Adam Cruise is an investigative environmental journalist, travel writer and academic. He has contributed to number of international publications, including National Geographic and The Guardian, covering diverse topics from the plight of elephants, rhinos and lions in Africa to coral reef rejuvenation in Indonesia. His books include King Solomon and the Showman, Louis Botha’s War and In the Pursuit of Solitude. Cruise is a doctor of philosophy, specialising in animal and environmental ethics, and is the editor of the online Journal of African Elephants.
Human language is a powerful tool that can intensify biases towards ethnic groups, genders or min... more Human language is a powerful tool that can intensify biases towards ethnic groups, genders or minorities. This is a logocentric manifestation early feminist philosophers, for example, identified and endeavoured to reform. Certainly, until the 1960s there was a widespread sexist attitude in Western society which found wide and enduring expression in linguistic conventions. Feminist philosophy has been effective in dismantling this attitude by discarding sexist aberrations in human language. The main focus of feminists was to have society acknowledge the unconscious ways that language both silences and emphasises gender in negative ways. A major part of the feminist language reform focused on when words or phrases make one gender, women, subjugated or invisible compared to the other.
The same process of language reform needs to occur in order to tackle our latent anthropocentrism and the, often violent, relationship humans have with other animals. Wildlife declines and the failed attempts at conserving them is mired in how we deploy human language.
Human language is used as a weapon to subjugate all the other animals. The human animal alone believes he is awarded the gift of logos through a principle of divine reason while all other animals are deprived of it. This means that humans, the world’s only autobiographical animals, have the ability to rewrite their own, as well as all the other animals’ story, and to inscribe through a structured language a power and a dominance over them as well as a deceit and a disavowal of their own animality.
Trophy hunting is a controversial topic. On the one hand, the idea that a handful of the wealthy ... more Trophy hunting is a controversial topic. On the one hand, the idea that a handful of the wealthy elite pays top dollar to shoot iconic and rare animals for ‘sport’ draws the ire of a far greater number of sensible (and sensitive) humans. On the other, trophy hunting is touted as a ‘necessary evil’ that brings in much needed funds to support the conservation of targeted species, while at the same time providing economic benefits to impoverished local and indigenous communities living among and alongside trophy hunted wildlife.
Proponents of trophy hunting often argue that without such funds these targeted animals will not be better protected, especially in remote wilderness areas that do not enjoy the financial benefits of mass wildlife-watching tourism. For the opportunity to blast the life out of an iconic animal, trophy hunting ostensibly provides much-needed capital for anti-poaching measures, fences and wilderness protection from anthropogenic habitat encroachment. Furthermore, proponents of trophy hunting recognise the need to include local and indigenous human communities in the activity, both in the form of direct employment and wider community economic benefits. Most significantly, in response to the increasing clamour of public outcries, trophy hunting defenders caution against such emotional responses, stating that hard facts and reason should be the only factors to consider when judging the activity.
This last point is where, ethically, the pro-trophy hunting argument unravels. The sole reliance on reason while at the same time ignoring the emotive responses to the practice, places trophy hunting firmly in the camp of iniquitous wrong-doers. Taken on its own, the act of destroying the life of an endangered wild animal for fun makes no ethical sense. This explains trophy hunting’s reliance on economic justification and its moniker ‘necessary evil’. That reason alone has, in the past, lead to dangerous political certainties that insisted on a hierarchical dualist world of us and them. ‘Them’ as the ‘other’ in the form of powerless and vulnerable minorities. Proponents of trophy hunting, therefore, may need to be a little more careful in their thought processes and adherence to reason over emotion.
The Namibian conservation model is an important example of
an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ global po... more The Namibian conservation model is an important example of an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ global policy framework as applied to biodiversity conservation, which operates a market-based approach with attendant socio-ecological effects.3 The model has received in-depth engagement and critique, which generally declares it successful in terms of conserving wildlife as well as providing economic upliftment for impoverished rural communities. Yet, as a recent analysis shows, ‘there remains a lack of detailed research concerning how these programs and their value frames are operationalised in practice.’
Over the past 30 years, wildlife conservancies in Kenya have proliferated. There are currently 16... more Over the past 30 years, wildlife conservancies in Kenya have proliferated. There are currently 167 conservancies covering 11 percent of Kenya’s landmass. This is more than the area of national parks, which covers around eight percent of the total area. Kenya’s conservancies are spread across various regions encompassing diverse ecosystems from savanna rangelands to forests and marine environments. Two-thirds of Kenya’s wildlife pop¬ulations exist outside formal state-managed areas on land co-habited by humans , thus making the conservation of wildlife dependable on finding ways for rural communities to become involved in the management and governance of wildlife conservation.
