The Meaning of Horses

Biosocial Encounters

Dona Davis, Anita Maurstad, Dona Davis, Anita Maurstad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780815346715
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317427964
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Meaning of Horses: Biosocial Encounters examines some of the engagements or entanglements that link the lived experiences of human and non-human animals. The contributors discuss horse-human relationships in multiple contexts, times and places, highlighting variations in the meaning of horses as well as universals of 'horsiness'. They consider how horses are unlike other animals, and cover topics such as commodification, identity, communication and performance. This collection emphasises the agency of the horse and a need to move beyond anthropocentric studies, with a theoretical approach that features naturecultures, co-being and biosocial encounters as interactive forms of becoming. Rooted in anthropology and multispecies ethnography, this book introduces new questions and areas for consideration in the field of animals and society.

1 Meaning of Horses

Dona Lee Davis and Anita Maurstad

Human Animal Studies have recently emerged as a topical, popular, controversial, cross-disciplinary arena of research, theory and practice that calls for innovative ways of understanding human animal relationships (DeMello 2012; Hurn 2012). Just as the 1960s and 1970s brought women from the periphery to the center of analysis, today’s researchers are exploring new ways of thinking about human animal relationships. Three theoretical frameworks dominate the new field of human nonhuman animal studies. Posthumanism seeks to decenter the human from human animal studies (Wolfe 2010). Multispecies ethnography advocates a more nuanced focus on the contact zones, or types of entanglements and engagements, that link lived experiences of human and nonhuman animals (Haraway 2008; Hamilton and Placas 2011). An innovative movement in biosocial anthropology (Ingold and Pálsson 2013) proposes (Ingold 2013) new ways of thinking about creatures as individual, biological and social beings that, through interspecies practices and interactions or biosocial encounters, mutually create their selves. Within each of these theoretical frameworks, horses and human horse interactions as a topic of study invite a broad perspective of analytic themes and frameworks. By bringing horses from the periphery to the center of analysis, the book’s contributors demonstrate the utility of an ethnographic perspective as they describe and discuss horses in multiple specific and situated contexts, times and places. As a whole this collection identifies and explores a variety of horse human entanglements that not only center the horse and bridge or challenge the nature-culture divide but also focus on the complexities of horse human relationships as forms of meaning making.

Although our focus on the horse draws from broadly defined ethnographic methods and case studies to contribute to the animals and society literature, we also assert that horses are not like other animals. They are partner (Birke 2008) rather than companion animals. Horses’ very nature, history, morphology and function set them apart from other kinds of animals in important ways. The practice of horse riding provides new dimensions of meaning to concepts such as co-being (Haraway 2008, 3), forms of “we” (Haraway 2008, 11) or “contact zones” (Haraway 2008, 5). The human riding with horse (Argent 2012) becomes the centaur (Game 2001) and a form of a “knotted being” (Haraway 2008, 15). The very act of riding is a process of “becoming with” (Haraway 2008, 16). Together rider and horse flatten or bridge not only the divides of animal/human but also those of nature/culture. Moreover, in addition to their use in riding and hauling as forms of transport, the speed, mobility, longevity and stamina of horses as well as their ability to survive in a variety of terrains and climates has had profound effects in human histories locally and globally and in both the long and short term (Kelekna 2009).

The contributors to this volume are situated in a variety of cultures that enable a focus on local variations in meaning of horses as well as on universals of ‘horsiness.’ The chapters draw from an international collection of authors and cover topics in a wide range of national, indigenous or cultural settings including Mongolia, Egypt, Finland, Norway, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, the US and the UK. Taken together, the contributors bridge dichotomies between nature and culture in ways that support developments of new theoretical language of nature-cultures and biosocial becomings (Ingold and Palsson 2013; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Haraway 2008; Hurn 2012) but also intersect with an existing social science literature that has ascribed meaning to horses and horse human relationships in a multiplicity of ways. Although there is considerable overlap among the chapters, each chapter stands by itself and chapters can be read in any order.

