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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:02.903)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Marcy Norton, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. And we're here today to talk about her book, Tame and the Wild, covering our relationship with animals since the year 1492. Dr. Norton, wonderful to have you on today.
Marcy (00:22.738)
It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
PJ (00:25.667)
So Dr. Norton, why this book?
Marcy (00:29.174)
Why this book? Well, there's a few, I mean, here it is, by the way. So it began for a few different reasons. One of them was that I, especially when I got a dog, I got my first adult dog when I was, I mean, I guess it's now been almost 20 years ago. And I was just,
PJ (00:34.727)
Yes, I have it on Kindle, so it's not, yeah, I don't have the cool cover shot. Thank you, thank you.
Marcy (00:56.65)
really blown away by how, when I say adult dog, I mean, there were dogs when I was growing up, but they were kind of like backyard dogs, nothing like the kind of bond that I had with Lily. And at the same, so just like the, you know, the kind of depth of that relationship, and at the same time being aware that right now, probably more animals suffer more than, I mean, I think we can say that actually without any might, like more animals suffer more than ever before,
PJ (01:22.104)
Oh, not a doubt, yeah.
Marcy (01:26.854)
you know, billions are victims of factory farming, others, you know, environmental degradation. And so like how this moment that we're in where there's like so much appreciation and not just for pets, but also all the amazing science, to fix studies about what, you know, the capacities of animals and so on. And, you know, I'm a historian. So I put my historian cap on and it's like, how did we get here?
And my previous work has looked at the intersection between European and native cultures. And so I knew I wanted to sort of pursue that angle. So I just sort of went back in, you know, my period 16th, 17th century, 18th century, early colonization and started looking at how Europeans interacted with animals, how native peoples in Amazonia, Caribbean, Mexico. So that was sort of one kind of starting point. And then the other one, I mean, I don't want to go on too long right now, but was I'd come across some pretty
fascinating stories, historical episodes about human animal relationships between that sort of European indigenous space and just wanted to understand them more.
PJ (02:36.66)
Yeah.
PJ (02:41.791)
I'm getting distracted by a question I'm especially interested in, but I think it'd be better if I do that later. Can you talk about, you give kind of like some basic categories to start with. Do you mind talking, because I think in the book, yeah, you talk first about like the European subject and object kind of ways. And I wrote down at first hunting and livestock, and then I missed I was like, oh, no, she put hunting and husbandry. Let's get the alliteration right.
But can you talk a little bit about the European approach? And it really does seem, I don't know, like obviously there's wild, but like there really does seem to be just these two types of ways that Europeans interact with animals.
Marcy (03:26.13)
Yeah, right. So yeah, so I, and my kind of approach in this book was to look at, like, the sort of, I guess, to back up a little bit, is that I think, you know, we're all born into a culture, and those cultures kind of give us parameters about how we interact with other beings, human and otherwise. And from my initial sort of reading of various sources, it seemed clear to me that there were
what I call modes of interaction, which is not to say that there aren't others. And in fact, I do talk about some others, but like the ones that like overarching structures where you're likely to have these kinds of ways of thinking and interacting with other animals, as you said, we're hunting and husbandry. And what I was really struck by at the beginning is how different the kinds of relationships that were being produced by those and having to do with, as you said,
PJ (03:57.281)
Yes.
Marcy (04:24.134)
whether animals would be regarded and approached as subjects or objects. So in hunting, and here I'm by and large actually referring particularly to the kinds of hunts that nobles, aristocrats, kings and queens practice, because in fact they were very much in control of who had access, both in terms of terrain and dogs and horses. So that's the kind of hunting I'm really talking about. So in those relationships,
It seemed very obvious to me that both the animals who were collaborators and were talking about, you know, hunting dogs, horses, and also hawks and falcons who were tamed to be collaborators in falconry, and then also the prey animals, that they were understood as fellow subjects, you know, having capacity for reason, for feeling, and that hunters would, especially with their collaborators,
form very strong attachments to these, what I call vassal animals, but also a lot of respect even for the prey, even if the intention was to kill them. And in contrast, you have livestock husbandry. And I mean, it makes sense that you actually said livestock because I mean, there are different kinds of animals within animal husbandry. Some of them are servant animals, which is sort of similar to vassal animals. You're kind of...
shepherd dog, to take the most oxen who are plowing. But by and large, as is the case still today, the vast majority of animals that would brought under that system are the livestock whose ultimate raison d'etre was to be killed, to be eaten, or sheared in the case of sheep, but also ending up slaughtered in the end usually. And that those animals, unlike the animals
vassal animals and servant animals were understood really as objects. And I can say more about that, you know, so.
PJ (06:23.4)
Well, I mean, even as you're talking there, it's obviously cultural constructions, even as we look at... I have a friend who grew up in Cambodia as a missionary kid, so she was a white girl in Cambodia, and they had a pet dog, actually two pet dogs, that they lost to neighbors for currys. Right? And it's like...