A mere twelve years after fighting the British in the Anglo-Boer War, Louis Botha went to war aga... more A mere twelve years after fighting the British in the Anglo-Boer War, Louis Botha went to war again ? this time on Britain?s side. As prime minister of the Union of South Africa at the outbreak of the Great War, Botha agreed to lead his country on a campaign against the Germans across the border in South-West Africa. But first he would have to deal with a revolt from fellow Afrikaners who would rather take up arms against him than side with the old enemy. Louis Botha?s War is the story of how a former Boer War general crushed a rebellion and rallied his country?s first united army to fight a better-equipped enemy in harsh conditions. It is a tale of thirsty men and horses trekking over miles of barren desert; German aviators flying above in rickety aeroplanes; the unusual presence of a prime minister?s wife on the field of battle; and a fabled gold-filled safe at the bottom of a lake. Adam Cruise recreates these fascinating events from journals, memoirs and documents, and describes ...
Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are under... more Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being Wild will showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development. The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system. As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings. Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65). Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings.
The Value of Being Wild: A Phenomenological Approach to Wildlife Conservation, 2020
Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are under... more Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being Wild will showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development.
The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system.
As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings.
Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65).
Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings.
It’s not about the bats, it’s you and me – and our governments. As Covid-19 has brought drastic c... more It’s not about the bats, it’s you and me – and our governments. As Covid-19 has brought drastic change to our world, the time for this idea has come: we need to re-set our relationship with nature.
The Covid-19 pandemic has put the spotlight on how human expansion on earth has led to an increase in zoonotic viruses jumping species, and calls on us to re-examine our rampant commercialisation of nature and animals in farming, wildlife management and in our diets. At the heart of the problem is ‘anthropocentrism’: our egotistical view that ecosystems, plants, trees and other animals exist for the benefit of humans, and humans alone.
In his trademark accessible and anecdotal style, Cruise explores the ethical and practical issues, the personal and political choices – and solutions – to the greatest problem facing all species on earth.
Human language is a powerful tool that can intensify biases towards ethnic groups, genders or min... more Human language is a powerful tool that can intensify biases towards ethnic groups, genders or minorities. This is a logocentric manifestation early feminist philosophers, for example, identified and endeavoured to reform. Certainly, until the 1960s there was a widespread sexist attitude in Western society which found wide and enduring expression in linguistic conventions. Feminist philosophy has been effective in dismantling this attitude by discarding sexist aberrations in human language. The main focus of feminists was to have society acknowledge the unconscious ways that language both silences and emphasises gender in negative ways. A major part of the feminist language reform focused on when words or phrases make one gender, women, subjugated or invisible compared to the other.
The same process of language reform needs to occur in order to tackle our latent anthropocentrism and the, often violent, relationship humans have with other animals. Wildlife declines and the failed attempts at conserving them is mired in how we deploy human language.
Human language is used as a weapon to subjugate all the other animals. The human animal alone believes he is awarded the gift of logos through a principle of divine reason while all other animals are deprived of it. This means that humans, the world’s only autobiographical animals, have the ability to rewrite their own, as well as all the other animals’ story, and to inscribe through a structured language a power and a dominance over them as well as a deceit and a disavowal of their own animality.
Trophy hunting is a controversial topic. On the one hand, the idea that a handful of the wealthy ... more Trophy hunting is a controversial topic. On the one hand, the idea that a handful of the wealthy elite pays top dollar to shoot iconic and rare animals for ‘sport’ draws the ire of a far greater number of sensible (and sensitive) humans. On the other, trophy hunting is touted as a ‘necessary evil’ that brings in much needed funds to support the conservation of targeted species, while at the same time providing economic benefits to impoverished local and indigenous communities living among and alongside trophy hunted wildlife.
Proponents of trophy hunting often argue that without such funds these targeted animals will not be better protected, especially in remote wilderness areas that do not enjoy the financial benefits of mass wildlife-watching tourism. For the opportunity to blast the life out of an iconic animal, trophy hunting ostensibly provides much-needed capital for anti-poaching measures, fences and wilderness protection from anthropogenic habitat encroachment. Furthermore, proponents of trophy hunting recognise the need to include local and indigenous human communities in the activity, both in the form of direct employment and wider community economic benefits. Most significantly, in response to the increasing clamour of public outcries, trophy hunting defenders caution against such emotional responses, stating that hard facts and reason should be the only factors to consider when judging the activity.
