilitating illnesses and suffer from a basic lack of nutrition in several major fields. Amplifying the effect of food deserts is that these same areas often also lack access to health care services. AIDS has provided a multigenerational study of the inequalities of health. At the beginning of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, the poorly understood disease was stated to be a “gay man’s virus” because it seemed to only affect gay and bisexual men. Medical anthropologists began studying the AIDS virus as early as 1983, with Norman Spencer notably studying cases in San Francisco. As the virus spread to other populations, research became more common and well-funded, receiving state support in some cases. Yet between poor and late funding and the spread of misinformation that took decades to reverse, AIDS devastated populations around the world. Medical anthropologist Brodie Ramin (2007) has applied anthropological knowledge and methods to AIDS treatment in Africa, utilizing cultural understanding to develop more effective methods of medical treatment and enhance public trust in these treatment methods. Partners in Health began treating HIV in Haiti at a time when world governments largely ignored it. Here, they offer help during the 2010 Haitian earthquake. (credit: “CG Officer works with Interpreter to Help Haitians” by Petty Officer 2nd Class Etta Smith/USCG Press/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Even today, AIDS is highly stigmatized and poorly treated in many places in the world. For over two decades now, Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim, both anthropologists and medical doctors, have worked with their organization, Partners in Health, to provide better health outcomes and access to poor, remote parts of the world. Their work has been instrumental in helping treat AIDS and other diseases in places such as Haiti. Jim Yong Kim used his role in the World Bank Group to help create better outcomes as well. Medical anthropology has the power to shape policy at the highest level of global health institutions, but it has much to overcome. Medical anthropologists are well aware of the severity of the problems of structural violence, systemic racism, and massive health inequalities around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of many cultures, affecting people’s professional, educational, and personal lives. Medical anthropologists Vincanne Adams and Alex Nading have already begun to analyze the social impact of COVID-19: “The pandemic continues to precipitate simultaneous dread over what is to come and loss over what appears to be gone forever, including loved ones, ways of life, and conceptual and literal safety nets” (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated how deeply intertwined health and culture can be. Elisa J. Sobo ’s work on the anti-vaccine movement in 2016 is now freshly relevant, as some people fear and mistrust both the COVID vaccine and the health measures to slow or prevent the spread of the virus proposed by nonprofits and governments. Adams and Nading build upon Sobo’s research, exploring the central role of belief and culture in the development of policy at the local, state, national, and international levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated how deeply intertwined health and culture can be. Medical anthropology has a lot to offer public health and health care professionals. Incorporating medical anthropology and cultural competence into the training of health care professionals is a proactive step to begin addressing medical racism and the inequalities of health documented by medical anthropologists. It also gives health care professionals insight into the relationship between social health and physical and mental health priorities. The work of medical anthropologists on nutrition, reproduction, and infectious disease has significant implications for health care and public policy. Finally, understanding the wealth of cultural traditions and ethnomedical systems provides a greater appreciation for the diverse ways of understanding health and managing maladies. As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, health and health care are a complex social issue with global ramifications for billions of people. Summary Medical anthropology is the application of anthropological practice and methods to medicine. It considers how culture affects medicine and health. Medical anthropologists thus try to study medicine and health within the context of the culture it comes from, which is known as ethnomedicine. The history of medical anthropology stems from numerous other branches of anthropology, including religious anthropology and the study of rituals and health. Since World War II, anthropologists have often been involved in health initiatives around the world, with numerous health practitioners using anthropological methods to increase their efficacy. Medical anthropological theory and practice is rooted in the work of Franz Boas. Medical anthropologists utilize various methods to gather data and study a culture’s dimensions of health. In participant observation, an anthropologist takes part in the culture they are studying. Ethnographic interviews ask questions of cultural informants regarding their understanding of their culture’s medical practices. Similarly, in illness narrative interviews, a person who has been ill is asked to describe their experience, both of being sick and how others treated them. Another method is to examine the choices people make when seeking medical treatment, a process called a health decision-making analysis. Anthropologists also use a number of quantitative methods, focusing on medical statistics, questionnaires, and surveys. Medical anthropology embraces a number of theories. The biocultural approach analyzes the links between culture and biology, using aspects such as environment to understand how medicine and the culture around it develops. The symbolic approach to medical anthropology looks at the world of symbols that surrounding health and medicine in a particular culture, including the placebo effect and specific cultural phenomena such as “voodoo death.” Medical ecology suggests that environment affects the development of culture and thus of medicine. The cultural systems model is a theory used for cross-cultural analysis, creating a frame of reference for comparison and looking at why certain cultures prefer certain types of knowledge. Critical medical anthropology (CMA) analyzes how social inequalities in a culture affect health outcomes. Critical theories of health apply medical anthropology theory and method to medical practice with the aim of changing medical policy at multiple levels. Medical anthropology, perhaps more than any other type of anthropology, is easily applied to other fields. Medical practitioners apply anthropological theory and methods to better understand their patients and improve their health outcomes. Evolutionary medicine studies how humans have evolved with the goal of better treating illness. This requires a fusion of biological anthropology, genetics, and globalization. Medical anthropologists also work within neuroanthropology, combining psychology, neurology, and human biology to understand and improve human physical and mental health outcomes. Reproductive health is improved with an understanding of medical anthropology, as culture is highly important to birth and childcare. Inequalities of health are a particularly important place for the application of the work of medical anthropologists. From food deserts to the AIDS epidemic, medical anthropologists have applied their work to solving real-world problems and innovated novel solutions that could later be applied to other problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Critical Thinking Questions Health Perspectives Project: Interviews Part 1: Develop Interview Questions Select a health-related topic and develop ethnographic interview questions related to it. Keep it short: three to five questions relating to the anthropological topic you wish to study. Ideally, your interview questions will be open-ended rather than yes/no questions or questions that generate one word replies. Part 2: Interview Select appropriate people to interview, and set up a convenient time and place