If you tell that story, I have told that story for comedic effect, for astonishing, like horrific effect over here in the United States and over in Cambodia, they're like, that's weird. You're keeping it as a pet. That's, you know, it's like, you can eat them. Like, and we're like, no, you can't. Like, why not? Like, it's like, it's the, yeah. Sorry. That comes to mind. Um, can you, if. Yeah.
Marcy (07:11.294)
Yeah, and you can see how that you could flip that, you know, like, I mean, which is kind of my whole point from an indigenous perspective, the idea that you would keep any animal once you start feeding it. I mean, we're probably getting ahead of ourselves and then eat it. That that would be as aberrant, you know, as for many people, the idea that you would eat a dog is while they would have no trouble, you know, eating a pig. Right. Which we know is just as intelligent or, you know.
PJ (07:17.035)
Yes.
PJ (07:25.548)
That's all right.
PJ (07:40.179)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually, I wanted to, because you touched on it briefly, but there's that kind of, it's what you start with in the book. There's this foundation to all this. Do you mind talking a little bit about the creation myths that you think that it seemed to play a major role in this, in the way that we think about these relationships?
Marcy (07:59.174)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess in some ways I do, I start the book with different creation accounts. And though in some ways my, like a lot of people when they think about human animal relationships from sort of a humanities or philosophical perspective, start with kind of different philosophical views, and then say that those viewpoints are what justifies various kinds of
Marcy (08:29.246)
One of the points in my book is sort of flip that and to say that the way that we interact with animals is what makes different kinds of origins accounts make sense, you know? And so in the period that I'm looking at, the origins accounts that I start the book with, some of which are very well known to probably most of your listeners like Genesis, obviously weren't.
PJ (08:40.523)
Hmm.
Marcy (08:54.702)
written down in the 16th century, but they continue to have, as they do today, you know, a lot of like resonance for people in art and philosophy and theology. And the same thing is true on the Indigenous side. I mean, we don't have quite the same kind of able to trace back, you know, the sort of theology of their origin stories because of the nature of our sources, but there's good reason to think that they had been circulating for a really long time, you know, the time that
PJ (08:57.579)
Thanks for watching!
You're right. Great.
Marcy (09:24.33)
were recorded. And so with that in mind, to sort of start the history that I'm telling, I try to really bring into relief these contrasts, right? And so in the Genesis account, we have a god who creates man in his image, and then various kinds of, and then after that, various kinds of animals.
to, you know, that are very clearly sort of below him and very distinct from him, you know, very, they're both different kinds of beings and they're hierarchically in relationship with man, right? Only man is made in God's image, right? And in these indigenous stories,
What you have are accounts in which there are earlier populations of humans, and then things happen, and those humans turn into the different kinds of animals who populate the world today, and in some cases plants or even rocks. And so right away you see there's a very different relationship. I mean, one, there's a kind of kinship relationship that doesn't exist in Genesis, and that way though,
actually has some corollaries to modern evolutionary theory, right, where that it's not evolution in the way that is understood by scientists today, but the idea that one class of being can turn into another, you know, transform is there. And the other thing, and also there's not this sense of, you know, hierarchy, I mean, there are hierarchies, but not in the kind of Genesis sense, that there's a clear place for.
PJ (10:51.177)
Hmm.
Marcy (11:13.782)
you know, humankind above other kinds of animals. So there's this more, there's a porousness and there's a lack of hierarchy. And so kind of then the question is, well, what are the kinds of interactions that make those different kinds of origin accounts different?
PJ (11:33.004)
Uh...
I want to make sure this is a fair question, but as I'm listening, you have the different types of hierarchy, and both of them involve power, but whereas in creation, in Genesis, you're talking about an innate, like man is innately at the top, with the indigenous Native American accounts, it's often a question of who has power at the moment. So the hierarchies can... Is that a fair way to talk about it?
Marcy (12:06.07)
You know, I'm not sure, I'm not saying that power is not a relevant category, but I'm not sure that I see power in those particular stories. I see more that, more actually the opposite. I mean, these are earlier populations of humans who, because of their actions,
turned into something else, you know, and so they, you know, because they looked at the sun too long, they turned into a kind of tree with bright yellow fruit or because, um, you know, in the Nahuatl stories from central Mexico, um, because hurricanes came blasting through, they were swept through the trees and they became monkeys, you know.
So it's more, I would say, actually I see more the, actually the fragility of humans to these other kinds of forces rather than their power in those stories. But it's a great question, you know, cause it's not really something that I pursue, right, in those sections of the book.
PJ (13:24.171)
And forgive me, I'm just like, I'm just kind of feeling my way around this even as you talk about this They talk a lot about diet and even So you look at like Europeans generally do better with dairy than people who have lived in tropical places for millennia Your you kind of mentioned how like animal relationships
Marcy (13:42.26)
Mm-hmm.