In this chapter we set the scene for what follows with an introductory overview of key themes or topics of inquiry that characterize contemporary literatures on the meaning of horses. We return to a more detailed assessment of horse human relations as biosocial encounters in our conclusion (Chapter 13). Although we cover a wide range of topics, the review is illustrative rather than comprehensive. The goal, aside from introducing the chapters of this book, is to demonstrate the various meanings in terms of significance or import that horses have had as they have been situated in a variety of genres of academic writing. Although the focus is on anthropology and works by anthropologists, rather than set, rigid academic boundaries, many non-anthropologists who employ an ethnographic perspective and are influential in the field are also included. The review is divided thematically into sections on the meaning of horses in reference to:

1 evolution and history;

2 harm and health;

3 embodiment, mutuality and communication; and

4 horse cultures and the ethnography of sport.

Evolution and history

The meanings of horses can be shaped through analysis of their roles and function in historical and evolutionary contexts. Anthropology is a four field discipline that includes cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology and linguistics. Archaeologists and biological anthropologists (Olsen et al. 2006) have shown a continuing interest in both the evolution of horses and their role in prehistorical and historical cultures of the past. Without horses the history and culture of humans would be very different (Lawrence 1988). For example, Sandra Olsen (1995, 2006a, 2006b) has studied human horse relationships from the Pleistocene past to current day herders in Kazakhstan (Olsen et al. 2008; Shnirelman and Olsen 1995). An archaeologist, Olsen documents the variety of relationships that have existed between horse and humans over the millennia. The horse was originally exploited for meat by Paleolithic hunters spreading across Europe and Asia and probably domesticated around 4,000 BC. Since that time, the horse has had not only multiple occupations but also a tremendous impact on geopolitics. Kelekna (2009, 1) describes the emergence of “horse power” in human history and documents the important roles that horses have played throughout a wide variety of regional and cultural contexts (see also Chamberlin 2006; Clutton- Brock 1992; Digard 2003; Hansen 2014). Kelekna’s (2009) study is interesting because the focus on horses moves analysis of key developments in human history and prehistory from the centers of sedentary agricultural civilizations to the margins and peripheries or the steppes and deserts of Europe, Asia and North Africa. Being the fastest long distance quadruped on Earth, long lived, able to run on hard surfaces, and having strength and stamina, horses became the basis of mobile equestrian cultures active in trade and a highly effective warfare that functioned to spread Indo-European languages, religion and writing through large areas of the old and new worlds. Taking a more literary turn, Raber and Tucker (2005) describe the role of the horse in defining the early modern world (Middle Ages to the 18th century) in Europe, Russia and Africa, where horses become associated with aristocratic, masculine, military and national identities. Returning to ethnography, Lawrence (1988) notes the readiness with which people throughout history have embraced horses and how mounted societies are characterized by pride and a sense of independence and superiority.

Of the contributors to this volume only Kristin Armstrong Oma, in Chapter 2, takes a specifically archaeological/historical perspective. Although she notes the importance of the horse for meat and transport among Iron Age Viking cultures in Scandinavia, Oma’s focus is on the more symbolic aspects of horses as vehicles for transport between the realms of the everyday and the supernatural. Nevertheless, Oma’s analysis is also embedded in discussions of culture change and state formation implicating the role and life of the horse as enmeshed in each. Charlotte Marchina, in Chapter 7 on Mongolian horsemanship, focuses on the contemporary Mongolians or modern day descendants of the horse cultures that figure so prominently in the accounts of historians like Kelekna (2009). Narrowing their analytic frameworks to the last two centuries, a number of contributors also take a historical turn, where the horse becomes a dynamic intermediary between traditional and modern. In Chapter 10, Amelia-Roisin Seifert takes Lawrence’s (1985, 1988) ethnography of North American Plains Indians, like the Crow, into a more contemporary setting by looking at the shifting but vital roles horses have come to play as keystone species and potent symbols in the biopolitical sphere. Seifert shows how traditional equestrian practices and meanings co-occur among those that are more modern or contemporary. Similarly, Claire Brown, in Chapter 5, demonstrates how the modern Connemara pony has become an admixture of traditional and modern in current-day Ireland. Others, for example Riitta-Marja Leinonen (Chapter 4) and Christoph Lange (Chapter 3), take a historical approach to changing uses and meanings of a particular regional or national breed of horse in Finland and Egypt, respectively. While Leinonen focuses on the changing functions of the Finnish horse, Lange traces the impacts of first colonialism and then globalization on the breeding of Arab horses in Egypt. Today the Connemara pony has become an athlete, the Finnish horse a therapist and the Arab horse a work of art. All of these contributors share an interest in the changing functions and morphologies of the horses who are subjects of their studies. In particular, Seifert, Brown, Leinonen and Lange all agree that as horses’ significance in work and subsistence decreases, their symbolic significance increases.