to interview them. Remember your safety is a top concern; do not meet with anyone in a place where you do not feel comfortable. Ideally, if you do not know the person well, you will want a public location that still affords a degree of privacy, such as the library or a coffee shop. Interview Field Notes Your notes should include the following: When and where the interview was conducted Your relationship to the interviewee (if any) The interviewee’s Age Gender Occupation Native language Nationality/country of origin Any other details that are relevant to your interview (Example: religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, role in family, etc. Only ask these if it seems to be relevant to your topic and questions.) Take notes not only on what the person said, but how they said it and what you think it might mean in a broader context. Reflect on body language, emotion, tone, and emphasis whenever possible. Include significant quotes and your reflection on the quotes’ significance in the context of the interview. Explain why and how you selected the person that you interviewed. Do you think that you had the necessary rapport to receive full and honest answers? Was your interviewee knowledgeable about the topic of your interview? 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Sobo, Elisa J. “Theorizing (Vaccine) Refusal: Through the Looking Glass.” 2016. Cultural Anthropology 31 (3): 342–50. Turner, Edith, and Victor Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture . New York: Columbia University Press. Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Turner, Victor. (1969) 2017. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure . London and New York: Routledge. World Health Organization. 2020. “Constitution of the World Health Organization.” Basic Documents , 49th ed., 1–20. https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/pdf_files/BD_49th-en.pdf#page=6. anorexia nervosa a culture-bound syndrome present in North American and European cultures, characterized by a person not eating to meet beauty standards. authoritative knowledge authority derived from perceived legitimacy, dependent on culture. cultural concepts of distress (CCD) a psychological term used to describe the way a culture experiences and expresses distress. epigenetics the changes in gene expression that take place during a person’s lifetime, often through environmental exposure. evolutionary medicine a method that uses evolutionary biology and culture to better understand human health. political economy the connection of economics and politics and how they affect wealth and inequality. psychobiological dynamic of health the measurable effect of human psychology on human biology. susto a cultural response to stress and trauma in Latinx communities.

Social Sciences


Introduction The relationships between humans and animals form a core part of all human cultures. Here, a man in Delhi sits beside his calf on a city street. (credit: “Mahimsyat sarva bhutani (veda)” by Abdel Sinoctou/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Take a moment to consider your relationships with animals. Where do you interact with animals? Do you encounter them on your plate, in your home, on your walks or visits to zoos and aquariums, in your vaccines and medical procedures, in your body lotion, or in the clothing or shoes you wear? Or do you encounter them mostly in books, movies, and poems? Human-animal scholarship is a relatively new interdisciplinary specialty. Interdisciplinary specialties cross individual disciplinary boundaries, drawing on perspectives and theories from multiple academic areas, most commonly anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology, philosophy/ethics, and even economics. When we consider the multiple roles that animals play in human lives, it is easy to see how this topic intersects with so many disciplines: the breeding and care of animals is associated with biology; the use of therapy dogs in human populations, such as with prisoners or those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is associated with psychology; and the ways in which different cultural groups think about and use animals is an anthropological concern. As a result, human-animal scholars take an interdisciplinary approach to preparing for and conducting their research to better understand the relationships among humans, animals, and culture.

Social Sciences


Humans and Animals Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Restate the scientific meaning of animal . Describe the human-animal continuum. Define multispecies ethnography. Identify highlights in the domestication of dogs. The Human-Animal Continuum Nonhuman animals are part of many facets of our lives. Many people rely on animals as part of food and subsistence systems, particularly in the areas of hunting, herding, and agriculture. Some people worship deities who are all or part animal. Many people recognize animals as symbols of clans or sports teams. For example, did your school have an animal as the mascot for its sports or debate teams? Across cultures, people love animals as pets and companions, and, as recognized by evolutionary theory, humans are connected to animals as ancestors and relatives. Animals are integral parts of the lives of humans around the world, in which they play a variety of roles. Defining an animal, however, can be complicated. With some exceptions, an animal is defined in science as a multicellular organism, either vertebrate or invertebrate, that can breathe, move, ingest and excrete food and food products, and reproduce sexually. This clearly also includes the human species. Western philosophical tradition supports this inclusion. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) grouped animals as being blooded (e.g., humans, mammals, birds, fish), non-blooded (e.g., shelled animals, insects, soft-skinned sea animals), or what he called dualizers , with mixed characteristics (e.g., whales, who live in the sea but have live births; bats, who have four legs but fly). Aristotle classified humans as animals with the intellectual ability to reason. In 1735, Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus introduced his binomial classification , which used two terms to identify every living organism: a genus and a species designation. In his work Systema Naturae (1735), Linnaeus divided the living world into two large kingdoms, the Regnum Animale (animal kingdom) and the Regnum Vegetabile (plant kingdom). Like Aristotle before him, Linnaeus classified humans as animals. Today, the scientific approach to the study of the animal kingdom accepts that there is a continuum between all living animal species with grades of difference between species. However, even though humans are animals, people across cultures define themselves as separate from animals. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) argued that cultures universally define themselves in opposition to what they view as nature , a domain they define as outside or on the margins of human culture. Humans and human culture are typically seen as everything that is not nature or animal. This makes animals and nature very important concepts to human societies, because they shed light on how people think of themselves as human beings in the world. Lévi-Strauss famously said of animals that they are “good to think” (1963, 89), meaning that animals provide good ways for humans to think about themselves . Animals are used as symbols in all cultures, a sign of the human tendency to identify similarities and differences between ourselves and (other) animals. In all societies, culture plays an important role in shaping how people define animals. Cultures assign various meanings to animals; they are ancestral spirits or deities, companions, work animals, wild and dangerous creatures, and even objects on display in zoos or raised in factory farms for food. Think of American culture, which both loves and dotes on dogs as members of the family and raises pigs as a food commodity. In other cultures, dogs are considered a food species. Among the North American Lakota people, dog meat is considered a medicinal food (see Meyers and Weston 2020), and in Vietnam, specially designated restaurants serve dog meat as a male aphrodisiac (Avieli 2011). To further