Download Non-western and non-dualistic human/nature relations

Non-western and non-dualistic human/nature
relations
I. Landscape and Memory

History and the Norfolk countryside:




What might be considered the domain of ‘nature’ and ‘things natural’
is the result of pre-meditated cultural actions and re-interpretations.
The dominant idiom is one which refers to subtle traces of past
human actions that are discerned and interpreted by those in the
present with present purposes in mind.
The Norfolk landscape is one that requires constant attention to and
intervention in preserving and reconstructing what is valued from the
past.
Local Nature INCLUDES history.
‘Other’ Senses in Apprehending ‘Nature’




Feld: Nature for the Kaluli is codified through the ecology of sound,
the cartography of song.
Geography BECOMES History.
Strathern: for the Hagen, there is no nature and no culture; only a
universe of animate beings exchanging substances.
II. Human/Nature Metaphors



Human/Nature relations can be investigated through metaphors
Metaphor: a comparison of two domains of experience. Some see it as a
fundamental aspect of human thought processes.
Bird-David: human/nature relatedness in small-scale, tribal and huntinggathering communities is expressed through distinctive metaphors.
III. Tribal Metaphors of Human/Nature
Relatedness
 Sexual relatedness, e.g. the Cree.
 Parent/Child Relatedness, e.g. the Nayaka of South India.
 Namesake Relatedness, e.g. the !Kung of southern Africa.
IV. Case Study: The Cosmic Food Web of the
Makuna of Amazonia

Background:

The Makuna are a small, Tukanoan-speaking group in northwest
Amazonia.

They subsist on shifting cultivation (of manioc), fishing and hunting

Two classes of shamans, plus dancers and chanters.

Named, patrilineal clans linked to ritual property.

Exogamous clans inhabit longhouses that are widely dispersed.

Sister exchange is the preferred form of marriage, I.e. the children of
brothers and sisters should marry each other.

Residence is uxorilocal, I.e. people reside with or near their mother’s
clan after marriage.
V. Human/Nature Relatedness of the Makuna



Society and nature are contiguous and not separate.
Animism, i.e. the belief that all animate beings and inanimate things contain ‘souls’,
is the basis of Makuna cosmology.
 “Animism endows natural beings with human dispositions and social attributes;
sometimes, even, animals are attributed with ‘culture’- habits rituals, songs and
dances of their own”.
Both human beings and animals are thought to share the same rules of behaviour,
morals, and cosmology.
VI. Makuna Eco-Cosmology



Fundamental distinction is between the world of appearances and that of
essences, or ‘souls’, all beings and things having a phenomenological
form and a spiritual essence.
Animals and human beings belong to the category ‘masa’= people.
Animals are also thought to possess ‘culture’, in the form of rituals,
kinship patterns, morals, dances and ceremonies. Their ‘longhouses’ are
their ecological niches, which are protected and tabooed from hunting.
VII. Makuna Distinctions:
Predators:(Predators/Food):Food

The major form of classification is tripartite:

Predators: Jaguars, Anacondas which hunt, (including humans) but which are not
hunted.
Local word is Yai, the word for jaguar.
Predators/Food: Those who both hunt and are hunted, e.g. human
beings.
 Local word is Masa, the word for people.
Food: Those which are hunted or eaten, e.g. fish and vegetable
matter.
 Local word is Wai, the word for fish.



VIII. Makuna Reciprocity




Balanced Reciprocity governs the relations between the three divisions.
They believe in reincarnation: that the spirit of a dead animal, human, or
vegetable being goes to the spirit house, where the Spirit Owners place it
in a new body through birth. Indeed, that a death is necessary for a new
birth to occur.
Life and vitality on the level of the individual are exchanged for renewal
and essential continuity on the level of the category, clan or species.
Predation, construed as reciprocity, explains death and accounts for the
regeneration of life.
The relationships between life and death, predator and prey have to be
mediated by shamans.
IX. The Role of Shamans





The universe is conceived of as a cosmic food web of eaters and eaten,
predators and prey.
Shamans are thought of as predators, on a par with the jaguar spirits.
They can change shapes and move between the different material cultures
of predators and prey.
Every species of game animal has its own spirit owner.
Shamans must negotiate with the spirit owner of each animal, especially
predator animals.

Shamans must give spirit articles, I.e. cacao and snuff, to the spirit
owner for it to relinquish an animal in the hunt.

If the hunter violates the agreement, e.g. by taking too many animals
in the hunt, then the spirit owner will bring disease and death on the
community.
X. Distinctions between Hunting and Fishing
Among the Makuna
 Hunting is conceived of as seduction; the relationship is one as between
marriage partners, and the hunted animal is seen as an individual.
 Fish are viewed as a generic category and their spirit owners are not
negotiated with before killing them.
XI. Conclusions




Animism implies a monistic, or continuous relation between animals and
human beings.
However, this does not mean that distinctions are LACKING; rather they
are formed on a different basis, e.g. among the Makuna the distinctions
between predator/prey.
Humankind is thus seen as a particular form of life participating in a
wider community of living beings regulated by a single and totalizing set
of rules of conduct.
They construe human predation as a revitializing exchange with nature,
modeled on the rule of reciprocity between affines and the shamanically
mediated exchanges between men and gods.
XII. Further Thoughts: Beyond Nature/Culture
Dualism
 Hybridity and domestication.
 The co-evolution of humans and dogs?