This last point is where, ethically, the pro-trophy hunting argument unravels. The sole reliance on reason while at the same time ignoring the emotive responses to the practice, places trophy hunting firmly in the camp of iniquitous wrong-doers. Taken on its own, the act of destroying the life of an endangered wild animal for fun makes no ethical sense. This explains trophy hunting’s reliance on economic justification and its moniker ‘necessary evil’. That reason alone has, in the past, lead to dangerous political certainties that insisted on a hierarchical dualist world of us and them. ‘Them’ as the ‘other’ in the form of powerless and vulnerable minorities. Proponents of trophy hunting, therefore, may need to be a little more careful in their thought processes and adherence to reason over emotion.
The Namibian conservation model is an important example of
an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ global po... more The Namibian conservation model is an important example of an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ global policy framework as applied to biodiversity conservation, which operates a market-based approach with attendant socio-ecological effects.3 The model has received in-depth engagement and critique, which generally declares it successful in terms of conserving wildlife as well as providing economic upliftment for impoverished rural communities. Yet, as a recent analysis shows, ‘there remains a lack of detailed research concerning how these programs and their value frames are operationalised in practice.’
Over the past 30 years, wildlife conservancies in Kenya have proliferated. There are currently 16... more Over the past 30 years, wildlife conservancies in Kenya have proliferated. There are currently 167 conservancies covering 11 percent of Kenya’s landmass. This is more than the area of national parks, which covers around eight percent of the total area. Kenya’s conservancies are spread across various regions encompassing diverse ecosystems from savanna rangelands to forests and marine environments. Two-thirds of Kenya’s wildlife pop¬ulations exist outside formal state-managed areas on land co-habited by humans , thus making the conservation of wildlife dependable on finding ways for rural communities to become involved in the management and governance of wildlife conservation.
A mere twelve years after fighting the British in the Anglo-Boer War, Louis Botha went to war aga... more A mere twelve years after fighting the British in the Anglo-Boer War, Louis Botha went to war again ? this time on Britain?s side. As prime minister of the Union of South Africa at the outbreak of the Great War, Botha agreed to lead his country on a campaign against the Germans across the border in South-West Africa. But first he would have to deal with a revolt from fellow Afrikaners who would rather take up arms against him than side with the old enemy. Louis Botha?s War is the story of how a former Boer War general crushed a rebellion and rallied his country?s first united army to fight a better-equipped enemy in harsh conditions. It is a tale of thirsty men and horses trekking over miles of barren desert; German aviators flying above in rickety aeroplanes; the unusual presence of a prime minister?s wife on the field of battle; and a fabled gold-filled safe at the bottom of a lake. Adam Cruise recreates these fascinating events from journals, memoirs and documents, and describes ...
Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are under... more Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being Wild will showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development. The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system. As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings. Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65). Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings.
The Value of Being Wild: A Phenomenological Approach to Wildlife Conservation, 2020
Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are under... more Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being Wild will showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development.
The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system.
As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings.
Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65).
Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings.
It’s not about the bats, it’s you and me – and our governments. As Covid-19 has brought drastic c... more It’s not about the bats, it’s you and me – and our governments. As Covid-19 has brought drastic change to our world, the time for this idea has come: we need to re-set our relationship with nature.
The Covid-19 pandemic has put the spotlight on how human expansion on earth has led to an increase in zoonotic viruses jumping species, and calls on us to re-examine our rampant commercialisation of nature and animals in farming, wildlife management and in our diets. At the heart of the problem is ‘anthropocentrism’: our egotistical view that ecosystems, plants, trees and other animals exist for the benefit of humans, and humans alone.
In his trademark accessible and anecdotal style, Cruise explores the ethical and practical issues, the personal and political choices – and solutions – to the greatest problem facing all species on earth.
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Papers by Adam Cruise
The same process of language reform needs to occur in order to tackle our latent anthropocentrism and the, often violent, relationship humans have with other animals. Wildlife declines and the failed attempts at conserving them is mired in how we deploy human language.
Human language is used as a weapon to subjugate all the other animals. The human animal alone believes he is awarded the gift of logos through a principle of divine reason while all other animals are deprived of it. This means that humans, the world’s only autobiographical animals, have the ability to rewrite their own, as well as all the other animals’ story, and to inscribe through a structured language a power and a dominance over them as well as a deceit and a disavowal of their own animality.
Proponents of trophy hunting often argue that without such funds these targeted animals will not be better protected, especially in remote wilderness areas that do not enjoy the financial benefits of mass wildlife-watching tourism. For the opportunity to blast the life out of an iconic animal, trophy hunting ostensibly provides much-needed capital for anti-poaching measures, fences and wilderness protection from anthropogenic habitat encroachment. Furthermore, proponents of trophy hunting recognise the need to include local and indigenous human communities in the activity, both in the form of direct employment and wider community economic benefits. Most significantly, in response to the increasing clamour of public outcries, trophy hunting defenders caution against such emotional responses, stating that hard facts and reason should be the only factors to consider when judging the activity.