PJ (13:50.171)
I just realized I made a pun and this is animal relationships feed culture rather than culture eating what we know about the animal relationships. That was not intentional and now I regret everything. But this idea that we come up with our philosophical presuppositions to justify our relationships with animals after, do you think in some ways this idea that with a winter climate we often see...
Marcy (13:54.028)
Hehehehe
Marcy (13:58.292)
Mm-hmm.
PJ (14:17.207)
the reliance on animal products because we do not have the winter planting season. Do you think that is part of what feeds these philosophical presuppositions that the agriculture comes first? Or maybe back and forth like they feed each other?
Marcy (14:32.582)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't think I'm sort of agnostic on that because my point of intersecting the story is when these practices on both sides of the Atlantic have been in place for probably millennia, you know? I mean, not that there isn't, I mean, there is change, not to say that it's unchanging. I mean, one of the changes, in fact, that I look at is the emergence of the slaughterhouse at the end of the...
PJ (14:49.532)
Yeah, yeah.
PJ (14:59.456)
Hmm.
Marcy (15:00.054)
15th century. So I am interested in things that emerge in the area. And I don't want to say, I don't want to have a very crude kind of materialist account where people were doing these things and then they invented these origin stories. I don't know. I don't know how it all went down thousands of years earlier. But I do think that there is a kind of alignment, you could say.
PJ (15:19.72)
Right, right, right.
Marcy (15:29.706)
between what people say about where they came from and the way that they interact in the contemporary period with other beings. So that's maybe I'm being a little bit evasive, but.
PJ (15:41.127)
No, no, I mean, I'm sitting here thinking like, I'm like, Dr. Norton, how dare you? You know, your book says it starts in 1492 and you're not answering my question about like 2000 years earlier. What's wrong with you? No, that's not fair. Like, that's completely, your evasion is completely fair there. I don't think that's an evasion. I think that's just like, yeah, right, right.
Marcy (15:51.702)
Thank you.
Marcy (15:59.722)
Yeah, and I mean, I would love for, you know, scholars of antiquity to like pick it up and sort of, you know, with their skill set, see whether that's, you know.
PJ (16:07.691)
Right, right, right. I am, I'm just, I'm thinking through, so like, I mean, I have not really looked at it through this lens, and I find your, I find this lens really fascinating. I really appreciate it.
PJ (16:27.616)
You know, you talk about with livestock and with husbandry, a good part of this, and this is something that really shocked me was to find out how much breeding we've actually done even before Gregor Mendel explained what was happening, like how much we have changed both plants and animals. Can you speak a little bit to that and to the role that plays in livestock or husbandry as objectifying animals?
Marcy (16:39.839)
Mm-hmm.
Marcy (16:55.975)
Yeah, and let me say that is something I touch on, but there are scholars who look at that in much more depth. So like for your listeners, like Mackenzie Cooley's Perfection of Nature, and an English historian whose first name I'm blanking on, but the last name is Russell, who's written about breeding, where they like really look at, you know, sort of different kinds of breeding practices. But what I focus on, and you know, and I had the challenge too, of course,
covering such a like vast swath of different cultures and then looking at how they interact with each other during the colonial period, I've only been able to sort of selectively approach it. So what I really focus on the book in the livestock chapter has to do with sheep was sort of my, you know, like example. And the way that like, there's a very romanticized vision that we have.
around shepherds and that was also romantic in that period as well. There's these kind of plays where the shepherd is this sort of pastoral figure, but in fact when you look at the nitty gritty of daily life of what the shepherd's job was, it was actually in a lot of ways a very violent one, both in terms of what was needed to happen to the sheep in order to shear them, but also because their job was to try to produce the
finest, softest wool that they were breeding, and that they were making decisions about which kind of sheep they wanted in the gene pool. I mean, they didn't put it in those terms. And these people were largely illiterate, but they would make up kind of little poems about that would describe the kind of wool that you want and would describe in great detail. This is the sort of traces of these practices of the kind of wool that they were looking for and the sheep.
PJ (18:45.992)
Mm.
Marcy (18:47.542)
that didn't have the little baby sheep, you know, and that you would have your lamb and they wouldn't be part of the breeding pool for the wool producers.
PJ (18:54.763)
Hmm. Um.
