Animal Domestication in Geographic Perspective Kay Anderson 1 University of New South Wales What, e actly, ma!

es humans human" A close loo! at nonhuman animal domestication practices reveals how people came to view their own uni#ueness in western cultural process$ %he study of domestication across time shows the multiple human impulses underlying acts of animal enclosure and domestication$ Animals can &e &eloved companions or eaten for a meal$ %hese impulses involve contradictory moralities '' a rich su&(ect for in#uiries into the dynamics of power and possession, at scales ranging from local to glo&al$ Writings on human'nonhuman animal relations in western societies commonly o&serve that animals are our ultimate )thers *+ir!e , -u&&ard, .//01$ 2n the moral order of self'other distinctions, where each socially constructed identity depends on its opposite for meaning, animality is said to &e a pivotal condition e isting not only against, &ut &eneath humanity *2ngold, .//31$ Animality is the final site of savagery and instinct, and animals are said to &e its living em&odiment$ We eat them, we harness their la&or, we cage them, we turn them into spectacles, we use them to reference the 4&eastly4 humans we despise$ And yet we also incorporate certain of them into our households as honorary family mem&ers, perhaps attracted to the wildness we have long since domesticated, even within ourselves$ %he am&ivalences run deep *-umphrey, .//05 Arlu!e , Sanders, .//61, upsetting neat models of mastery and oppression in human'animal relations$ -umans and animals have &ecome ha&ituated to close coe istence$ 7rom companion animals to animals living on farms, domestication has entailed sentiments ranging from affection to domination$ %he ultimate intention of this article is to release the study of domestication from its moorings in evolutionist'functionalist models and supply glimpses of its wor!ings across diverse times and scales$ Animal Domestication: Comments From the Urban Zoo Animal domestication is a comple practice that can &e conceived narrowly, in a technical sense, and &roadly, in a metaphorical sense$ 8lsewhere 2 developed the argument that ur&an 9oos are supremely domesticated social products that craft the means for the popular e perience of nature *Anderson, .//05 :ullan , :arvin, ./;<5 -oage , Deiss, .//61$ =oos are spaces through which 4nature4 is transformed into 4culture$4 =oos are acts of enclosure encoding what -araway *./;;1 has called the 4partial perspective4 of humans$ -owever, the story of metropolitan 9oos in western societies, such as Australia, is not one of a&solute human control and coercion$ 2nside the walls of the 9oo, there are a range of e periences and representations of human'animal relations, from interspecies pro imity *in the petting or children>s 9oo1 as well as distance *inscri&ed &y iron &ars1$ :any people, and not only children, visit 9oos to e perience &eing 4closer to animals$4 Domestication of the nonhuman other is no simple act of appropriation '' it is filled with am&iguity and tension$ %echnically spea!ing, most 9oo animals are not domesticated$ 2ndividual animals such as elephants and mon!eys can &e tamed, &ut only a species &red in captivity for many generations can &e considered domesticated in the strict sense of the term$ %hese are the farm animals in the children?s corner of 9oos such as goats, sheep, cows, horses, pigs and ra&&its$ Along with the other ma(or domesticated species of chic!ens, dogs, cats, mice, rats, camels, tur!eys, &ees, and sil!worms, they are the descendants of once wild species &red for characteristics valued &y humans and whose su&sistence cycles have for milennia &een socially regulated$ )ver generations, the evolution of such creatures was reorganised so that their 4natural4 state &ecame one of coe istence with humans$ %hey are living artifacts '' hy&rids of culture and nature '' that have &een &rought into socially em&odied form$ 2f only some of the 9oo?s inha&itants are domesticated in the technical sense, all the 9oos inha&itants are argua&ly domesticated &roadly spea!ing$ %his domestication process draws the non'human into a ne us of human concern where animals and humans &ecome mutually accustomed to conditions and terms laid out &y humans5 where that which is culturally defined as nature?s 4wildness4 is &rought in and nurtured in some guises, e ploited in other senses, mythologised and aestheticised in still other forms of this comple cultural activity$ %he intriguing mi of human impulses that reside within the process of animal domestication recently prompted me to survey the wide'ranging literatures on the su&(ect$ %hose &odies of scholarship, including those contri&uted &y geographers, are overwhelmingly devoted to the study of technical domestication$ %he political and cultural inflections within the process &eyond the &rute facts of &reeding suggests, however, the need to e plore how animal domestication has &een culturally understood in western traditions$ -ow was the turn to &reeding and harvesting entire species conceived

