Amoral Wolves and Cultured Reindeer: Anthropomorphism and Ethical Judgements in the Case of the Reindeer Herders of European Russia and Western Siberia

Аннотация

Ethical evaluation and ethical judgements about animals are traditionally regarded as a manifestation of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, connected with a baseless attribution to animals of human qualities such as free will, and the extension to them of a human system of values. This opinion, however, is based on an implicit assumption that the logic of moral judgements about animals repeats the logic of such judgements regarding people. The present work, using ethnographic data about Komi and Nenets reindeer herders, shows that this assumption is wrong: moral judgements about both wild and domestic animals are based on a wide experience of interaction with them, take into account the variability of their behaviour and do not mechanically transfer onto animals the norms of human morality. Furthermore, in the case of domestic animals, one of the objects of judgement is the complexes of behaviour arising from the animals’ interaction with their owners, whose activity is also an object of judgement. In this way, though it may be agreed that anthropomorphism is present in reindeer herders’ moral judgements about animals, it is a particular kind anthropomorphism, based on knowledge and providing a powerful tool for understanding the animal. The ethical judgements themselves may therefore play a positive role in organising the herders’ interaction with the animals and their mutual adaptation to each other.