You mentioned on the other side you have hunting and predation and you make this really interesting comment about how in Europe Warfare hunting was seen as warfare and then it for mesoamerica and for greater amazonia and feel free to talk a little about that too, but the Because i'd never heard the term greater amazonia before but the for predation it was more that it was uh warfare as hunting
Marcy (19:31.374)
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, to back up a little bit, one of the one of the really interesting ways that you're so yeah, I'll back up even more. So I focus on kind of three culture areas in this book, one of them we've been talking about a fair amount already, you know, Europe, focusing on Spain, but I think most of what I'm saying would apply to all of, you know, Western Europe brought in broad strokes. And then
greater Amazonia, which is a term I borrowed from anthropologists to refer to not just Amazonia proper, but really, like almost all of South America, excluding the highland areas where there were the Inca were dominating at the time the Spanish arrived, and where you have your alpaca and the Cunha like I
Yamas like that I decided was just too much. So I left that out. Greater Amazonia would, you know, include the Caribbean as well. Because, you know, the Indigenous people populating the Caribbean had originally, you know, their ancestors had emigrated from the mainland. And I want to say there's a huge amount of diversity in these regions. But through the patterns that I was looking at, there were striking similarities, even though there, I mean, are important differences as well.
And then the other culture area scholars refer to as Mesoamerica, and I was focusing specifically on the area that the Aztecs were controlling or the Mexica at the time of the Spanish arrived into the sort of Oaxaca area. People wanna place themselves a little bit geographically. So in all of these regions, hunting was really important. So that's the first thing to say, hunting being, and I, to...
often including kind of fishing as well and hunting, you know, the practice of stocking and killing wild animals with the purpose of consuming them. But there are also really fascinating differences. And one of the differences, I would actually say the warfare is one where there is maybe more similarities than differences in the sense that
Marcy (21:48.006)
they for Europeans for Amazonians for Nawaz in central Mexico the both the technologies of hunting and the ethos of hunting was transferred into military technologies and really in some ways even more I mean that was true in Europe prior to expansion but
when they arrived in the Americas, because they were encountering people who weren't using horses and were not using dogs in the way that either in regions where there weren't dogs or they were not using dogs, if there were dogs, they weren't using them as kind of hunting collaborators. They repurposed some of those practices in warfare in ways that were not even in effect in Europe. And the most...
kind of vicious would be actually turning dogs into killing machines for people. So that's an example of that kind of transfer, but also really trying to leverage the use of horses and with mixed results, but in their minds, at least initially, this is like a real advantage. And so I'm sort of already anticipating some of the ways that hunting was different in the Americas. One of them being that they weren't hunting with
PJ (22:43.969)
Hm.
PJ (22:48.459)
Hmm.
Marcy (23:12.642)
dogs and horses. And so that created a very different relationship to prey animals. And some dogs and horses, in some ways, the dogs were taking on, to use that example for Europeans, were augmenting their sensory abilities, right? When you think what dogs can do in terms of sniffing and smelling. And one of the results is that it creates some more mediated relationship with the prey animal.
And in indigenous America, there wasn't that level of mediation. And so a lot of the tactics around hunting involve imitating animals, like direct through calls or hiding within the forest. And so those practices of imitating animals in order to find them and then kill them creates a kind of empathic relationship with the prey that
PJ (23:50.272)
Hmm.
Marcy (24:06.55)
doesn't exist on that level in Europe. So that's like one of the ways that hunting differed. But I think, to go to your original question about relationship to warfare, one of the ways that there's an interesting contrast between Nahua and Central Mexico and many indigenous peoples like Europe, Central Mexico, the culture was very stratified. And one of the ways that the elite of that society
PJ (24:30.475)
Hmm.
Marcy (24:36.098)
would kind of legitimate their activities to themselves and to others was by really identifying with apex predators. So you see kind of symbolically, wearing the cloaks of jaguars or eagles and all kinds of different ways. And even the act of like eating other animals is a way of kind of identifying yourself as an apex predator when.
the vast majority of the community was largely vegetarian. So that's like another kind of interesting contrast. Anyway, I think I've gone on too long.
PJ (25:12.175)
Yeah, no, I think that that's really fascinating. One thing and you mentioned this a little bit, even as you're talking about like you're going to have a more patient or a more surprise and stealth based hunting style, where you don't have horses and dogs, there's the obviously the sensory augmentation. Also, you're going to be faster on horses and faster on dogs. Like I'm not going to run down a deer.
Marcy (25:27.679)
And that's it.
PJ (25:38.923)
Right? Like, I mean, like, most animals are faster than humans. So, uh, you have, it's a totally different set of tactics when I'm on horseback or I'm off. Um, but, uh, this vassal relationship really kind of is interesting to me. The, uh, can you talk a little bit about that from the European side? How the way that they viewed, uh, sometimes even higher than humans, sometimes, uh, dogs and, uh, Falcons and horses too. Yeah.
Marcy (25:43.747)
Mm-hmm.
Marcy (26:06.13)
Yeah, yeah, well, that was one of the so part of this notion that I, you know, elaborate in the book comes from just how struck I was. One of my main sources for this part of the book were reading hunting treatises from the 16th and 17th century that were written by hunters, oftentimes like the royal huntsmen whose job it was to assist royalty or aristocrats in these hunts.
