Natural relations: horses, knowledge, technology

Latimer, Joanna Elizabeth and Birke, Lynda 2009. Natural relations: horses, knowledge, technology. The Sociological Review 57 (1) , pp. 1-27. 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.01802.x

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Maintaining the tensions and divisions between the human and non-human, nature and culture has been a mainstay of Euro-American thought. Drawing upon two studies of people's associations with horses, we examine how these divisions are being reworked in the social sciences as well in everyday life. We focus on how different ideas about ‘horses’, ‘horsemanship’ and how knowledge is acquired, accomplishes different social worlds. Specifically, what emerges in these differential discourses is that a paradox is put into play to make a distinction between traditional and contemporary ways of being in relation to nature and the animal; it is the paradox of what we want to refer to as ‘natural technologies’. We suggest that the paradox of ‘natural technologies’ is a proliferating feature of Euro-American cultural life that troubles old divisions between nature and culture and propose that it indicates less about a politics of nature than a politics of culture. Specifically, we show that the preoccupation with bringing nature, and the non-human, more into alignment with the human promotes ethics and equality as matters of lifestyle choice to the exclusion of very specific ideas about tradition, hierarchy, evolution and socialization.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) S Agriculture > SF Animal culture T Technology > T Technology (General)
Publisher:	John Wiley & Sons
ISSN:	0038-0261
Last Modified:	25 Oct 2016 02:07
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/19242

Citation Data

Cited 51 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item