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

Abstract

Ethical evaluation and ethical judgments about animals are traditionally regarded as hopelessly anthropomorphic and even anthropocentric: it is believed that they are based on attributing, without sufficient grounds, human qualities such as free will as well as human values to the animals. This belief, however, is based on an implicit assumption that the logic of ethical judgments about animals is the same as that used in the case of humans. In this paper, which is based on ethnographic data on reindeer-herding nomads of the European part of Russia and of Western Siberia, I demonstrate that this assumption is false. In the case of reindeer herders, ethical judgments about animals are based on detailed knowledge of their behaviour originating from the experience of direct interaction with them. They take into account possible variations of animal behaviour and do not contain any mechanical transfer of human values. Furthermore, in the case of domestic animals, the behaviour introduced by constant interaction with their masters represents a special object of evaluation, which involves ethical assessment of the masters themselves. Therefore, if it can be said that some anthropomorphism is involved here, then it is an anthropomorphism of a special kind, one that is based on knowledge and represents an effective means of learning. The ethical judgments themselves can play an important role in organizing interaction between the herders and the animals and in their mutual adaptation.