And I was kind of blown away that one third of these treatises were often just about dogs. That's all they were writing about. And really, some of these hunts were extremely elaborate, where the Spanish word was armada, where there would be like 10 different kinds of dogs in it, very, very specialization.
PJ (26:44.831)
Hmm.
PJ (27:03.952)
Oh wow. Yeah.
Marcy (27:05.002)
You know, yeah, some who were like their job was to, I mean, you know, like track. Well, I mean, this sort of maybe three main divisions were tracking, catching and killing. But then within that, there was like gaze hounds, sight hounds, you know, the whole system of kind of communication through hand signals and so on. And the.
you know, importance of these. I mean, you can see it today, right? If you go into a museum and you look at painting from the period, you'll see portraiture with hunting dogs and so on. But you also see it in the kinds of letters that diplomats were writing to each other about, you know, procuring these different kinds of dogs and their, you know, interest in breeding them and these really, really strong attachments, you know, and like where if one of them died, you know, just like...
or even commemorating them in these treatises and building really ornate, you know, kennels for them. And similarly, investing those same kinds of resources obviously into horses, but also into the raptors used for falconry. And I think you're thinking of this one quote that I have in the book where someone in a falconry
Tridus was talking about how these birds are fed better than peasants, like the freshness of their meat or even the medicines that they would receive, really expensive medicines that were procured from far away and so on.
PJ (28:36.645)
Hmm.
PJ (28:46.246)
Um...
PJ (28:49.543)
It's kind of interesting. So I don't want to miss out on, we've talked a little about kind of these more adversarial modes, right? Predation, hunting. Can you talk about familiarization? And I think to me, this is the one that's the most, at least in my own head, foreign, right? Like, which is, I guess it really isn't because we have pets, but the way the language doesn't...
Marcy (29:07.583)
Yeah.
PJ (29:16.583)
Maybe this says more about me, because now as I think about my mom and the way she treats her dogs, maybe this makes more sense. But anyways, can you talk a little bit about familiarization and the way that works?
Marcy (29:21.134)
Yeah.
Marcy (29:28.434)
Yeah, of course. No, I think you're absolutely right that it is the most foreign and even though it has some relationship to our modern ideas and practices around pets, it's also quite distinctive. And I would say this is the one that when I started the project, I had no idea how important it would it would become. So I guess at the most simple level what familiarization is, it's the practice.
of capturing a wild animal and then taming it and the sort of most and nurturing it and the kind of paradigmatic practice around nurturing being feeding it. And I, you know, and I mentioned earlier to you that this project emerged out of my, you know, grappling with this contemporary paradox.
but also from having come across some things in the historical record that I couldn't quite understand. And the very first thing which I came across when researching my first book was what I now know to be an account of familiarization. So, you know, maybe I'll use it to sort of to describe it a little bit. And what's interesting about this episode is it's actually not with animals that were indigenous to the Americas.
PJ (30:46.827)
Yeah.
Marcy (30:55.542)
but actually animals that Europeans had introduced, namely pigs. And so this was an account where, and this was the source for it is a chronicler named Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, who himself was a participant in some pretty vicious like massacres and enslavement. But he's writing surprisingly kind of sympathetically about this thing that happened that some soldiers reported to him.
where a man in what is today the Dominican Republic had escaped either slavery or other kinds of coercive labor regimes that the Spanish had imposed in that areas in the 1530s and was living in the wilderness. And he had formed a relationship with three wild pigs and he had named them and he would go digging for roots and plants and feed them. But the weirdest and most surprising part about it was that he had trained these pigs.
to hunt other pigs. And actually this part was probably, this is kind of a kind of hybrid example where he probably had been, he was described as speaking Spanish very well. So he had exposure to like European dog hunting practices, but he had transferred it to these pigs. And so the, and for the Europeans who like, they ended up who encountered him, they slaughtered his pigs, like thinking that they were feral.
but they actually felt bad and described how bereft this man was. And so when I first read it, again, this is years ago, part of me was like, could this even happen? It seemed to almost seem too incredible. But when I started just reading more and more sources, things kept popping up where there are these accounts of people capturing wild animals. And parrots and monkeys are probably the most common and noted upon.
PJ (32:34.546)
Yeah.
Marcy (32:52.342)
But I have examples of manatee, of capybara, of deer, of peccary, of all kinds of different birds, many, many species, iguana, lizards, rattlesnakes, like, you know, you name it. And where this would be the practice. And sometimes they'd be the orphan babies left behind after hunters, or sometimes they'd be captured just for that purpose.