This last point is where, ethically, the pro-trophy hunting argument unravels. The sole reliance on reason while at the same time ignoring the emotive responses to the practice, places trophy hunting firmly in the camp of iniquitous wrong-doers. Taken on its own, the act of destroying the life of an endangered wild animal for fun makes no ethical sense. This explains trophy hunting’s reliance on economic justification and its moniker ‘necessary evil’. That reason alone has, in the past, lead to dangerous political certainties that insisted on a hierarchical dualist world of us and them. ‘Them’ as the ‘other’ in the form of powerless and vulnerable minorities. Proponents of trophy hunting, therefore, may need to be a little more careful in their thought processes and adherence to reason over emotion.
an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ global policy framework as applied
to biodiversity conservation, which operates a market-based
approach with attendant socio-ecological effects.3 The model
has received in-depth engagement and critique, which generally
declares it successful in terms of conserving wildlife as well
as providing economic upliftment for impoverished rural
communities. Yet, as a recent analysis shows, ‘there remains
a lack of detailed research concerning how these programs and
their value frames are operationalised in practice.’
The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system.
As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings.
Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65).
Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings.
Books by Adam Cruise
The Covid-19 pandemic has put the spotlight on how human expansion on earth has led to an increase in zoonotic viruses jumping species, and calls on us to re-examine our rampant commercialisation of nature and animals in farming, wildlife management and in our diets. At the heart of the problem is ‘anthropocentrism’: our egotistical view that ecosystems, plants, trees and other animals exist for the benefit of humans, and humans alone.
In his trademark accessible and anecdotal style, Cruise explores the ethical and practical issues, the personal and political choices – and solutions – to the greatest problem facing all species on earth.
The same process of language reform needs to occur in order to tackle our latent anthropocentrism and the, often violent, relationship humans have with other animals. Wildlife declines and the failed attempts at conserving them is mired in how we deploy human language.
Human language is used as a weapon to subjugate all the other animals. The human animal alone believes he is awarded the gift of logos through a principle of divine reason while all other animals are deprived of it. This means that humans, the world’s only autobiographical animals, have the ability to rewrite their own, as well as all the other animals’ story, and to inscribe through a structured language a power and a dominance over them as well as a deceit and a disavowal of their own animality.
Proponents of trophy hunting often argue that without such funds these targeted animals will not be better protected, especially in remote wilderness areas that do not enjoy the financial benefits of mass wildlife-watching tourism. For the opportunity to blast the life out of an iconic animal, trophy hunting ostensibly provides much-needed capital for anti-poaching measures, fences and wilderness protection from anthropogenic habitat encroachment. Furthermore, proponents of trophy hunting recognise the need to include local and indigenous human communities in the activity, both in the form of direct employment and wider community economic benefits. Most significantly, in response to the increasing clamour of public outcries, trophy hunting defenders caution against such emotional responses, stating that hard facts and reason should be the only factors to consider when judging the activity.
This last point is where, ethically, the pro-trophy hunting argument unravels. The sole reliance on reason while at the same time ignoring the emotive responses to the practice, places trophy hunting firmly in the camp of iniquitous wrong-doers. Taken on its own, the act of destroying the life of an endangered wild animal for fun makes no ethical sense. This explains trophy hunting’s reliance on economic justification and its moniker ‘necessary evil’. That reason alone has, in the past, lead to dangerous political certainties that insisted on a hierarchical dualist world of us and them. ‘Them’ as the ‘other’ in the form of powerless and vulnerable minorities. Proponents of trophy hunting, therefore, may need to be a little more careful in their thought processes and adherence to reason over emotion.
an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ global policy framework as applied
to biodiversity conservation, which operates a market-based
approach with attendant socio-ecological effects.3 The model
has received in-depth engagement and critique, which generally
declares it successful in terms of conserving wildlife as well
as providing economic upliftment for impoverished rural
communities. Yet, as a recent analysis shows, ‘there remains
a lack of detailed research concerning how these programs and
their value frames are operationalised in practice.’
The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system.
As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings.
Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65).
Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings.
The Covid-19 pandemic has put the spotlight on how human expansion on earth has led to an increase in zoonotic viruses jumping species, and calls on us to re-examine our rampant commercialisation of nature and animals in farming, wildlife management and in our diets. At the heart of the problem is ‘anthropocentrism’: our egotistical view that ecosystems, plants, trees and other animals exist for the benefit of humans, and humans alone.
In his trademark accessible and anecdotal style, Cruise explores the ethical and practical issues, the personal and political choices – and solutions – to the greatest problem facing all species on earth.