Animal Studies Bibliography
Sibley, David. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. NY: Routledge.
Chapter 1: Feelings About Difference
Ideas of the self have changed over time, especially with theory such as that of Freud's psychoanalysis. 4 Ideas such as that of cleanliness have been connected with those of the large society such as capitalism and the order that springs from it. 5 Freud's object's relations theory is an important part of this study because it defined the ways in which we see objects as good and bad and define our relationships to them as well as to ourselves. 5 From infancy we start to determine what we believe are good' and bad' things, beginning with our mother and evolving into different levels of both until finding a balance. 6 Beginning with separation from the mother people learn to either the like differnence of merging with others or reject difference.7 Different cultures have different definitions of what it means to distance, many Western cultures often have racial lines that are drawn. 7 Mothers, often having more contact with babies fluids, are often more used to interaction with this way that we distance ourselves from others through bodily functions. So male and female roles in child bearing reflect the masculine value of autonomy and the feminine value of merging and a tolerance for difference.7
Maintaining the purity of the self, defending the boundaries of the inner body can be seen as a never ending battle against residues and Julia Kristeva points out that it is a battle never won excrement and its equivalents stand for the danger to identity that comes from with out: the ego threatened by the non-ego. 8 Elizabeth Gross defines the abject as objects that are not part of a subject but not apart from it either and that these objects are always threatening unity once again with the subject. 8 Yet, the urge to make separations, between us' and them' that is to expel the abject, is encouraged in western cultures, creating feelings of anxiety because such separations can never be finally achieved. 8 The feeling of abjection can turn up in our relation to places too, this requires knowledge of the generalized other'. 9
Mead's interpretation of the relationship between self and other has fundamental implications for geographical studies of social interaction because it locates the individual in the social and material world. 9 The social positioning of the self means that the boundary between self and other is formed through a series of cultural representations of people and things which frequently elide sot that the non-human world also provides a context for self hood. People and things come to stand for each other, so that object relations can include relating to others through the material environment. 10
Chapter 2: Images of Difference
Stereotypes play an important role in the structuring or bounding of the self. 15 We all have a range of good' and bad' in the way we see the world, the gradations of this become finer as we get older these gradations apply in many areas, one of them translating into the stereotypes we have of others. These stereotypes help us cope with the world around us by distancing us from its unpredictability. 15 The things we identify with as dirty and disgusting often start with the object of excrement we are exposed to as infants after this point when we see things as dirty we associate them with being bad. 18 Because we see ourselves as belonging in a place we also other' people and associate certain groups with places thus place stereotyping' can be a part of the way we see the world.19
Color and language are important ways in which we define our world, in this chapter we will look at black and white. Focusing on white societies such as the English the color black has inherently been used to describe dirt, decay, death, infection and other unclean things: These views of the color itself contribute to the stereotyping of people whoa re any darker than them and are inherent within the society's values. 22 Black and white represent a whole set of cultural power relations, white is often associated with rationality and order and black with the opposite. 23 Bell hooks makes the contrasting point that the black feeling of oneness is important also in talking about othering and focusing on difference because this feeling is important to the black community, while finding difference is often important to the white community. 23 Any positive images of blackness present in many societies was stamped out with colonization, industrialization, and the spread of capitalism. White often symbolizes purity and cleanliness and is easily polluted. 24
Disease symbolizes for us the dissolution of our society and therefore the diseased other' plays an important role in defining stability and normality. 24 Classification of groups was traditionally very important to Western science adding to the othering' of minority groups, referencing them as a disease infecting the more pure population. Disease spreading from minority groups to others has a particular power. 25 Class issues have also come into play only lower classes got certain diseases, causing upper classes to distance themselves. 26
Categorizing people throughout nature has also effected the status of groups in society. People who have been considered closer to nature have been seen as dirty and of lower status. Those groups who are seen as more primitive are classified as being on the lowest wrung of society, and 19 th century European science has backed up these views. 26 Patriarchal status also feeds into this as women are seen as being closer to nature, this kind of classification excludes women and other groups from civilized society. 27 Representing people as animals is the closest infusion of this, making some of the most destructive, stereotypical images people being wild'. 27 Rats have had a special place of hierarchy because of their association with dirt and disease, when needing to dehumanize a group of people they are often compared to rats. 28 Irish peasants were often called rats because of their work in sewers and canals, places of feces and waste. 28
Chapter 3: Border Crossings