in early writings on domestication" What might the answers to such #uestions reveal a&out the dynamics not only of certain human'animal interactions, &ut also of the social will to power" Animal Domestication: A View from Geography %he interspecies association !nown as domestication has &een the focus of long and enduring study &y 9oologists, &iologists, archaeologists, pre'historians, anthropologists, and geographers *@lutton'+roc!, ./;., ./;/5 -emmer, .//A5 -arris, .//65 Uc!o , Dim&le&y, ./6/5 Wilson, ./;;5 =euner, ./6B1$ As a pivotal event in the development of food production, the domestication of animals has figured prominently in histories of human settlement and livelihood, as well as regional demographies of population growth and migration$ Natural scientists, on the other hand, have &een more concerned with matters of species and &ehavioral change under practices of social selection$ %he impact of domestication on the world>s physical environments has also &een a ma(or focus for scientific analysis$ Despite the volume of literature on animal domestication, however, de&ate continues to this day a&out its origins$ %here is argument a&out whether domestication must &e understood as a rational decision of humans, or is &est modelled as part of evolution$ %he conventional wisdom that domestication was wholly directed &y humans has recently &een critici9ed &y neo'Darwinist scholars wishing to conceptuali9e the relationship &etween humans and *nonhuman1 animals in more mutual, consensual terms$ +udians!y *.//01, for e ample, has claimed that certain animals chose domestication in the interests of species survival, while in a similar vein, others note that humans do not have a monopoly on domesticatory relations$ Ants, for e ample, 4domesticate4 aphids *)>@onnor, .//<1$ 8volutionary challenges to approaches that privilege human agency are thus mounting$ Cultural Geography and Domestication Animal domestication has received a somewhat different treatment and theori9ation within the literature of cultural geography$ +eginning with the pioneering wor! of @arl Sauer and his +er!eley school students in the ./0As, geographers situated the Neolithic turn to animal propagation within a tra(ectory of cultural evolution *rather than the a&ove'mentioned organic evolution1$ 2n this endeavor, Sauer *./0CD./6/1 drew on the wor! of Darwin>s contemporaries, including geologist Shaler, whose influential .;/6 pu&lication was titled, Domesticated AnimalsE %heir Felation to :an and -is Advancement in @ivilisation$ Given its influence on later geographic wor!, it is worthy of some attention$ Shaler *.;/61 argued that domestication of 4forms of wilderness4 mar!ed the moment of human &eings> transition &eyond 4the threshold of &ar&arism$4 2t was an advance of culture, he claimed, that separated people from animals$ After all, the process of domestication did not lie only with functional need on the part of humans$ Father it derived from 4aesthetic values4 and inclinations to &ring 4other &eings into association with our own lives$4 -ere Shaler echoed the views of Darwin>s cousin, Galton *.;601, who claimed that the ma(or animal domesticates had &een initially &red in protective relationships as pets$ %he 4careta!ing soil'tiller,4 in Shaler>s words, had also ac#uired 4sympathetic tendencies4 in the tas! of 4hus&anding4 animals$ 2t followed for Shaler, then, that domestication was the wor! to which 4perhaps more than $$$ any other cause, we must attri&ute the civili9a&le and the civili9ed state of mind4 *.;/6, p$ CCC1$ Felated narrative assumptions structured Shaler>s analysis$ 7or him, domestication was not only a mar! of culture *conceived as a civili9ing attri&ute1, it was the practice through which culture had arisen$ %his ena&led him to script the relations of man and animal within a frame of culture>s ascendancy and evolution through stages$ And yet, in a rather remar!a&le contradiction, Shaler claimed that such 4humani9ing influences due to the care of animals4 were not universally shared &y people$ %he distinction &etween wild and tame was meaningless, he o&served, to 