illustrate the blurring of boundaries between categories of animals, some species of pigs, such as the potbellied pig, are kept as family pets in the United States. How do cultures designate species as being one thing and not another? Potbellied pigs are kept as pets in some countries. Here, a pet pig is ready for a walk in her neighborhood. (credit: “Potbellied Pig!” by Eric Chan/flickr, CC BY 2.0) The study of group identity is central to anthropology. Different cultures distinguish what is animal from what is human by comparing “the other” with themselves. Sometimes called us versus them , we versus they , or even the Other , capitalized, this binary (two-component) comparison is a human tendency observed across cultures. It is common for cultural groups to distinguish between humans and nonhuman species and also to designate some humans as “other” and not as fully human—comparable to animals or even isolated parts of animals. In the Andes , indigenous Quechua and Aymara speakers refer to themselves as runa , meaning “people” or “humans.” Those who do not speak their languages and do not live in the Andes are, by extension, nonhuman and are typically referred to as q’ara , meaning literally “naked and bare,” referring to their lack of social ties and community (Zorn 1995). This distinction between those within the group and those without is common among Indigenous groups all over the world as well as within Western societies. Although the origin of the word frogs as an epithet (nickname) for the French is contested, it appears to have begun within France itself as a way of referring to people who lived in Paris and ate frog legs. By the late 18th century, however, frogs had begun to show up in English newspapers and other written sources as a pejorative, insulting term for all French people (Tidwell 1948). Not to be outdone, the French have traditionally referred to the English as rosbifs (roast beefs), a food common in English cuisine. Although these examples are relatively lighthearted, there is a dark side to human-animal imagery. In a recent book, German freelance journalist Jan Mohnhaupt (2020) examines the distorted relationships that some Nazi leaders had with animals. After coming to power in Germany in 1937, the Nazi state enacted many laws against the Jewish people, among them a 1942 law that made it illegal for Jewish people to own pets, while Nazi leader Adolf Hitler doted on his dog and military commander Hermann Göring kept lions as pets. Preventing them from having companion animals was yet another way in which the Nazis sought to dehumanize Jewish people. Human-animal relationships are important to our sense of selfhood. In this chapter, we will explore various cultures’ approaches to and understandings of nonhuman animals, including both living and symbolic animals, and the diverse ways in which humans interact with and think about these “other” beings. Multispecies Ethnography In his essay “Why Look at Animals?,” English art critic and poet John Berger writes, “To suppose that animals first entered the human imagination as meat or leather or horn is to project a 19th century attitude backwards across the millennia. Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises” ([1980] 1991, 4). Recent trends in anthropological scholarship attempt to interact with these messengers and understand the relationship that humans and animals share. The term polyspecific refers to the interactions of multiple species. The relationships shared between humans and other species began with our ancestors millions of years ago. The specialty of human-animal studies within anthropology suggests new forms of scholarship that deliberately move away from anthropocentrism , which focuses on humans as if they are the only species that matters. Human-animal studies opens a window into different ways of thinking about what it means to be human. One approach within the specialty, called multispecies ethnography , pays careful attention to the interactions of humans and other species within their shared environment—whether those other species be plant, animal, fungal, or microbial. Multispecies ethnographies are especially focused on the study of symbiosis , which is a mutually beneficial relationship between species. Researchers conducting multispecies ethnographies utilize a broad, holistic approach that takes into account questions such as where and how interactions between humans and animals occur. This approach is more complex than traditional ethnography because it requires that the researcher acknowledge both the perspectives of nonhuman actors and their roles in how we see and understand ourselves. Cultural anthropologists and ecologists Kirill Istomin and Mark James Dwyer (2010) conducted multispecies ethnographies between two different herding populations in Russia: the Izhma Komi , who live in northeast European Russia, and the Nenets in western Siberia. The two groups live in environments that are comparable in terms of geography, average temperatures, and precipitation, and they herd the same subspecies of reindeer year-round. Yet their herding styles are completely different. The Izhma Komi divide their reindeer into two large groups: a family group consisting of non-castrated males, females, and calves, called a kör , and a group of castrated males used for transportation and hauling, called a byk . Herders accompany the two groups to two separate grazing grounds during the day and direct them back to camp at night. While foraging for food, the reindeer stay within their particular groups and do not wander away. In contrast, the Nenets allow their reindeer to freely disperse and wander during the day, only occasionally observing their general whereabouts and well-being. Unlike the Izhma Komi herds, which stay in their two large groups, the Nenets animals forage in smaller groups and reunite at night as a single herd when they return on their own to camp for protection. Unlike wild reindeer, who do not routinely live in and around human encampments, these groups have a symbiotic relationship with their herders. The humans get meat, some limited milk, and leather for clothing, shoes, and trade products from the reindeer, and the reindeer get protection and supplemental foods at the campsite from the herders. Istomin and Dwyer’s research notes behaviors that the reindeer have learned from their human herders, but it also addresses social learning within the herds. In their interviews with the researchers, both Izhma Komi and Nenets herders told stories about the difficulties they faced when introducing new, so-called unmanageable animals into the herds. These new animals had not yet learned the herding routines of the group they were joining. Some wandered off and were lost before they could adapt to the particular herd culture. Istomin and Dwyer conclude that the animals themselves pass along behavioral knowledge to each other across generations as offspring follow and learn from their mothers and other adult reindeer. This conclusion challenges the notion that animal behavior is solely genetic and instinctual. Expanding ethnographies to include an understanding of what animals are doing and thinking is a primary objective of multispecies ethnography. Despite its recent emergence in anthropology as a separate specialty, the multispecies perspective has a long history. Nineteenth-century amateur anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan ’s research on the North American beaver (1868), which includes material on beavers’ adaptation to and interaction with humans, remains one of the most insightful and perceptive works on the species. And the research conducted in the 1930s by British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard on the relationship between the Nuer people of Africa and their cattle resulted in an ethnographic account of their interdependence, both socially and economically. More recently, cultural anthropologist Darrell Posey used a multispecies ethnographic approach in his work “Wasps, Warriors, and Fearless Men” (1981). In this case, the relationships of interest are between humans and insects. Posey’s work utilizes a lens of ethnoentomology , exploring the relationships that the Kayapó people of central Brazil have with local insects and how these relationships shape their perception