Dr Thorsten Gieser (Czech Academy of Sciences) The Dignity of the Prey: Maintaining ‘Good’ Human-Animal Relations in Western and Non-Western Hunting

Abstract

Germany, outskirts of Berlin 1904. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II leads a big societal hunt on a capital wild boar on horseback and with a pack of hounds. Eventually the hounds corner the boar, the fastest rider jumped from his horse to hold it in place until the Kaiser arrived to kill it with a blade in ‘knightly battle’. This type of chase had been practised for hundreds of years, going back originally to the French parforce hunt on red deer. In its ideal, this hunt is paradigmatic for a particular kind of relation between human and animal which still, so I argue, implicitly underlies contemporary hunting practices in Germany – and other European hunting cultures. The question is, why the hunt equals a ‘knightly battle’? Why is it not a ‘common’ fight between human and animal? The answer is, because both involved are considered to be of ‘noble’ character - honourable and endowed with dignity. In this talk I will explore the role of animal dignity in the problematic relation between hunter and game, a relation characterized by acts of violence, of suffering and the death of animals. I will first show how contemporary hunters in Germany maintain ‘good relations’ with game animals. In a second step I will compare their hunting ethics to indigenous hunting cultures, particularly from North America and Siberia, to show how animal dignity plays out differently when applied to the living animal, the dead animal and the afterlife of the animal. I will conclude by arguing that animal dignity is a valuable concept beyond hunting that enables researchers ‘to take animals seriously’ and that adds another ethical dimension to discussions on animal agency.

Bio

Thorsten Gieser is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Koblenz and Lecturer in the MA program ‘Visual Anthropology, Media and Documentary Practices’ at the University of Münster. For the last seven years, he has developed a phenomenology of hunting through an ongoing research project on hunting practices in contemporary Germany. He draws on written sensory ethnography but also documentaries, photos, and a multisensory art installation and his website. More recently, he has studied the affective dimensions of the return of wolves to Germany (funded by Volkswagen Foundation, 2019-22). Since 2020, he has been based at the Institute of Ethnology in the Czech Academy of Sciences where he holds the post of Senior Researcher in the ERC project BOAR: "Hunting for Wild Boar Futures in the Times of African Swine Fever". This research focuses on wild boar hunting in Germany (Rhineland and Saxony) and the recent transformations of hunter-boar relations and hunting ethics.

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