4the savage$4 %he wor! of domestication has 4in the main,4 Shaler stated, 4&een effected &y our own Aryan race4 *.;/6, p$ CCA1$ 2n the continent of Africa, e cepting the 4lands a&out the :editerranean and the Fed Sea, the native peoples have never attained the stage of culture in which men &ecome inclined to su&(ugate wild animals4 *.;/6, p$ C3<1$ Such men had themselves, therefore, remained savage *Givingston, ./;31$ So (ust as creatures ac#uired a 4tone of civili9ation4 when they 4a&andonHedI those ancient ha&its of fear and rage which were essential to their life in the wilderness4 *Shaler, .;/6, p$ CC61, savage people could only &e &rought into a 4higher state of perfection4 under civili9ing regimes$ Cultural !olutionism 2n ./00, an international symposium was convened under the chair of Sauer of the University of @alifornia, +er!eley, to review the impact on the earth>s surface of 4man>s evolutionary dominance4

*%homas, ./06, p$ viii1$ %he meeting grew out of concern a&out the environmental impacts that were said to have transpired since man 4supplemented organic evolution with a new method of change '' the development of culture$4 Sauer had previously written a&out the origins and dispersal of agriculture and was convener of the conference>s retrospective focus$ 7or Sauer *./0CD./6/1, the evolution of culture in man had given rise to innovations that '' in an intellectual conte t of economic and environmental determinism in the discipline of geography in the ./0As '' he wished to highlight$ 8choing Shaler, %homas stated, 4:an alone ate of the fruit of the %ree of Knowledge and there&y &egan to ac#uire and transmit learning, or culture4 *./06, p$ C1$ 2n this sense, as for Shaler, culture was conceived normatively and temporally as an attri&ute that had arisen in con(unction with the development of man>s rational capacities$ Unli!e Shaler, however, Sauer saw no variation in the capacity of races to select and harvest particular animals *and plants1$ @ertainly, he tolerated no assertions a&out the special a&ility of Aryans to domesticate nonhuman species$ Sauer>s theoretical o&(ective, after all, was to vindicate culture *a&ove ecological factors1 as the decisive force transforming the earth>s surface$ @ulture was a universal capacity, he insisted, of 4even the most primitive people,4 including 4the o&tuse %asmanians4 *%homas, ./06, p$ ..1$ Sauer *./0CD./6/1 followed the tradition of the German geographer, 8duard -ahn, in his forays into the origins of pastoralism and agriculture$ Animals &ecame domesticated, he argued, less to supply food to growing populations *ecological and economic factors1, than to serve in the religious ceremonies of more or less sedentary populations *cultural factors1$ -erd animals, Sauer speculated, would have first &een &rought into gentle protection and reared li!e children$ )nly su&se#uently would people have e perimented with &reeding$ )ther animals &ecame part of people>s households as pets, giving *again following Shaler and Galton1 aesthetic satisfaction to humans$ Nor were today>s chic!ens initially domesticated for functional *egg'laying and meat'producing1 #ualities, Sauer argued$ Such characteristics were selected for later, at least in :alaysia and 2ndia, where originally animals were domesticated for ritual reenactments of divine com&at, as in coc!'fighting$ -is e tensive empirical investigations of the religious &ases of domestication thus led Sauer to theori9e the process as a 4cultural advance achieved only where people of special inclination $$$ gave peculiar and sustained attention to the care and propagation of certain plants and animals4 *Sauer, ./0CD./6/, p$ vii1$ Unli!e Shaler *who ended his &oo! with an appeal for more &reeding e periments1, Sauer was no uncritical advocate of the process$ Despite seeing domestication as an innovation associated with the rise of man to ecological dominance, he recogni9ed in his paper for the ./00 symposium that floc!s and herds were progressively causing attrition of vegetative cover and surface soils$ 2t was time to 4ta!e stoc!4 '' Sauer wrote in words that again connected &ac! to Shaler '' of the 4responsi&ilities and ha9ards of our prospects as lords of creation4 *Sauer, ./0CD./6/, p$ .A31$ Armed with culture, humans had singularly decoupled themselves from nature and thus &een set on a path to civili9ation$ -e was now duty'&ound to heed the negative conse#uences for his environments$ "ines and "in#ages )ther geographers carried forward Sauer>s line of wor! on animal domestication$ Nota&le were the Simoonses *./6;1 who wrote a &oo! a&out the