A sense of border is very important to most individuals, crossing these boundaries can cause moments of anxiety for many people or groups of people because they provide areas of safety and comfort. 32 Organizing spaces in our world into crisp sets can often be difficult and create spaces of ambiguity. 33 An example is the home, outside is public, inside is private and organized in the way the resident wants it to be, the doorway is the space of ambiguity. 34 Another example is the child/adult barrier where adolescents are in the middle and often are threatening to adults because of this. 34 Adolescents are hurt by these ambiguities and so are many others who are not on one side or the other of a boundary but are somewhere in between. 35
While many dichotomies are difficult to use in this discussion the one from Davis and Anderson of high-density and low-density societies. 35 In the former many people are familiar with each other so outsiders and difference are more noticeable, whereas with the later they are not as noticed because the community is not as tightly knit. 35 Here Durkheim's ideas of social and mechanical solidarity apply somewhat as they looked a collective consciousness among societies. This work though does not suggest how people might react to difference collectively, that requires a great deal of information, but we can see this forming in some parts of America and Britian. 36
At the individual level, an awareness of group boundaries can be expressed in the opposition between purity and defilement. 36 Mary Douglas's work in the Bible shows that even ancient cultures had this separation from dirt through purification rituals. 37 She found that is was those animals, people or things which were discrepant, that did not fit in a group's classification scheme, which were polluting. 37 These pollutions should be looked at in their time and place but do have wider implications especially in observance of pollution taboos that exist in many families and communities. 38 American and British suburbs are becoming more closed off this shows the want of conformity and order and that special boundaries are in part moral boundaries, the more you keep out the better' you are. 39
Suburbs provide very interesting evidence as to the boundaries put up by people and have been seen as a danger to urban communities. 39 Suburbanites, while in America are mixing more in ethnicity are still place where episodic panics can arise, although these usually die down. 39 These moral panics have happened all through history to define boundaries and who is othered' from normal' society. 40 Panics are manifestations of deep antagonisms within society and therefore are focused on groups who are seen as threats to core values. 41 AIDS and issues of race in the inner city are example of modern panics, especially reactions such as wanting to quarantine AIDS victims. 42 The media has often had a large role in these panics, spreading the ideas and panic further. 42 These kind of panics have occurred throughout history, but they never last for long so new panics must be invented. 43
Sometimes these panics are inverted with those usually marginalized in the center and the majority as spectators, political protests are an example of this. 43 The oppressed often react, even with revolt, strongly to these inversions because they wish they were in the position of power. 44 These inversions are often strongly fought by the mainstream society because they are a threat to power. 44 Ethnic festivals can be examples of this and when it is constricted it is an example of the mainstream constructing the other'. 45
Chapter 7: The Exclusion of Knowledge
This chapter is a reflection on the production of knowledge which touches on the same themes of power relations, boundaries, and the danger and rewards which attach to boundary crossings that were examined in the first part of the book. 119 The social and political contexts of scientific research have received much attention. 119 In geography during the 1960's and 70's there was some enthusiasm dealing with the ideas of scientific change and a push for the idea of a dominant paradigm this pushed people to look towards economics as a great science. 120 Such introspection suggested that science is detached from society, real economics, and unscientific belief systems, when in reality it is shaped by all of these things. 121 Power within and between communities also plays a large part in the production of scientific knowledge. 121 What is considered legitimate knowledge in the scientific community is a grey area, the work of some researchers is marginalized and results are suppressed. 121
We tend to compartmentalize knowledge, kept within boundaries this gives power and authority to those who peddle it. 122 Power in academia is reflected in hierarchies, practitioners defer to a small number of higher authorities whose ideas are widely accepted, other knowledge is considered lower' if expressed in different idioms. 122 Divisions of knowledge within hierarchical systems reflect increasing functional differentiation within developed economies. 124 As universities multiplied in order to service expanding industrial economies, academics had to stake a claim within them by appropriating areas of knowledge whi
ch had to be identified clearly by their content, methods and boundaries. 124 Breaking down some of these boundaries has started to happen. 124 There is an important focus on the control of knowledge which perpetuates the dominant value system often leaving out women and minority researchers. 125 In many fields diversity, heterogeneity, and disciplinary boundary crossing are regarded as undesirable. 126
It is virtually impossible to prove that ideas which challenge firmly established interpretations of the social and physical world have been deliberately suppressed. 127 It may be necessary for dissenting groups to launch their own journals and form their own study groups, but this may backfire and cause them to be considered irrelevant and continue to be shunned from the mainstream. 127 Connections in power and the production of knowledge can be seen when ideas that threaten the already accepted boundaries/theories. 129 Social knowledge can be more potent than physical or biological knowledge when it touches on visions of a moral order. 131 Dangerous' knowledge embodies values which call into question the moral basis of dominant models of society. 131 Power is again the central issue because it is the establishment which has power to define legitimate knowledge and to identify competing truth claims as deviant and dangerous. 131