of themselves as human. Posey documents how Kayapó warriors deliberately provoke a local species of wasp to sting them, using the “secret” of the venom to become more powerful: The warriors dance at the foot of the scaffolding and sing of the secret strength they received from the wasps to defeat the giant beetle. The women wail ceremonially in high-pitched, emotional gasps as the warriors, two-by-two, ascend the platform to strike with their bare hands the massive hive. Over and over again they strike the hive to receive the stings of the wasps until they are semi-conscious from the venomous pain. This ceremony is one of the most important to the Kayapo: it is a re-affirmation of their humanity, a statement of their place in the universe, and a communion with the past. (172) Kayapó tribespeople continue to practice their cultural traditions while fighting to protect their ancestral lands from Western encroachment. One of these traditions involves deliberately provoking wasps to sting them in order to enter a sacred state. (credit: “VI Aldeia Multiétnica no XV Encontro de Culturas Tradicionais da Chapada dos Veadeiros” by Oliver Kornblihtt/Special Secretariat of Culture of the Ministry of Citizenship/flickr, CC BY 2.0) A Case Study: Domestication of Dogs Humans interact with and relate to animal species that live in the wild as well as those that depend on them for their survival. Animals that are dependent on human beings are typically the result of domestication . Evidence suggests that early humans quickly developed a clear understanding of how selective breeding works, encouraging animals that shared preferred characteristics to mate and produce offspring. These desired traits included a calm temperament; the ability to get along with conspecifics , or members of one’s own species; usually a smaller body so that the animal could be gathered or herded in larger numbers; and an attachment to or tolerance of humans. Dogs were among the earliest domesticated animals. Here, Siberian huskies race in a dogsledding event. Across cultures, dogs have been used for pulling and hauling loads. (credit: “Frauenwald, Hundeschlittenrennen, 6” by Rainer Lippert, edited by Ritchyblack/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) The dog ( Canis lupus familiaris ) is believed to have been among the earliest animal domesticates, possibly the first. The origins of the domesticated dog are controversial. Most scientists agree that dogs originated from wolves, particularly from the subspecies Canis lupus pallipes (Indian wolf) and Canis lupus lupus (Eurasian wolf). The wide variety among dog breeds indicates that other wolf subspecies were also involved in selective breeding, making today’s dogs animal hybrids. Wolves have various natural instincts that make them excellent candidates for domestication. They are highly social scavengers who could easily have become accustomed to human settlements and food handouts at a young age, and they have a hierarchical social structure that includes status and submission within the pack, traits that would predispose them to conforming to human direction and domination. Dogs today vary genetically by only about 0.2 percent from some of their ancestral wolf subspecies. Historically and cross-culturally, humans benefit in many ways from their relationships with dogs: Guarding and protection. Dogs are naturally territorial and highly social; they are both biologically and behaviorally prone to be keenly aware of their physical surroundings and their group (or pack). The impulse to guard and protect is a genetic trait that was easily manipulated in the species as humans selectively bred animals that were particularly loyal to their families and attentive to their property. As part of the domestication process, humans selected for dogs who exhibited a bark-howl response when alerted, with the result that domesticated dogs bark when concerned or excited. Among wolves, the bark is only used as an initial alert (Yin 2002). Wolves do not call attention to themselves as dogs do. Hunting. Descended as it is from a wild predator, the domestic dog can be an excellent hunter and retriever. A trained dog offers considerable benefits to humans in the hunting of prey. Some Indigenous groups, such as the Chono of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, trained their dogs to dive and to fish for seals. The Tahltan people of Canada used dogs on bear hunts. In czarist Russia, borzoi dogs were used to hunt for wolves. Herding. Dogs were key to the development of pastoralism, a subsistence system based on herding animals. Many pastoral societies utilized dogs as shepherds for domesticated herds of sheep, goats, cattle, and even fowl. Once trained to identify and protect its herd, a dog can be a fierce defender of and guide for animals foraging away from human settlements. Trained herding dogs can shepherd their flocks on a consistent trail without constant human surveillance. Selective breeding moderated a natural instinct in dogs referred to as eye-stalk-chase-bite , a sequence of steps utilized by dogs to focus on another animal when hunting. This moderated instinct enables dogs to guide and protect another species by keeping the animals rounded up and moving away from danger. While not utilized by every pastoral society, dogs are considered vital to most pastoral societies, even today (see the Ethnographic Sketch at the end of the chapter). Transportation. Historically, dogs served as beasts of burden, especially in cultures that had no larger domesticated animals such as the horse, donkey, or cow. Many Indigenous peoples used dogs to carry young children or possessions. Among North American Indigenous cultures such as the Assiniboine , Apache , and Inuit , dogs were traditionally used for transportation. Some of these groups developed specialized technology, such as the travois and the sledge, that allowed them to harness a dog to a platform loaded with items to be moved. Kainai women use dog travois, constructed of two shafts lashed to a platform, to carry their possessions. This photo was taken around 1910 in what is now southern Alberta, Canada. (credit: “Kainai Women and Dog Travois” by Provincial Archives of Alberta/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Meat. In some cultures, domesticated dogs offer a dependable source of meat. Some of the earliest evidence of dog eating was found at a prehistoric rock shelter site located at Hinds Cave, Texas. At the Hinds Cave site, geneticist Raul Tito and his team identified domesticated dog remains in human coprolites (fossilized feces) dating to 9260 BP. From the Preclassic through the late Postclassic period (2000 BCE–1519 CE) in what is now Mexico, various Indigenous cultures, including the Olmec , Zapotec , Aztec , and Maya , raised and consumed dogs as a source of protein (Thompson 2008), eventually developing a hairless breed of dog known today as the Xoloitzcuintli . This breed existed when the Spanish arrived in Mexico in the 16th century. The Xoloitzcuintli is a hairless dog first bred in Mexico. (credit: “MX MM XOLOITZCUINTLE” Milton Martínez/Secretariat of Culture of Mexico City/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Although dogs are primarily pets in contemporary societies, they continue to play other important roles in a wide range of human activities. As just a few examples, dogs are used as drug detectives at airports, therapy animals for a wide range of human needs, and guides and helpers for those living with physical challenges. Dogs also continue to be used as shepherds, hunting companions, and guards. animal a multicellular organism, either vertebrate or invertebrate, that can breathe, move, ingest, excrete, and sexually reproduce. anthropocentrism the belief that the human perspective is the most important one; also called human exceptionalism. conspecifics members of the same species. domestication the selective breeding of a species by humans to create animals better suited to human life. multispecies ethnography the study of the interactions between humans and other species within their shared environment. nature a domain defined by cultures as outside or on the margins of human culture. polyspecific interaction involving multiple species. symbiosis a mutually beneficial relationship between species.