ceremonial uses of the o in 2ndia *Simoons, ./<31, and 2saac, who in ./<A, pu&lished Geography of Domestication *Don!in, ./;/5 Palmieri, ./<C1$ 2saac developed the lin!age &etween the domestication of cattle and religious ideas with a view to unsettling reigning materialist interpretations$ After outlining a wealth of evidence of the sacred status of &ovine species in certain societies, he concluded that domestication occurred in con(unction with 4a religious world picture4 *2saac, ./<A, p$ ..A1$ 2t was a view that ena&led 2saac to *so he claimed1 4reverse the popular :ar ist a iom that religion and science are superstructures$ 7or in this case, technology HdomesticationI was a superstructure on $$$ religious !nowledge4 *./<A, p$ ..A1$ %his idealist position on the origins of domestication persists in !ey human geography te ts up to the present day *Fu&enstein, ./;/5 7ellman, Getis, , Getis, .//A1$ A $ew "oo# at Animal Domestication Fecently, however, there have &een dissenting views among geographers$ 7or e ample, Fodrigue *.//C1 refuted on empirical grounds the Sauerian theory of animal domestication$ She tested the theory that the earliest animal domestications were &rought a&out through ritual sacrifice, using data from Near 8astern sites for periods spanning the transition from Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic times$ -er data led her to argue that ritual sacrifice occurred in societies already possessing domestic animals, as well as stored and traded food$ She thus claimed that 4fragile, desta&ili9ing human ecosystems4 impelled decisions to settle and to elevate long'domesticated stoc! into spiritual herds *Fodrigue, .//C, p$ 3C;1$ 2n so doing, she re(ected the emphasis of Sauerian geographers on 4the causal power of the human mind4 *.//C, p$ 3C<1$

Philosophical idealism in the wor! of the +er!eley school has &een su&(ect to other, #uite different, criti#ues &y geographers in recent years$ @alling themselves 4new cultural geographers,4 they have sought to &rea! with Sauerian framewor!s of domestication and, more generally, of landscape form and change$ %he leading e ponent of this criti#ue has &een Duncan *./;A1 who challenged the Sauerian model of culture and ela&orated the grounds for a revised view$ %he details of Duncan>s criti#ue cannot &e treated here *Jac!son, ./;/5 Anderson , Gale, .//C1, &ut it is useful to note their specific implications for Sauerian views of animal domestication$ Not least relevant is the causal power that Sauer gave to culture for the so'called innovation of domestication$ @ertainly, there is a strong sense running through Sauer>s richly detailed wor! on pastoralism and agriculture that culture is an entity functioning independently of individuals$ Such a superorganic concept was consistent with his o&(ective &ehind theori9ing the origins of animal hus&andryE to unseat materialist perspectives in favor of those that emphasi9ed the force of culture in imprinting the face of the earth$ 7or Sauer, culture was an evolutionary attri&ute uni#uely ac#uired &y :an '' recall that -e 4alone ate of $$$ the %ree of Knowledge4 *%homas, ./06, p$ C1$ )nly humans possessed a rational soul, as testified &y their inclination to use animals for nonfunctional purposes as pets and sym&olic &odies in acts of ritual sacrifice$ %plain or %plain Away 2t follows from these critical o&servations a&out the +er!eley concept of culture that Sauer left unpro&lemati9ed the learning surrounding animal selection and &reeding$ 8 planation for human intervention in other species> reproduction and disposition was implicitly handed over to forces that had put them at the ape of life$ 2n &eing content to e plain or, more precisely, e plain away, animal sacrifice and &reeding within a pre'given evolutionary tra(ectory that &estowed culture on man, Sauer lost the opportunity of conte tuali9ing domestication within a politics of premises surrounding human uni#ueness$ 2f Sauer>s school of domestication o&scured the politics of species alteration, so too has a growing &ody of neo'Darwinian research$ %his wor! theori9es domestication within the frame of organic evolution, one in which humans do not have privileged status as Sauer would suggest, &ut rather are conceptuali9ed continuously with nonhuman animals in see!ing to ma imi9e their species fitness$ According to such wor!, domestication functions to &ring humans and other species into 4co'evolutionary relationships4 that, in species'terms, are mutually &eneficial *Jac!son, .