Harm and health

While McShane and Tarr (2006) assert that it is questionable if the horse would have actually survived without human intervention, Cassidy (2013, 2) refers to “the costs of our entanglements with animals” in terms of harm to the animal. Any discussion of the human horse interactions, past or present, raises issues of what potentials for harm exist in the case of the horse and for help or health in the case of the human. Tuan (1984), writing about human histories of hunting and domestication of animals in general, describes human animal relationships as characterized by cruelty, power and dominance. Gilbert and Gillet’s (2014) edited book on the use of animals in sport contains an entire section on violence towards and the unethical treatment of animals. Young and Gerber (2014) describe the cruelty to horses that occurs in chuck wagon racing at the Calgary Stampede. According to Hurn (2012), the breeding and commercial sales of Welsh cobs is a kind of sex trade where obese horses are enslaved to human ideals of what features should characterize the breed. Lange in this volume sets forth similar arguments for the case of the asil Arab horse where breeding for form trumps function. American rodeo (Lawrence 1982; Rollin 1966) is often portrayed in terms of abusive practices towards animals including horses. Dalke (2010) describes how herd culling policies for management of mustang herds must juggle images of historical icon, object of beauty and pest. We, like other contributors to this volume, have attended animal and society conferences where members of the audience vocally object to any form of riding, stabling or domestication of the horse as a form of abuse.

More nuanced approaches to the ethical treatment of horses, however, also occur both in terms of domestication and sport. Rather than view domestication as a form of human control, exploitation and dominance, Cassidy (2007a) characterizes domestication as a more symbiotic, mutual co-evolution or exchange between humans and animals in general. Similarly, Argent (n.d.) and Goodwin (1999) caution against emphasizing dominance over co-operation in horse human relationships. The importance of animal ethics and welfare in sports is noted by Rollin (1966), as are safety concerns or accident/injury prevention in a variety of equestrian sports (Bryant 2008; Murray et al. 2005; Odberg and Bouissou 1999; Thompson and Adelman 2013). Dashper (2014), while noting that the horse does not choose to participate in equine sports, like Birke (2004), sees human horse interactions as a kind of partnership rather than a form of exploitation. Smith (2014) fine tunes her discussion of horse human riding partnerships, with an elaborated distinction of what constitutes good and bad dressage as a difference between a responsive horse and a controlled horse.

As there is a literature on harm to horses, there is also a literature on the benefits of health and well-being that horses bring to humans. Although problematic when it comes to efficacy studies (Davis et al. 2015; Kruger and Serpell 2010), horses do bring healing benefits to humans. Equine assisted therapy (EAT) or, more broadly, equine assisted activities, include physical and psychological benefits from riding or just being around horses. Although EATs are focused on those who suffer some sort of impairment (Michalon 2014), horse human alliances are also considered to give pleasure to their human partners and the depth of emotional connection people feel with their horses is said to exceed that of the client/therapist relationship (York et al. 2008). Keaveney (2008), Gilbert (2014) and Lawrence (1988) summarize these benefits as the physical pleasures of grooming or touching a horse; a sense of connection, partnership and mutual trust that arises in the shared embodiments of riding: feelings of happiness, relaxation, escape, freedom, transcendence, communion with nature and spirituality; a sense of community in the barn; and a sense of accomplishment and self-actualization or confidence. According to Lawrence (1988) the qualities of the horse as healer in modern society reside in his...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Meaning of Horses
• Part I Commodification and Identity
• Part II Communication and Relation
• Part III Performance, Practice and Presentation
• Index