Social Sciences


Animals and Subsistence Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the role empathy plays in human-animal relations. Identify some characteristics of the ways that Indigenous hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists relate to animals. Discuss the relationship between Rock Cree hunters and animals. Human-Animal Empathy in Subsistence One of the most important relationships between humans and animals is that centered on subsistence, the means by which a group of individuals makes a living. In hunting-and-gathering and pastoral societies , the relationships between humans and animals are critical to human survival. Serving as meat, tools for hunting and for herding other animal species, and sources of commodities such as wool and leather, these societies’ animals are central to human lives. In such societies, human relationships with animals are typically characterized by animal empathy , or the sense of being attuned to the feelings or experiences of other beings—in this case, animals. Elaborate beliefs and rituals surrounding human-animal interdependence are common among hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. The research of anthropologist Pat Shipman ([2015] 2017) suggests that human empathy and alliances with animals, especially dogs, gave humans an evolutionary advantage over animals. Relying on animals for survival prompted humans to develop not only improved hunting and meat-processing tools but also a deep understanding of their prey. Humans needed to be able to discern and predict animal behaviors, including migratory patterns. By the emergence of our species, Homo sapiens , some 300,000 years ago, humans had evolved to have a sophisticated empathic understanding of and relationship with animals. By the Upper Paleolithic (50,000–12,000 BP), humans were leaving testimonials to their empathic relationships with animals in cave paintings. One of the most outstanding early examples of animal art is the paintings found in the Lascaux cave in southwestern France, depicting the animals and plants that humans encountered some 17,000 years ago. These paintings were likely created over a range of years by several generations of hunters. Of the more than 6,000 images of humans, animals, and abstract signs, some 900 are animals. Animals that appear in these paintings include horses, deer, aurochs (wild cattle), bison, felines, a bird, a bear, and a rhinoceros. One black bull measures 5.6 meters (approximately 17 feet) in length. The animal is painted as if its legs are in motion. One of the felines appears to be urinating to mark its territory. Paintings of various animal species appear on the walls of the Lascaux cave in southwestern France. The paintings have been dated to ca. 15,000–17,000 BCE. (credit: “6 i Lascaux_painting” by Paul Smith/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Lascaux closed to tourists in 1963 to protect the extraordinary artwork inside. Today, it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site by the United Nations. This means that it is legally protected by international agreement with the goal of ensuring permanent conservation and protection. Lascaux is of inestimable value for understanding our common human history. Animal Relationships among Indigenous Hunters Many cultures continue to rely on wild animals for subsistence today. This dependence requires the mastery of various cognitive skills, including knowledge and understanding of animal behaviors. In all cultures, much of the socialization of children is connected to skills required for subsistence. In societies that rely on hunting for survival, children learn to be especially attentive to their environments. It is also common in such societies for children to keep pets, often the young of wild animals that have been hunted, such as birds and small mammals. Many wild animals are capable of being tamed by human handling when they are young. An animal is considered tamed when it has learned to tolerate human proximity and interaction for considerable periods of time. Young lowland Amazonian children with a pet sloth in Peru. (credit: “Bad Hair Day in the Amazon” by Kevin Rheese/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Indigenous hunter-gatherers subsist on what their environment freely provides. They do not produce food but rather collect it. Indigenous hunters typically view animals as fellow sentient and spiritual beings with whom they must maintain a relationship of mutual respect. Commonly, they practice elaborate rituals associated with hunting, both to show respect for their prey and to increase the likelihood of success in the hunt. In his study of Yukaghir elk and reindeer hunters in Siberia, Danish anthropologist Rane Willerslev (2004) recorded many ritualistic hunting behaviors. These included taking a sauna bath several days before the hunt to diminish the hunters’ scent; using special language (code words) to talk about the hunt, never mentioning death or hunting directly, in order to deceive or confuse the animal spirits; and “feeding” a fire with alcohol and tobacco the night before the hunt to perfume the air and seduce the animal spirit to desire the hunter. Even so, the hunters are never overconfident about the hunt, as they believe they risk their own identities as human beings when trying to lure an animal and its spirit. The bond between hunter and hunted in Indigenous societies is often viewed as tenuous, a relationship between equals in which the balance of power could shift in either direction. During the hunt itself, Yukaghir hunters wear wooden skis covered in elk leather so that their movements sound like the movements of an animal in snow, and they practice thinking like the elk or reindeer to lower the animals’ inhibitions so that they will allow the hunters to get near. The hunters even imagine themselves speaking to the animal, trying to diminish its fears. For the Yukaghir people, the hunt can be a dangerous interaction, and so respect is necessary at all times, even after the body of the animal has been taken. A Case Study: Rock Cree Hunters The Asinskâwôiniwak , or Rock Cree , are an Indigenous society of hunter-gatherers living in northwestern Manitoba, Canada. In his ethnography Grateful Prey (1993), cultural anthropologist Robert Brightman examines the various ways in which the Rock Cree think about and interact with animals. Once a foraging society subsisting on big game hunting, fishing, and fur trapping, today the Rock Cree are primarily settled on government lands and no longer nomadic. Their relationship with animals continues to be central to their cultural identity, however, and today they hunt and trap as part of a mixed subsistence system that includes both foraging and wage labor. The Rock Cree’s hunting is informed by both Indigenous principles that place high value on big game animals such as bear, moose, and caribou and the current market price for animal products such as pelts. During his research, Brightman observed a fascinating tension between humans and animals at the core of Rock Cree hunting culture. Because animals are believed to be both spirit and body and capable of regenerating (reincarnating), killing an