//61$ 2n contrast &oth to scientists for whom animal domestication operated in tandem with organic evolutionary forces, and cultural evolutionists li!e Sauer, for whom it followed naturally from some higher stage of evolution called culture, is an alternative perspective again$ Newer models of domestication are possi&le that pro&lemati9e animal containment strategies &y humans within a cultural and political conte t$ :ore particularly, animal domestication can &e historici9ed within the set of remote ideas of 4domus4 and 4agrios,4 and oppositions of savagery and civility that are alive to the present day$ Domesticating the &ild: A $arrati!e 'riumph %he practice of selectively &reeding animals was rooted in the remote past, &ut the term 4domestication4 did not enter the 8nglish language until the .0AAs$ %he ver& 4to domesticate4 appears to &e a technical term '' deriving from the 7rench 4domesti#uer4 which in medieval times &ecame attached to a concept that had &een circulating for centuries$ We !now that in the Gree! classical era, however, from appro imately 0AA +@8, to the Foman period, .AA to BAA @8, domesticated animals were the reference point for a split in thought &etween nature that was said to &e tame, in @icero>s words, that 4we ma!e,4 and nature that was said to &e 4indomita&le4 *.;/31$ @haracteri9ing the thought of any era is fraught with pro&lems of overgenerali9ation, &ut it is reasona&le to conclude that the opposition &etween made and unmade nature was no neutral distinction for the ancients$ 7rom at least the time of -esiod>s Wor!s and Days in the ;th century +@8, human history was conceived &y many Gree! scholars as a (ourney from the age when people lived in *what was said to &e1 a 4state of nature4 *Glac!en, ./6<, pp$ .BC'.BB1$ 7or some authors, not least -esiod, who deplored the toils endured &y farmers, the (ourney effectively amounted to a fall from a golden age$ +y and large, however, the practice of recasting life'forms for food, energy, warmth, sport, company, and so on, came to &e narrated positively as a process of cultivating nature$ %o cultivate nature was to draw it into a moral order where it &ecame civili9ed$ 2ndeed, it was the practice that signified culture itself, a term, which, in its earliest 8uropean use, meant to cultivate or tend something '' usually crops and animals *Williams, ./;B, p$ ;<1$ 2nversely, nature &eyond the or&it of cultivation came to signify a space of danger, death, and distance

*@osgrove, .//01$ Fecall the walled city *polis1 of the classical era that was designed to !eep out wildness *especially animals1 and secure the esta&lishment of the ideal moral community *Pagden, ./;C, pp$ .;'./1$ Such enclosures represented a systematic effort to definitively segregate civility and wildness, &oth in thought and practice$ Gater on, &i&lical stories invo!ed still more negative notions of wilderness &eyond the reach of cultivation and civili9ation *@ronon, .//01$ %he social archaeologist, -odder *.//A1, provides a model that historici9es still further these ancient concepts of civility and wildness$ -e locates the cultural distinctions even more remotely '' in the Neolithic era '' when humans were e perimenting with the &reeding of &ulls, sheep, and goats in diverse parts of 8urope$ People were also erecting more sta&le homes, settlements were &ecoming more definitively delimited, and the dead *&oth human and nonhuman1 were &eing &uried and segregated, all in ways, -odder argues, that more securely &ounded the domestic from the wild$ While ac!nowledging that the full range of meanings within Neolithic sym&olic systems cannot &e recovered, -odder argued that space in many archaeological sites throughout 8urope in that period was structured around the dramatic templates of domus *where life'sources such as plants, animals, and clay were &rought in and transformed1 and agrios *where danger and death were found1$ -odder held that, underlying such practices, were human impulses of &oth fear and attraction to that which loosely &ore the la&el of 4wild$4 Altering (elationships 2t follows from -odder>s analysis that the alteration of the relationship &etween humanity and other life' forms during the Neolithic period '' called 4agri'culture4 '' was far &roader than a functional rise in the activities of herding and harvesting *%homas, .