PEOPLE-ANIMALS RELATIONS: THE SINGAPORE ZOO AND ITS SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The sociological dimensions of nature versus culture have been long and well debated upon. But a related aspect of it, the very relationship between people and animals has not yet been accorded extensive attention. Although the nature of animal categories and social structure have been studied by anthropologists such as Edmund Leach, Mary Douglas and Claude Levi Strauss, it is an area which, I believe, still remains relatively unexplored. Man/animal relationship revolves around the differential ordering of Self and Other. Culturally provided rules determines the arrangements of the notions of Self and Other either on an ego centred basis, or otherwise. The ordering of the Self and Other surfaces again in the direct interactions between humans and animals. Interlocking processes such as intersubjectivity, individuality and the possibility of anthropomorphism arises out of the way animals are seen in relation to humans. I have, in this research, attempted to analyse how interactions take place in the context of the Singapore Zoo and the position which animals occupy in the understanding of the keeper in the light of the above mentioned processes.