Dominion and Domestication

 

 

Ingold, in his classic article From Trust to Domination: An alternative history of human-animal relations argues the shift from a ecocentric to anthropocentric worldview can be traced to the origins of domestication. The idea being that as people began to farm, their relationship with their environment changed from a situation where people existed within their environment, as part of their environment, to a situation where they sought to impose their control upon it.

Others, notably Wickham-Jones in her book Fear of Farming are beginning to reach similar conclusions and suggest that we should look to hunter-gather societies (both past and present) in order to re-learn some of their values that were lost with the advent of farming.

This is not to suggest that we should abandon our farming lifestyles, especially since many farming societies today hold similar worldviews to those of hunter-gatherer communities (see next slide):