animal has repercussions for the hunter. If the hunter does not treat the animal’s body with respect after the kill, the animal spirit will not return to the hunter: The animals are endlessly regenerated, and yet they are finite. I am more powerful than the animal because I kill and eat it. The animal is more powerful than I because it can elude me and cause me to starve. The animal is my benefactor and friend. The animal is my victim and adversary. The animal is different from me, and yet it is like me. (Brightman 1993, 36) Rock Cree hunters, who may be male or female, are frequently influenced by an animal spirit called a pawakan that appears in their dreams. Sometimes referred to as the “master of animals” in other Indigenous societies where it is also found, the pawakan is the head spirit of an animal species or type. Individual animals have a different and lesser spirit. The relationship that hunters have with the pawakan is complex and variable and depends on the hunter’s behaviors and circumstances. The pawakan may provide the hunter with useful information about where a prey animal can be found and can persuade a specific animal to either go near the hunter or elude them. A sorcerer can even send a pawakan to frighten dangerous animals away from a potential human victim. The Rock Cree believe that an animal can be successfully hunted only if it voluntarily offers itself to the hunter. Through offerings of prayers, songs, and bits of food and tobacco burned in a stove or outside fire, the Rock Cree symbolically interact with their prey prior to the hunt. Once the animal is slain, the hunter makes sure that no parts of its body are wasted. To waste any part of an animal would be disrespectful and would imperil the hunter’s future success. The Rock Cree have detailed procedures for butchering, cooking, and eating animals and for disposing of the bones by hanging them in trees where they cannot be violated by other predators. They believe that once the people have finished with the animal and left its bones hanging, the animal will recover its bones and regenerate back into the environment. Sometimes, hunters or trappers say they recognize an animal and that it is the “same one” that was killed before (Brightman 1993, 119). This study of the Rock Cree illustrates the intense and complex relationships that can exist between humans and wild animals. Many of these same kinds of relationships between hunters and animals also exist among the Netsilik people and other hunting populations. Indigenous hunter-gatherers have a fundamentally different view of their relationships with animals and of their own place in the world than do pastoralists or people living in industrial societies. This traditional wisdom and interconnected way of being in the environment is a valuable part of our shared human cultural heritage. Animal Relationships among Nomadic and Transhumant Pastoralists Like hunter-gatherers, pastoralists also have empathic relationships with animals, but the nature of those relationships is different. Pastoralism, which is subsistence based on herding animals, can be either nomadic or transhumant. Nomadic pastoralism is herding based on the availability of resources and involves unpredictable movements, as herders decide from day to day where they will go next. Transhumant pastoralists have patterned movements from one location to another. The Izhma Komi and Nenets herders in Russia, discussed earlier in the chapter in the section on multispecies ethnography, practice nomadic pastoralism. While the relationship between nomadic pastoralists and their animals is based on respect and empathy, just as with hunter-gatherers, nomadic pastoralists are more involved in the daily lives of the animals they rely on. Typically, the animals are herded into human campsites each night, and often their movements are monitored during the day. The animals are not physically dependent on humans, but the two groups are involved with each other, as herders offer supplemental food to the reindeer to reinforce their connection to the human campsites for the night. Both hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists rely on their animals for meat and leather, but nomadic pastoralists might also harvest milk and use the animals as transport, two practices that require the animals to be more accustomed to human handling. The pastoral herd is more dependable as a food source than the wild animals of hunter-gatherers, but it is also more labor intensive and time consuming, requiring humans to manage the animals according to a daily routine. A Sami reindeer herder in Sweden. Pastoralists such as the Sami rely on their animals for meat and leather, as well as sometimes making use of their milk and using them to transport heavy materials. (credit: “A Day at Work” by Mats Andersson/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) Nomadic pastoralism is not as widely practiced as transhumant pastoralism, which evolved around the time of the rise of agriculture in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Transhumant pastoralists do not typically raise crops or forage for wild plants, and they are dependent on trade with agricultural societies for vegetable products. Interestingly, while there are cultures that practice strict vegetarianism and do not consume any meat products, such as the Hindu and Jain cultures in India, humans cannot live solely on meat. Arctic hunters who had no access to vegetation in the winter ate the stomach contents of grazing animals, such as caribou, to access vegetable matter. Transhumant pastoralists typically have a tenuous and competitive relationship with agriculturalist societies, as agriculturalists may not always have sufficient surplus for trade in years when there have been droughts or warfare, for example. At times, the relationships between sedentary agriculturalists and more mobile and dependent pastoralists break down into conflict involving threats, destruction of property, and even warfare. Transhumant pastoralism is usually built around a seasonal migration between a family’s two households in different geographical areas. It normally takes days or weeks to move people and herds between the households, so pastoralists often have mobile residences, such as yurts or tents, to use during travel. As we find in nomadic pastoral societies, transhumant pastoralists rely on their animals for various trade commodities such as meat, leather, wool and wool goods (e.g., ropes and blankets), and juvenile offspring. The most common domestic herd animals of transhumant pastoralists are cattle, sheep, goats, camelids (llamas and alpacas), and yaks. animal empathy a human sense of understanding and sensing the feelings of other animals. nomadic pastoralism herding that is based on the availability of environmental resources; involves unpredictable movements, as herders decide from day to day where they will go next. pastoral societies societies in which primary subsistence is based on herding groups of animals. tame a behavioral condition in which humans encourage wild animals to tolerate human proximity and interaction. transhumant pastoralism herding in a regular, patterned movement from one location to another.