Part of the point of the book is that this whole practice of familiarization, even though it's something that anthropologists have written about, has been just basically not written about by historians with very few exceptions. And part of the reason that Europeans and then scholars sort of following them have been blind to it, is that they're so centered around wild or domesticated that when they would see this,
And this is, for instance, one of the people I really criticize in this book is Jared Diamond, you know, who kind of assumes that people in the Americas didn't domesticate animals because the animals weren't suitable for domestication, when in fact, what I see is that they viewed European-style livestock husbandry as kind of repellent because of their practices of familiarization.
where once you feed another animal, which again is sort of the essence of these nurturing practices, you would never want to kill them. And that's where these two systems really come into conflict. So when European animals are introduced, like pigs and chickens in particular, what you see is that they're really enthusiastic about chickens, but they don't wanna treat chickens the way that Europeans treat chickens, i.e. once they feed them.
You know, it's fine to kill them if they're wild, that's no problem, right? But once you start feeding them, you don't wanna eat them.
PJ (34:47.791)
And just because I think it was implicit in the story, but like with the pigs, like the reason that like he was comfortable hunting other pigs, but his pigs were different was because he fed his pigs, right? Yeah.
Marcy (34:59.694)
Exactly. Yeah. They were like his kin. They were, you know, once they were brought into his like domestic sphere. So, and that was, and that's true with all these animals, like for the most part, you know, if they're in the wild, hence the title of the book, The Tame in the Wild, you know, if they're in the wild, then so it's, whereas Europeans have this kind of like human animal and then animal hierarchy system in these indigenous systems. It's like, it's more of a trans species category of tame versus wild.
PJ (35:13.866)
Yeah.
PJ (35:30.339)
I'm just trying to imagine what that kind of cultural approach would even make of something like a factory where we are like mass feeding, like force feeding all these animals and then killing them. It'd be like, it would just be so, they wouldn't even, like it wouldn't fit, right? It's just so odd. But kind of similar. And I, you know, I'd love to transition into the discussion of how you're really
Marcy (35:43.511)
Yep.
Marcy (35:50.839)
Yeah.
Exactly.
PJ (35:59.147)
trying to change approaches to historiography. So my wife is from Southern Alabama, which already kind of leads to, there's a lot of family jokes that we make, but she grew up and it's really interesting to see modes of interactions that we consider less advanced. So for instance, her brothers took in a wild squirrel and took it to school.
Of course like I think even most people listening to this would look at that and be like That's a wild squirrel. I remember them telling me I'm like that's you can't do that That's a wild squirrel like you can't you can't take it and make it you can't familiarize it, right? But then one they clearly did like the squirrel was very happy just to sit like nothing bad happened at the school Yeah, I'm sure they had their own policies and everything but
What I found at the end of the discussion, at the end of the story, the way that everyone kind of ends it with is like, ah, it's just Alabama things. They're just not as advanced over there, right? Because it doesn't fit into our modes of interactions. And that's what I was really struck by as you talk about this. You said, oh man, I want to make sure that the historiography, like our historiography internalizes rather than questions our relationship with animals. Can you talk about that and what that looks like moving forward?
Marcy (37:20.532)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, I think you put it well. Um, yeah, so one of the, the things that I look at is not only how contemporary scholarship has been blind to familiarization as an important, you know, Indigenous practice and one that also
affected European society, you know, because again, like these, these parrots are coming back and these monkeys started their lives in the wild and then were tamed probably mostly I something I didn't mention is that you know familiarization was understood as often sort of gendered like along with, you know, a mothering role so often it was women in native communities who were doing this work. And then, as they start.
PJ (37:53.513)
Right.
Marcy (38:14.446)
coming into Europe, they start actually changing how Europeans think about animals on a number of different levels. But this idea of kind of, well, in the case of familiarization, I won't even say hierarchies, but more like invisibility, but an invisibility that is based on a hierarchy, which is the assumption of that there are stages of progress that human societies have to go through.
in order to advance. You know, and I'm, you know, I think most people start reading about this when they're, you know, in early grade school, right? The idea that when humans domesticated plants and animals, that was an important and kind of necessary stage of progress. And I am challenging the idea that that's a useful way of approaching global history. I mean, certainly it was a very consequential
and significant moment in human history with huge repercussions up to the present moment. But if we, I don't think it's helpful for scholars, you know, to go in with the notion that, and I, because I like, it has had the effects that I've described where it sort of blinds us to other possibilities. And I think, and especially we're in a moment when I think we need to be able to think of other possibilities, because we know that
PJ (39:14.011)
Yeah.
Marcy (39:43.294)
our current system of food supplies is unsustainable on a planetary level as well as on a sort of individual suffering level as well. And just one more thing I'll say about that is that it's actually part of the justification that feeds colonialism itself. So when
Spaniards and then other later European powers are trying to justify some really brutal forms of colonialism They themselves kind of use what they see is the lack of domestication as a rationale for conquest So there's kind of a connection between these early colonial Rationals and a lot of contemporary scholarship
PJ (40:30.607)
I mean, this is where we get that term where they become comfortable calling, you know, and this will go well into the 1900s, right, of calling people savages, right? Like you know, that idea of like, well, they're a lower class of human being.