//.1$ 2t was a simultaneously practical and sym&olic process$ Note particularly that the distinctions of domus and agrios, inside and outside, are not pre' given in -odder>s analysis, &ut rather are under constant construction, e perimentation, and negotiation as humans rema!e life sources and life sources rema!e humans$ +y the late 0th and 3th millennia +@8, -odder claimed, the productive activities of coo!ing, feasting, and e change were couched within an ideology of the domus where that which was figured as wild was domesticated$ +y the time of Gree! writing, the capacity of humans to domesticate entire species of animals had come to inform some grand, forward'thrusting narratives$ Ko!ing the o to the plough, for e ample, was &eing scripted as the very process out of which civili9ation had evolved$ 2ndeed, the activity of domesticating animals was, for many Gree! scholars *especially the Stoics1, the very (ustification of a claim to human uni#ueness *Sora&(i, .//B1$ %he logic went as followsE Whereas humans *endnote C1 could control their instincts through thought, nonhuman animals were, &y contrast, loc!ed in the tyranny of instinct, una&le to 4reali9e their potential4 *cited in Pagden, ./;C, pp$ .<'.;5 Aristotle, ./<61$ )f course, the animal world provided a reference point for human &oundary'ma!ing efforts in a range of ancient civili9ations long &efore e periments in &reeding *Dell, in press1$ +ut &reeding and harvesting were ta!en as decisive &ecause *unli!e hunting1 such activities were said to involve the systematic use of reason$ Selective &reeding vindicated the telos that was inherent within humans, ena&ling them to gloriously transcend the primal struggle for survival$ +y contrast, animals were stuc!$ %hey were lodged, not only in their own nature, &ut in that residual sphere called 4nature4 that was somehow left over and &ehind after humans, or at least :an, had heroically detached himself$ Such was the avowed triumph of the taming of nature that, in time, the process &ecame more widely e trapolated in @hristian theori9ations of human identity *Sora&(i, .//B1$ Just as humans regulated animal savagery in the ascent to domestication, so did :an &ecome *what was said to &e1 civili9ed &y raising himself a&ove his own internal primal urges$ -e was released from the grip of instinct, from his own animal nature$ -e was never entirely free, however, and &y the .;th century in 8ngland and elsewhere, the prevailing conception of human identity depicted a self split &etween animal and human sides *2ngold, .//3, p$ CC1$ -ere was foreshadowed the notion of 4the &east within4 '' that metaphorical site that to this day, in western cultures, signifies all the contradictory fears and desires surrounding uninhi&ited &ehavior including se and violence *:idgley, ./<;1$ 8uropean ideas of animality have had a comple history since the ancient era, not least during medieval times when premises a&out the integrity of the human'animal &oundary &ecame less confident$ 2n time, however, the divide of human and animal &ecame so ta!en for granted in western science and thought that the reality of species'specific diversity grew o&scure$ %he processes em&edded in the construction of Animal as a category distinct from -uman &ecame progressively lost to conscious reflection even &eyond the time of the pu&lication of Darwin>s path'&rea!ing )rigin of Species in .;0/$ %he connections drawn here &etween practices of animal hus&andry and ideas of human uni#ueness are &eing charted as part of a strategy of retrieval well underway in a range of human sciences *Nos!e, ./;/5 +ir!e, .//05 Plumwood, .//B1$ %he activities that gave humans control over the reproduction and

character of other life'forms were nested within &inary and temporal rhetorics of reason and instinct$ %hese logics pitted animals apart from and &eneath humans$ Selective &reeding and harvesting thus assumed a wider, metaphorical dimension in Judeo'@hristian thought, holding up a mirror to an ieties within human self'definition$ Changing )cale: 'he &ild in the City Drawing wildness into a ne us of human concern is an inherently spatial process$ 2t implies a physical infrastructure of enclosure practices, as well as concepts of &ounding, fi ing, and arranging that rely on spatiali9ed thought$ Such &oundary'ma!ing efforts have &een fraught with contradiction and tension, however, as a loo! at the narrative history of animal domestication shows$ As -odder *.