Social Sciences


Symbolism and Meaning of Animals Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify totemism. Identify the roles of animals in the oral traditions of many human cultures. Describe the various ways animals are used in religious practices. When we think of animals, we usually picture them as pets, food, or wildlife, but animals play a central role in the symbolism of human lives as well. Humans relate to animals not only as tangible beings but also as images and symbols that carry personal meaning and communicate cultural norms. While we can find animal symbols almost everywhere in human cultures, they play a particularly significant role in group identity. Totemism Totemism is a belief system in which a subcultural group acknowledges kinship with a spirit being, typically a plant or animal, that serves as the group’s emblem or herald. Relationships with their totems mirror the social relationships they have with each other as subgroups within their society. Totemic groups, often referred to as clans, view themselves as descendants of nonhuman ancestors and maintain special relationships of respect with other species in the natural world. Totemism is an example of a metaphorical relationship between humans and the natural world, one that links humans, animals, plants, landforms, and even weather events into a unified web of life. Many Indigenous groups practice totemism and have ancestral alliances with certain animals and plants, demonstrated by the ways in which they talk about them in their myths and depict them in their artwork. Totemic cultures frequently practice shamanism as a way to communicate with animal and plant species. The totem pole, a cultural practice of some North American Indigenous groups, exhibits the clan’s identity, with a focus on the connections that the clan has with ancestors, animals, and plants. This reproduction of a First Nations totem pole is on display in Stanley Park, Vancouver, Canada. (credit: “2014 06 27 Cher and Downtown Vancouver 065” by Blake Handley/flickr, CC BY 2.0) The totem , an animal or plant believed to be spiritually connected to a group of people, is a symbol of identity for the subgroup. The Anishinaabe, a North American Indigenous tribe located along the midwestern border between Canada and the United States, was historically divided into various doodeman (clans), most of which had local animals as their totems. Examples of their totem animals include a loon, a crane, a fish, a bird, a bear, a marten, and a deer. All members of the same totemic clan identified with one another as descendants and relatives. The totemic identification that children received at birth (from their fathers’ affiliations) connected individuals not otherwise linked by close social or biological relationships, creating a spiritual kinship within the clan through the common totem. Clans were often associated with specific occupations and work assignments within the larger tribe. Clans also determined marriage rules; members of the same clan could not marry one another, as it was considered to be incest. While the Anishinaabe today have fewer clans, and thus fewer animal totems, than when their population was higher, and the importance of clans and totems has lessened, they continue to value the identities that their ancestors constructed through the natural world. The totem pole is a form of monumental architecture displaying the significant totems and historical events in a clan or family’s ancestral history. It functions as a signpost that identifies the occupants of an area to those passing through and proclaims the pride that a people have in their ancestry. Extended families are grouped together in a clan. The totem pole serves to proclaim the clan membership that an extended family has had throughout its history. The story of the first creation of the Indigenous group and the major events that occurred in the life of that family, its clan, and its tribe are all depicted on the totem pole. Many, though not all, Indigenous groups in North America make totem poles. These poles are historical landmarks of cultural identity. Although Western societies do not construct physical totem poles, they do utilize some of the same symbolism in sports mascots and family heraldry. Sports teams use different types of symbolism, but animal symbols are common. Often, teams choose animals that are local to their immediate environment or that connect with certain characteristics and behaviors with which the group wishes to identify. Some well-known teams with animal mascots are the Detroit Lions, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Boston Bruins. What animal mascots do you know? Animals in Oral Tradition Animals play an important role in nearly all oral traditions and religions. Across cultures, including Western cultures in Europe and the United States, animals appear as protagonists in myths and stories. The animal characters in nursery rhymes, fairy tales, fables, and folktales teach adults and children lessons and morals and model personal characteristics, some peculiar to a specific culture and others more universal. For example, the story of Chicken Little, also known in the UK as Henny Penny, is one that many US children learn at an early age. It was collected in print in the early 19th century, but it has older roots as a European folktale. In this tale, Chicken Little goes out for a walk on a windy day, and an acorn falls on her head. She panics—the sky must be falling! She runs around the farm warning all the animals about the calamity that she believes is happening: “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” The moral of the story is to have courage and not believe everything you hear. “The Queen Bee” is an interesting European reflection on animals, recorded from oral tradition by the Grimm brothers in 1812 . In this story, three princes, all brothers, leave their castle home to seek their fortunes and travel around the world. Two of the brothers move about haphazardly, paying no attention to the animals around them, but the youngest son, with the insulting name of Simpleton, is more considerate to the animals they encounter. When the older brothers try to destroy an anthill, kill ducks, and chase bees out of their hive, Simpleton intervenes to protect the animals and stop his brothers from causing harm. Eventually, the three princes arrive at another castle, in which everything living has been turned to stone except for one very old man. The old man tells the princes that if they can perform three tasks, all of which depend on the help of animals, they will be able to wake up the castle and earn the hand of a princess. The animals, remembering how they were treated, agree to help only young Simpleton, who thereby gains the keys of the kingdom. The moral is that even the smallest animals serve a mighty purpose. Many of the animal stories that are still told in Western societies were either collected by the Grimm brothers in the early 1800s (1812–1857) or taken from Aesop’s Fables, a collection of stories supposedly told by Aesop , an enslaved Greek storyteller, around 500 BCE. These stories have made their way into children’s storybooks and animated movies—including an animated version of Chicken Little. Indigenous societies across cultures have their own sets of animal stories that provide instruction and wisdom. Some of the most common animal symbols among Native American cultures are the coyote, the raven, the bear, and the spider. Coyote and Raven often appear in stories as tricksters , animal spirits or deities who are lively