Marcy (40:44.204)
Right.
Marcy (40:49.75)
Right, right, right. Yeah, it comes, I mean, it really does come out. And even, you know, even it has some other interesting kind of effects as well, which is then from the European perspective, both in the 16th century, but against a sort of bias that scholars have inherited is the notion of hierarchies within native societies. So like the Mexica Aztecs and the Inca are considered to be more advanced than other.
PJ (40:51.034)
Um.
Marcy (41:17.442)
kinds of indigenous groups, because for instance, they have in the case of the Aztec, you know, some kinds of domestication of turkeys and dogs. But I part one of the things that I also look at in the book is how that those I the idea that domestication is just one thing, has actually blinded us to some really important ways that domestication arrangements in those areas were actually quite different, you know.
PJ (41:42.483)
And one thing, and I don't want to stretch too much here, I would just love to hear your thoughts on this. One thing I appreciate about this is the discussion about like our current food situation, and that's what a lot of this is about, is how do we address that? The discussion about whether we should go vegetarian or vegan is an important discussion, but there's also a separate discussion which is also possible that often gets overlooked, which is
We can talk about whether we should eat meat at all. That's an important discussion there's also an important discussion about the dignity of animals and Just the way that like which is also an important ethical discussion and I think that most people They they can link into each other but like certainly like we can talk about the dignity of animals and still and I think sometimes people just I think partly because of this divide can't wrap their heads around the idea that
you can have, you can believe in the dignity of animals and still eat them. But that kind of comes back to that like apex predator almost, if that makes sense. Is that, am I, is my tracking with kind of like your approach here?
Marcy (42:39.499)
Mm-hmm.
Marcy (42:44.919)
Yeah.
Marcy (42:48.234)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think I like how you put it. I do think that they are separate issues and certainly, you know, all of the cultures that I talk about in this book, none of them are vegetarians, you know, they're there as we've discussed already, they're all they all practice hunting. But where they really, really differ is in
is in the recognition of subjectivity and the kinds of subjectivity that they can perceive. And, you know, in the case of Europe, and again, going back to your dog example, I mean, these biases are still with us, there is still the sense of like, certain animals are subjects, and that's worthy of being treated with dignity and where, and again, where people are able to hold in their heads that it's okay to treat pigs in one way and treat and not treat, you know,
dogs in that way or horses in that way, you know, that has direct origins to this earlier period versus one where like all animals are subjects and that comes out of these kinds of treatments. And absolutely, I do think those are separate and related. And I mean, I think there's... I don't think it's wrong to go from dignity...
to vegetarian, you know, I think that is especially, yeah, but it's also not necessarily the only way to get there.
PJ (44:15.476)
Right, right, right.
PJ (44:19.307)
You could see that relation. Yes, yeah.
PJ (44:27.175)
Right, yeah, it's not like the dignity of the animal does not entail vegetarianism. Like, it's like you can treat those separately. And actually, so with these history episodes that I do, I often put a lot of work into like showing how they're relevant to today, because I think sometimes, you know, that's a whole other discussion why people don't appreciate history as much as they should. But one thing I found, I found that your book is like so immediately relevant.
Marcy (44:32.596)
Right.
PJ (44:54.767)
Even just like the stuff that it brings up, I don't know if you saw this, I wouldn't be surprised if you had. So for those listening, if you want to understand how this is still spreading today, South Korea this year just passed a bill to ban dog meat. I don't know if you had seen that, but yes, I was like, it's still got like these.
Marcy (45:18.734)
I had, yeah.
PJ (45:22.399)
these ideas, these prejudices, like this kind of like, it's still going, right?
Marcy (45:27.378)
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I would say, I mean, my own sense of the big, I some someone criticized my book for not like presenting the solution, you know, to contemporary agribusiness. So I and I think that's a fair criticism. I don't, I don't have the solution. Well, no, I don't think it's fair to ask my book.
PJ (45:43.455)
Yep.
PJ (45:47.923)
Oh, okay. I don't think that's fair, but okay.
Marcy (45:54.294)
to do that, but if you thought that that's what my book should do, it doesn't do that. But I do think that the contribution is that I think sometimes people above, I mean, I like to think there are multiple contributions, but there's a sense that the way the status
PJ (45:57.887)
Yeah, okay, yeah.
Marcy (46:21.79)
and causing them enormous, enormous suffering and our waterways and our soil and our heating climate. Well, it has to be that way. That's the normal way that that's what people do and it needs to be upscaled and we need to sustain it. And I think, and that the idea that we might wanna put first
the wellbeing of other animals over our immediate, seemingly immediate desire for meat, that that's like romantic and sentimental. But in fact, in a broad historical sense, our current way of doing things is actually really aberrant and strange, and like to see the strangeness of it and not necessary and not inevitable, and that there are other ways.
to be in the world, you know, and just to open up our imaginative possibilities.
