I’m not sure how much I agree with your first paragraph. Darwin’s writing can be quite dense with excessive numbers of clauses, so I may have misinterpreted. But, it seemed to me that he was not conveying that earlier versions of adaptations and organisms are inferior. If he was, I think he was referring to inferiority in terms of an organism’s successful adaptation to an environment. For instance, woodpeckers with longer beaks tend to get more food, and in this sense their adaptations are “superior,” not because there is some innate quality of superiority to having a longer beak, but because it is more successful and is more likely to be past on. If using this definition, any adaptation can be inferior or superior depending on the constraints of the surrounding ecosystem. Evolution DOES tend to improve on adaptations, not because beneficial mutations are really common, but because unsuccessful organisms die off, leaving those who are relatively more successful to reproduce. Also, I don’t believe most mutations are deleterious. My impression is that most have no effect on an organism’s survival. Most variability that occurs makes little difference to an organism’s success until a happenstance change in the environment selects certain individuals and reinforces those variations.

He does use the word “lower” to refer to organisms less successful than humans. He may be implying a sort of evolutionary direction toward “higherness” that doesn’t necessarily happen with evolution, but I can’t say he’s incorrect in conceptualizing species this way. There is degree of accuracy in calling us (or at least our minds) higher than other organisms.

Scintific research on the rat and pet is helped very well to change the view of every animals.

” God granted Adam dominion over animals, which I think has had a lasting impression on the relationship with animals in a Christian society, in which humans are viewed as the most important beings and all other creatures are at our mercy. This is different from the society of the reindeer people in which all living things have souls and a consciousness just like humans do.” This really gets to the heart of a fundamental difference in cosmologies and we should all probably reflect on that as we think about how we (in the 21st-century West) makes sense of domestication and our relationships with other animals.
Another quick thought re: nomads and pastoralists — they are not mutually exclusive modalities. The Eveni, for example, are both….

Though I’m interested in the discussion that compares your comments to racism among humans, I’m more intrigued by your connection to pastoral societies and nomadic societies and the dictation on their religion. I think you’ve picked up on something here, especially in that pastoral societies have developed a religion that mirrors their relationship with God as their shepherd. Furthermore, God granted Adam dominion over animals, which I think has had a lasting impression on the relationship with animals in a Christian society, in which humans are viewed as the most important beings and all other creatures are at our mercy. This is different from the society of the reindeer people in which all living things have souls and a consciousness just like humans do. This could have a very lasting impression on how each of those societies treat their domesticated animals.

First, I’m very interested that you experienced real reindeer burgers. That’s so strange to me! I think it strikes me as odd because I picture reindeer as horses in our culture, and it would be very weird for us to eat horse burgers. Also, I’m really glad that you brought up the commodification of the reindeer. I was interested in this topic from Goat Song, and it was definitely on my mind all throughout this week’s reading. I like the comparison you made between communism and capitalism. In my opinion, Soviet communism doesn’t look at all like the communism laid out by Marx and Engels that was brought up in Goat Song. Based on this, I think the commodification of domesticated animals has been very similar in Soviet communism, American capitalism, and many other political structures in the world. I think Reindeer People does a good job of explaining the way our relationship with animals has shifted as humans have entered the modern era. I’m probably biased along with you on my desire to dive much further into the topic of political structures and their influence on domestication!

The idea of domesticated people makes me think of The Time Machine, where humanity had diverged into two groups, a society of effeminate idle people, and the cannibalistic under-dwellers who feed on them and provide them with material goods. Except in such an extreme sense I can’t see “domesticated people” being applicable in the sense you’re using it.

Apparently there have been projects to introduce reindeer herding in Alaska as early as the 1890s, between 20 and 30 years after it was purchased from Russia. (http://www.foresthistory.org/fellowships/willis.pdf) That reminded me of another similar project, introducing camels to the mid-west. Unfortunately they didn’t work well alongside horses and couldn’t deal with rocky terrain. (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/03/the-military-camels-of-the-north-american-west/)

I think Corinne is right about domestic and tame reindeer populations being very similar in terms of their genetic make up, and the comparison with feral / “domestic” cats is a good one. I think it also works to take that a step further. The Eveni don’t even try to domesticate wild reindeer, but domestic reindeer can become wild pretty quickly.

I’m glad Kara hasn’t seen Frozen because I was worried I was the only person around who had missed it! There are so many good ideas in this post. I agree that the caribou / reindeer /domestication triad is really interesting. The piece that intrigues me the most is the presence of both wild and domestic reindeer in the same place and the liminality of domestication in this context. I’ve read this book several times, and still can’t quite get my head around the Eveni’s use of domestic reindeer to hunt wild reindeer. BTW, Sven needs to get a handle on the plural of reindeer.

When trying to make sense of Bayani and the concept of animals “delivering themselves” I find it helpful to look back at Ingold’s article, “From Trust to Domination” which talks about how hunter gatherers understand their relationship with prey animals (and how domestication changes that understanding).