A metaphor that classifies human beings in terms of behaviors similar to those of other animals must come with special caveats. Of course, all metaphors have limited usefulness. We urgently need to understand this context better, so as to predict (at least in broad strokes) where our social “ecosystem” may be headed to change course, in instances where there is still time to avert severe harm and to better adapt to whatever impacts are already inevitable. This is not a static context instead, it is a highly dynamic and perilous situation dominated by our society’s collision with ecological limits to further growth, including climate change, resource depletion, and species extinctions. My main objective here is to use the “predator-prey” frame to see whether we can gain some insight into society, especially in its current context. In order to emphasize the metaphoric nature of this usage, I’ll use quotation marks in every instance where terms like predator or prey are being applied to relations among and between humans. In discussing the phenomenon of “predation,” I’m not so much interested in cases in which some humans actually eat others (though this did happen in some societies), but rather in forms of economic exploitation. Speaking informally of human economic exploitation of other humans in terms of “predation” is hardly new, as we will see however, a cursory search of the literature turned up few systematic explorations of the metaphor. In addition, members of conquered “prey” societies can be enslaved by or absorbed into the “predator” society, becoming a permanent underclass. Members of a complex society can “prey” upon other members of the same society via slavery (including sex slavery and debt slavery), caste, class, taxes, rents, crime, and debt on the other hand, one society can “prey” upon a different society through raid, invasion, plunder, conquest, colonization, or (again) debt. Human groups have “preyed” upon one another via two main pathways-intragroup and intergroup-which have often intersected or run parallel. But the extent and variety of human ways of exploiting other humans defy comparison with the behavior of any other animal hence the “predation” metaphor. Bull elk battle one another for mating privileges, sometimes to the death. For example when a shoebill gives birth to two chicks, the mother and father tend to favor one of them then the favored offspring attacks the unfavored, which inevitably dies. Within non-human species in nature, forms of competition or exploitation unquestionably exist. To the extent that some exploit others, we could say that some act as “predators,” others as “prey.” There may even be human analogues to subcategories of predatory behavior such as parasitism and infection. Within it, humans (all a single species), because of their differing social classes, roles, and occupations, can act, in effect, as different species. Could we use predator-prey relationships among widely divergent species in nature as a metaphor to help in understanding the behavior of people in complex human societies, in which some people gain at the expense of others? Even the best metaphors have limited usefulness, and this one certainly has potential for misapplication however, as I hope to show, it also has the ability to illuminate.Ī complex or stratified human society can be thought of as an ecosystem. Biologists and ecologists have studied such relationships in detail for many decades, codifying principles that help us understand and predict the behavior of entire ecosystems. Without a moment’s hesitation, we classify the first interaction, between the lion and gazelle, as a predator-prey relationship. In each of these three scenarios one party seeks to gain at the expense of the other. Human Predators, Human Prey: Society as Ecosystem in a Time of Collapse – Part 1 IntroductionĪ lion runs down a gazelle a raiding band brandishing clubs, bows, and arrows descends on a tribal village a loan shark confronts a delinquent borrower. This is a 3-part essay that uses predation as a metaphor to unpack power relations in human societies. Read Part 2 and Part 3.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |