In recent decades, our relationship with other animals has become an increasingly important sociopolitical question. As a result of the increasing scientific knowledge of the cognitive and social abilities of animals, we are forced to reconsider whether our current way of treating other animals is legitimate. This challenge also requires us to develop new ways of both conceptualizing other animals and conducting our relations with them.
A clear distinction between humans and other animals has been a central part of sociological theory construction for decades. Animals have also been almost invisible in the sociological analysis of society and human sociality. Sociological animal studies, a relatively new field of research that has been growing rapidly since the end of the twentieth century, has identified this exclusion of animals time and again, but there has been little research on the reasons for this sociological view on animals; have animals consistently been excluded from sociological research, or was there more discussion on animals and more variety in the ways they were portrayed in the early sociological texts?
Animal is a category that reduces the multiplicity of life forms under a single term. This concept serves as an opposite and counterpart of human. Animals have become a cultural ‘one’, unity, whose difference from humans is more important than its internal differences and variation. As Nik Taylor has written, “[o]ne of the ironies in modern Western thought is the fact that we separate humans from animals through language when, in fact, humans are animals” (Taylor 2013, 1).
In this book, I use the concept ‘animals’ often as it is generally used: animals as all the other animals except humans. I do this reluctantly, for practical reasons and to make the text more readable. I regard humans as one species of animals, and I see the continuous lingual distinction between humans and all other animals harmful, as it blurs the fact that humans are one species of animals and emphasizes a boundary and difference between humans and all other animal species instead of continuity. The dichotomy human–animal also diminishes the differences between other animals and represents humans as the only unique species. When possible, I write about humans and other animals as I see the dichotomy of humans versus animals as one of the root problems in the societal exclusion of animals. This practice is not unproblematic either, as it designates all animals that are not humans ‘others’, while humans appear again as ‘the foremost’. We are locked in our language, which has evolved inside our anthropocentric culture.
This book is about exploring how the animal and animals appeared in the texts of the classical era of sociology. I will show what sociological themes caused animals to appear on the pages of those early sociological books. I focus on two early sociologists, the Frenchman Émile Durkheim and the Finnish–English Edward Westermarck, who worked as professors of sociology simultaneously in neighbouring countries. Westermarck also carried out research in Morocco and lived in that country for long periods. I examine the significance of animals in their texts, how the animals are used and when animals are needed in their sociological theory construction.
The so-called classical period of sociology was also an era of industrialization, urbanization and secularization. The formation of sociological ideas on human and animal was part of a more general process in which the status and significance of ‘man’ had to be redefined. Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the general secularization were threatening the special status of humans. The idea of humans as a result of special creation was questioned. This human status was redefined in several ways in early sociology, some of them differing from those that have been employed in the later sociological canon. In this book, we will see that in the early period of sociology there was a range of conceptions of animal and human: for example, the meaning of the evolutionary theory for understanding humans and other animals was interpreted in distinct ways.
Durkheim and Westermarck shared an interest in many sociological questions, but they had diverging outlooks on human and animal, and hence views of sociology as a discipline. Morality and its origins were a major theme in early sociology and a central topic in both Durkheim’s and Westermarck’s body of work; in their consideration of morals, they both discussed animals, but in contrasting ways. This is because of their differing views on the nature of human morality. Westermarck emphasizes the evolutionary development of morality, so that he sees humans as sharing certain moral features with other animals. Durkheim’s perspective emphasizes the emergence of morality as a result of human social life and society in concert with human social development and the qualitative uniqueness and purely human nature of these phenomena.
Alongside morality, religion is one of the topics covered by both Westermarck and Durkheim. To identify the significance of religion they analysed and compared religions. Animals’ and people’s perceptions of animals appear in their texts as a result, but in differing ways. Westermarck is particularly interested in religious beliefs about animals and teachings and norms concerning their proper treatment, whereas Durkheim examines the importance of animals mainly in totemism. Durkheim’s interest lies especially in totemistic beliefs in the shared ancestors of humans and animals and the divine nature given to animals in these belief systems. Durkheim’s and Westermarck’s conflicting views on these themes of common interest led them to comment on each other’s interpretations in their texts.
