Full Name: Angela MacDonald
Age: 24
Home: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Student Status: She completed her Bachelor’s degree, major in Cultural
Anthropology & minor in World Religions, in 2003 at McGill University.
Interests: Animal Rights/Social Justice / Political Ecology, Visual Anthropology
Future Plans: Further her studies in Humane Education
See What I See
The Role of Vision in Anthropology, Advocacy and in the Shaping of Attitudes Toward Animals Within an
Urban Cultural Milieu
The tension between anthropology and advocacy forms the integral framework within
which my fieldwork experience at a Montreal animal rights advocacy organization,
Global Action Network, was initially motivated and it is within this space that the union
of these two facets of my identity was able to find expression. My twofold objective
arising from my experiences at Global Action Network was to challenge the boundaries
of anthropological participation as an animal rights activist while simultaneously
undertaking an anthropological analysis of the human/animal relationship in North
American consumer culture. Aiming to expose the processes involved in factory farming
and the fur industry, I developed the hypothesis that the ease with which animals are
consumed in the urban cultural milieu of Montreal is dependant upon the absence of
imagery and the distance from which we are kept from, both by choice and via the
mediation of mainstream culture. If anthropology creates a space for the expression of
marginalized voices, I believe that an anthropological analysis of the human/animal
relationship in an urban context merits elaboration in light of the expanse of marginalized
voices within animal based industries.
Over the course of my three months fieldwork at Global Action Network, I
participated in four protests aimed at drawing attention to the cruel processes involved in
factory farming, the seal hunt as well as fur farming and trapping. At each protest, and
one in particular targeted at the commercial fur trade and its founder, the Hudson’s Bay
Company, I was introduced to the experience of sensing myself as apart from mainstream
culture and realized that what I was doing by standing there together with Global Action
Network, as an anthropologist and as an activist, was explicitly critiquing the habits and
complicit attitudes toward animal suffering by mainstream culture. Holding a laptop
displaying video footage of fur farming conditions, while standing in the middle of an
extremely crowded sidewalk in downtown Montreal, not a single person stopped to see
what the tape was showing or to even acknowledge that I was there at all. My findings
suggest that within the urban milieu, we do not want to see graphic images of animal
cruelty and so we choose not to see them.
Regardless of the prevailing opposition to the reconciliation between the two roles of
anthropologist and activist, there are those within the discipline that contend that the two
have forever been intrinsically linked. In fact, there are many, myself included, who were
initially attracted to anthropology for its nature as a discipline that encourages tolerance
of difference and appreciation of cultural diversity, and its emphasis on the need to
acknowledge that there exists more than one way of approaching relationships with
people and the natural environment.
Where anthropology aims at disseminating an
understanding of the world as seen through the eyes of others, advocacy seeks to heighten
public awareness on issues that have been suppressed and hidden in order for others to
see existing manifestations of oppression, exploitation and social injustice. The common
thread woven across the two roles is the message emanating from both the anthropologist
and the advocate: ‘see what I see.’