and clever and get into trouble through thoughtless or unconventional actions. In the story of Coyote and Bluebird from the Pima people of the southeastern United States, Coyote envies Bluebird’s plumage and asks for the secret to the beautiful blue color of the bird’s feathers. Bluebird tells Coyote that these pretty blue feathers came from bathing in blue water. Coyote does the same and comes out with a fine blue coat. In his vanity, he tries to outrun his shadow so that he can see his beautiful blue body in the light, and he crashes into a stump head-on, landing in the dirt, which coats his blue fur and paints him a “dirty” color that he still has today. The moral of this tale is that vanity does not serve an individual well. In West Africa, many myths focus on a supernatural figure named Anansi , the spider. Anansi is a culture hero who teaches lessons of bravery and morality. Culture heroes are typically associated with supernatural feats and are particular to each cultural group, exhibiting specific traits, actions, and discoveries that are significant in that culture. In one Anansi story cycle brought by enslaved Africans to the Caribbean area during the time of the Atlantic slave trade, Anansi goes fishing and fills his basket with many different sizes of fish. On his way home, he crosses paths with Tiger, who demands to know what Anansi is carrying in the basket. Scared, Anansi lies and says he has nothing. Tiger takes the basket and sees the fish. In a series of back-and-forth interactions, Anansi succeeds in outsmarting Tiger by agreeing to clean his fur. Tiger shakes down his long hair, and then Anansi uses it to tie Tiger to the trunk of a tree, picks up his basket of fish, and continues home. The moral of the story? Use your wit to protect yourself and your possessions . Or, perhaps, Don’t let a bully get the best of you . Animals in Religion Animals play a role in most religions. Common functions include as objects of ritual sacrifice and as tokens symbolizing gifts, payments, or even messages between the human world and the divine. As just one example, think of the use of a dove in the Noah and the ark myth (Genesis 8:6–12). The dove is the first animal to bring back a piece of greenery, evidence that the flood had receded. With this promise, Noah begins preparations to leave the ark and start over. This use of animals as messengers and forms of sacred communication is seen across cultures. In prehistoric Peru, wild guinea pigs were sacrificed and buried either alone or with humans. They appear in archaeological deposits in Peru as early as 9000 BP (Sandweiss and Wing 1997), and they continue to appear as sacrifices after their domestication around 4500 BP and through the Inca period that ended in the 16th century. Some of the sacrificed animals are whole and intact, mummified and desiccated, while others have been burned and their charred bones stored as ritual offerings inside elaborate ceramic jars. Guinea pigs were and still are a dependable source of meat in the Andes, where they traditionally live inside kitchens, nesting around the warmth of the cooking area. They are also used medicinally, their fat rubbed on areas of sickness to draw out pain and infection, and employed as divination tools. During divination rituals today, some Andean healers will rub a living guinea pig on a patient’s body to draw out some of the illness and then cut the animal open to “read” it, looking for a sign of some type of abnormality in the guinea pig’s organs that would mirror the location of the illness in the human patient. At Lo Demás , an ancient Inca fishing site south of Lima, Peru (ca. 1480–1540 CE), archaeologists have excavated multiple guinea pig sacrifices, some of which show characteristic signs of having been used for divination and healing prior to burial. In India, where Hinduism is the predominant religion, it is common to see cows walking along city streets, undisturbed and roaming freely. Many Hindus practice vegetarianism, but even those who eat meat do not usually eat beef. Cattle are sacred in Hinduism. In the Vedas, the Hindu sacred texts, the cow is associated with Aditi, the mother of all gods. In a very famous study, “The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle” (1966), cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris explores the economic rationale associated with revering cattle , arguing that cattle are considered sacred because they are more useful when allowed to live out their natural lifespans than when slaughtered at a young age for meat alone. In India, cattle provide dung that can be dried and used as fuel, traction for plowing fields, some limited milk production, and reproductive capacity. When cattle die of old age, beef and leather are then harvested by those in the lowest socioeconomic class. Keeping cattle alive as long as possible thus provides for a greater range of material assets than raising them for food. This economic rationale, however true it may be, does not negate the cultural and religious importance of cattle to Indian people. Understanding animals’ symbolic roles is critical to understanding human belief systems. A white elephant enjoys the rain in an elephant sanctuary in Phuket, Thailand. In Buddhism , the elephant symbolizes mental strength and endurance (Diamond 2011). Buddhists in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand believe that the white elephant represents one of the reincarnations of the Buddha. (credit: “Elephant in the Rain” by Marc Dalmulder/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Buddhism is a religion that reveres all life and sees humans and animals as intertwined, each capable of being reincarnated into the other, reborn into a new cycle of life inhabiting a new body of the same or another species. Because Buddhists believe in karma , a spiritual principle of cause and effect in which an individual’s words, actions, and deeds in one life affect their conditions in the next life cycle, the relationship between humans and other animals should ideally be based on respect and sympathy. All forms of life are working toward enlightenment, a state of awakening and having a complete knowledge of the life process. Animals are important in human belief systems. English art critic and poet John Berger ([1980] 1991) writes about the gaze between humans and other animals, saying that animals remind humans that we are not here on Earth alone, that we are all companion species. Many religious systems reflect the awareness that life is not the exclusive domain of the human species and that our world is a shared community. For more on animals and belief systems, see the Ethnographic Sketch at the end of the chapter. culture hero an idealized animal or human figure associated with supernatural feats. A culture hero is particular to their cultural group, exhibiting specific traits, actions, and discoveries that are significant to that group of people karma a Buddhist spiritual principle of cause and effect in which an individual’s words, actions, and deeds in one life affect their conditions in the next life cycle reincarnation rebirth into a new cycle of life, inhabiting a new body of the same or another species. totem an animal or plant believed to be spiritually connected to a group of people. totemism a belief and classification system in which a group of humans claims a spiritual kinship with a plant or animal that serves as the group’s emblem. trickster an animal spirit deity who is very lively and clever and gets into trouble through thoughtless or unconventional actions.

Social Sciences