//A1 flagged, and the notion of the 4&east within4 captures, humans are attracted to wildness as they engage in acts of enclosing, repressing, and recasting it$ %he practice of &ringing wildness into the human domus has &een underpinned &y impulses not only of fear and control, &ut also of care and curiosity '' &y affection as well as domination *%uan, ./;31$ %he am&iguities are precisely what ma!e the representational devices at such familiar institutions as the ur&an 9oo more comple than a series of rationalist frames of viewing$ %his is not to imply that some overarching continuity of domesticatory relations has flowed from Neolithic 8urope into the spaces and places of contemporary cities$ Nothing so transhistorical, linear, a&stract, or impregna&le in scope is proposed$ Father, returning to the local spaces through which domesticatory practices are articulated, registers the point that animal life is &rought into close encounter with humans in diverse ways, through particular spatial arrangements, and in specific times and places$ %he manifestly varied faces of domestication re#uire their own detailed geo'histories$ 2f the menageries of ancient Greece and 8gypt saw efforts to technically domesticate new species of animals *-oage, Fos!ell , :ansour, .//61, the 9oo of the modern era is an e ercise in metaphorical domestication$ 2nside the walls of those institutions that call themselves 9oos after Fegent>s Par! in Gondon in .;3A, select animals are &rought into encounter with humans as o&(ects of curiosity, education, and entertainment '' as resources within a nature aesthetic for ur&an consumption$ Adelaide Zoo 2n the case of the colonial institution of Adelaide =oo in South Australia, the decisions of the officers of the Foyal =oological Society regarding animal composition and display hold up a window to such representational strategies$ %he decisive influences included an imperial networ! of animal trading that, for the first 3A years of the 9oo>s career, saw e otic icons of colonial mastery &rought from a&road$ Also instrumental in shaping the 9oo>s design philosophy was the mi of late ./th'century ideas surrounding race, gender, and empire, such that the li!es of Gilian, the elephant *and her long line of female successors1 stood dou&ly as raciali9ed su&(ects and mother figures for children$ %he animals were also recast as e hi&its according to the dictates of consumer capitalism over the CAth century that &rought circuses and other entertainments inside the walls of Adelaide =oo$ Science too had a role in transforming the animals into spectacles$ 7rom the era of Ginnean ta onomy *with displays accompanied &y maps of the glo&al distri&ution of species1 to contemporary &iodiversity discourses of loss and e tinction, animal &odies have &een interpreted through the lens of scientific !nowledges$ %he rise of nationalism saw the addition of an 4Australiana4 e hi&it in the ./6As$ 8arlier in the century, there had &een a flow of !oalas, !angaroos, wom&ats, and other national icons to overseas 9oos1$ 7inally, shifting design languages in western society at large '' from modernist iron &ars to the postmodern 4World of Primates4 where wildness has &een invented from scratch '' have conditioned the form of the wildness aesthetic at the heart of the city of Adelaide$ nclosing the *ther %he changing visual technologies at the Adelaide =oo, from menagerie'style caging to the ecological theaters of the present day, reveal that institution>s nesting within conte ts of empire, consumer capitalism, and nationalism *among others1$ 2t does not necessarily follow, however, that the story of that 9oo can &e read as a tidy tale of human *and +ritish colonial1 dominion$ 2n &ringing in wildness, 9oos replay a will to control the )ther, at the same time as there is an attraction to it$ At Adelaide, in the ./BAs, children came into close contact with animal &odies when they too! rides on Gilian>s &ac!, while they *and their parents1 laughed at the antics of mon!eys in the demeaning chimpan9ee circus *7igures . and C1$ 2n this sense, the 9oo is a microcosm of the comple modalities of power and allure within the more general process of domestication$

H7igures . and CI Conclusion )ne of the most persistent themes within western thought has &een the concern with what ma!es us human '' an impulse that has seen numerous efforts to specify how we are different from animals$ Animal domestication has figured prominently among such efforts '' a claim su&stantiated here &y historici9ing domestication practices within a narrative politics of ideas a&out human uni#ueness, wildness, and civility$ Such a review presents a more activated model of domestication than has e isted in past and present functionalist'evolutionist theori9ations$ %he multiple human impulses that underlie acts of animal enclosure involve not only a politics of difference, however$ %hey also contain contradictory moralities, ma!ing animal domestication a rich su&(ect for in#uiries into the dynamics of power and possession, at scales ranging from local to glo&al$