Westermarck’s and Durkheim’s perspectives on the relation between man and animal are reflected in their thoughts on the essence of humanity and human social behaviour, the correct methodology of sociology and their views on the relationship between sociology and other disciplines. Research on sociological views on animals can affect the discipline’s understanding of humans and human society. It could also facilitate deconstruction of dualisms concerning human social life and animal life. One of my aims has been to understand why a strict human–animal boundary became so important for sociological theory.
This book shows that in the early years of sociology, animals were discussed more and perceptions of animals were more varied than in the later sociological canon. Animals occurred in a wide variety of forms, as generalized ‘animal’ and animal nature, as a variety of species and even animal individuals. Animals have many uses in these texts, but the most important one is to define human, social life and sociology. These findings may give us new ideas about how to integrate human–animal relations, social significance of animals, our shared animality and other non-dichotomist ideas in sociology.
1.1 Invisibility of Animals in Sociological Tradition
When we think about the role of animals in sociology, the images that come to mind are not numerous—the first impression of animals in sociology is invisibility. But for a sociologist, social invisibility—exclusion—can be just as interesting as inclusion, something being very well presented and much analysed.
It poses an interesting sociological quest to find out why we should not discuss a particular issue, or why we do not talk about certain people or subjects. If we demarcate some issues outside of sociological consideration, this may prevent our discipline from finding certain answers or even asking some relevant questions. Despite their invisibility, animals have factually been quite central to sociological theory, especially through the construction of human–animal boundary. Defining ‘human’ and ‘society’ is the core subject matter of sociology. And defining human and humanity also inevitably means defining animal and animality. During this research process, I also gained a greater appreciation of how central our views on animals have been for our views on human social behaviour.
In sociological animal studies, the invisibility of animals has been discussed (see, e.g., Taylor 2013, 7–11), but the reasons behind this tradition have not really been studied. This observation served as an inspiration for this book. We have not known how the sociological view on animals has been formed and how animals became excluded from the sociological theory. The end of the nineteenth century was an era when human animality and the question of human nature and its unique character were actively debated, not least because of the rise of the evolutionary theory. My original suspicion that, in the early period of sociology, views on animals and the scope of the discipline might have been more fluid and varied than they were later proved to be correct.
Animals have not been discussed widely in sociology except for the recent work done in ‘sociological animal studies’, as a part of the emerging cross-disciplinary field of animal studies. This multidisciplinary field has grown fast since the 1990s. This new area of research on human–animal relations and sociocultural meanings of animals has been carried out under the titles ‘animals and society’, ‘HAS (human-animal studies)’, ‘animality studies’ and ‘anthrozoology’. Also, the field of ‘critical animal studies’ is gaining ground. Critical animal studies are challenging the anthropocentric perspectives found also in the field of human–animal studies and taking a pronounced standpoint against the oppression of animals (Peggs 2014, 41). This rise of academic interest in human–animal relationships and significance of animals and their treatment in human societies has been called the ‘animal turn’.1
However, only some analyses have been made about classical social scientists and the position of animals in their texts. G.H. Mead has been the object of most interest thus far (e.g. Irvine 2003; Konecki 2005; Myers 2003). Mead’s prioritization of language and anthropocentrism have made his Mind, Self, and Society a negative classic in sociological animal studies (Wilkie and McKinnon 2013). There have been some analyses of animals in Marx’s thinking too (Benton 1993). Järvikoski (1996a, 1996b) has briefly discussed animals while analysing the relation of nature and society in the classical sociological texts of Marx, Durkheim, Spencer and Comte. Philosopher Kari Väyrynen (e.g. 2006) has analysed Westermarck from the perspec...