Can natural behavior be cultivated? The farm as local human/animal culture |
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Authors: | Pär Segerdahl |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Center for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University, Uppsala Science Park, SE-751 85 Uppsala, Sweden |
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Abstract: | Although the notion of natural behavior occurs in many policy-making and legal documents on animal welfare, no consensus has
been reached concerning its definition. This paper argues that one reason why the notion resists unanimously accepted definition
is that natural behavior is not properly a biological concept, although it aspires to be one, but rather a philosophical tendency
to perceive animal behavior in accordance with certain dichotomies between nature and culture, animal and human, original
orders and invented artifacts. The paper scrutinizes the philosophy of natural behavior as it developed in the organic movement
in response to a perceived contrast between industrialized and traditional agriculture. There are two reasons for focusing
on the organic movement: (i) the emphasis on “the natural” is most accentuated there and has a long history, (ii) everyday
life on organic farms presupposes human/animal interplay, which conflicts with the philosophical tendency to separate nature
from culture. This mismatch between theory and practice helps us see why, and how, the philosophy of natural behavior needs
to be reconsidered. The paper proposes that we understand farms as local human/animal cultures, and asks what we can mean
my natural behavior in such contexts. Since domestic animals adapt to agricultural environments via interaction with caretakers,
such interplay is analyzed as “hub” in these animals’ natural behavior. |
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Keywords: | animal caretaker animal husbandry animal welfare domestication double imprinting human/animal culture mutual adaptation natural behavior organic movement |
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