PJ (47:24.007)
Yeah, so as you're talking, that leads, the next question I had, this is perfect, because I didn't want to miss talking about this. Can you talk about the advent of the slaughterhouse and how that has led to a lot of these practices today?
Marcy (47:37.81)
Yeah, yeah. So like going back to alienation, well, I'm sorry, going back to the problem of seeing animals as objects, that's something I was really trying to understand in the chapter on livestock as it was practiced 15th, 16th, 17th century. And I focused it on kind of to like sort of the beginning of livestock life by focusing on sheep, you know, which we talked a little bit
and in Slaughterhouse. And one of the things that I found was that the emergence of the Slaughterhouse as an institution that is separate from the butcher emerges like much earlier than I think people might expect like in the end of the 1400s in the in the late 15th century. And what happens
PJ (48:29.084)
Oh wow, yeah.
Marcy (48:37.074)
you know, like not so dissimilar to what we have today. The slaughterhouse being a site that's out of the city where animals are killed and the butcher being the retail place where people buy meat to eat or their, yeah, I mean, right, or to other people who are producing it into like finished food. And what that does is it severs people's
connection between the experience of eating meat and living, suffering, thinking animals. And so that the objectification of animals isn't something that just happens, it happens through institutions and technologies such as the division. And that, and you know, I adopt the term alienation to talk about that. That's how we become alienated from these relationships. So there's actually, you know,
significant labor that goes into people's ability to not see meat connected to animals. And of course, you know, that's been upscaled, but exponentially in our, in our current system, where the, the animals themselves, as well as their killing happens hundreds and there's like ag, gag rules that, you know, prevent people from even
PJ (49:55.019)
Hmm
Marcy (49:59.026)
having access to the videos from that and some really brave activists, you know, go in and film, you know, quite illegally. But all that has its origins and, you know, much earlier developments.
PJ (50:12.671)
Yeah, I, this is where I feel like children are a gift because, uh, there's a lot that we just kind of accept. And then I'm explaining to my kids, I'm like, Oh no, chicken comes from chicken, pork. Like we call it pork. It comes from pigs, right? We have to call it something different, right? Um, it's not sheep. It's mutton, right? It's not cow. It's beef. And I'm like, yeah. I'm just watching their faces trying to like, wait, this is from animals and it's so hard for them to see it. Cause they're at the grocery store and it's just like,
Marcy (50:31.255)
Right?
Marcy (50:38.647)
Right.
PJ (50:42.175)
You never see it. It's always in this sealed package. Yeah, there's a lot. That feels like a whole nother episode, so I won't dig too much into that. But one, I wanted to say thank you so much for coming on today. I wanna be respectful of your time. If you could have our audience think about one thing throughout the week, if they had one main takeaway, something to chew on, what would that be?
Marcy (50:46.208)
Yeah.
Marcy (50:54.828)
Yeah.
PJ (51:11.755)
be coming away from this episode.
Marcy (51:18.958)
That's a great question.
Marcy (51:23.918)
maybe, you know, returning to kind of where we started and also what you just said about, like, if you go through the world thinking of the subjectivity, you know, the personhood, the potential for feeling, suffering, thinking of all kinds of beings, you know, and having a kind of
PJ (51:37.559)
Mm.
PJ (51:46.752)
Hmm.
Marcy (51:53.194)
but also thinking about what enables that to happen and what hinders that from happening. Because the point isn't necessarily to be finger wagging, you're bad for thinking this way or feeling this way, but what are the conditions around you that promote empathy in some situations?
and the lack of empathy in other situations. Cause I, like on a very macro level, I do think that's kind of what my book is about. It's about like that we don't, that we're born into our given place in culture and like our blind spots or whatever. They're not just individual, they're macro. And so like, just be curious, I guess, be curious about what those are.
PJ (52:46.439)
Forgive me if I could add to that. Why are we so excited? Ask yourself, why are you so excited to eat pig but so horrified to eat dog? If you're just thinking through that, and that expands to other things, but it's such a cultural blind spot. Thank you so much for writing this book. I think it's really fascinating.
Marcy (52:58.622)
Yeah.
Marcy (53:03.052)
Yeah.
Marcy (53:10.598)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, now I think you put it exactly best. Why is it not just that you don't want anyone to eat your dog? But the idea of anyone eating anyone's dog, if you love a dog, is horrible. And yet, read an article about pig consciousness and then wonder a little bit. But what is it that doesn't feel visceral in that way?
PJ (53:36.5)
Dr. Norton, thank you so much. It's been a joy talking to you today.
Marcy (53:40.13)
Thank you so much for having me. It's been delightful.