“First and last, relational sociologists and critical realists care deeply about the human capacity for fulfillment and the human liability to multifarious forms of suffering. As it becomes increasingly popular to blur the human/non-human distinction in social theory, nothing could be more welcome than to find that in relational sociology we encounter not just an abstract theoretical convergence but a shared commitment to the promotion of human thriving.”

It’s stunning, really. Admittedly, I haven’t read the fuller treatment of this issue in her Being Human, but the title alone suggests we might only find a more elaborated version of the above.

The thought that I am having difficulty expressing is that the distinction between human and animal is only marginally worth preserving, but only because we, as sociologists, tend to disavow the boundary concept between the two: viz., pets. This disavowal is clearly obvious in the only major survey of the sociology of animals, Adrian Franklin’s Animals and Modern Culures, where his analysis of pets is, in essence, that modernity creates conditions wherein intimate contact between humans breaks down, but that this intimate contact is nonetheless desired. As a result, animals become surrogate humans. Pets are both animal and human, but it is this very lack of distinction between the two categories that troubles Franklin: pets are animals, we are mistaken when we believe that they are human. He may be right, but I doubt it.

What needs to be done is to study the domain of the home more carefully (the history and sociology of the family/home tends to ignore pets, domesticated animals and vermin), especially as a site of domination. As Yi-Fu Tuan points out, pets (and topiaries) are the product of dominance and affection. It is at this point that we would want to also bring in children, servants, slaves, and parents.

I started drawing a diagram in my notebook today, attempting to make sense of these distinctions. I’ve reproduced it here. My handwriting is terrible! Obviously, I don’t intend for the diagram to be definitive, but suggestive.

Note: Appropriate, Private Property

The “means to appropriate” the common and thus transform it into private property is absolutely essential to Locke’s political theory and has significant consequences for the theory of political or civil society including the right of resistance to tyranny for “political power [is] a Right of making Laws [...] for the Regulation and Preserving of Property” (II, §3), “no Political Society can be, nor subsist without having in it self the Power to preserve the Property [...] of all those of that Society” (II, §87), “Government has no other end but the preservation of Property” (II, §94), “The only way whereby one devests himself of his Natural Liberty, and puts on the bonds of Civil Society is by agreeing with other Men to joyn and unite into a Community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst the another, in a secure Enjoyment of their Properties, and a greater Security against any that are not of it” (II, §95), “And ’tis not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to joyn in Society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unit for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property” (II, §123), “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property” (II, §124), “Men therefore in Society having Property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the Law of the Community are theirs, that no Body hath a right to take their substance, or any part of it from them, without their own consent; without this, they have no Property at all” (II, §138), “Political Power is that Power which every Man, having in the state of Nature, has given up into the hands of the Society, and therein to the Governours, whom the Society hath set over it self, with this express or tacit Trust, That it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their Property” (II, §171), “When the Governour, however intituled, makes not the Law, but his WIll, the Rule; and his Commands and Actions are not directed to the preservation of the Properties of hi People, but the satisfaction of his own Ambition, Revenge, Covetousness, or any other irregular Passion [is a tyrant]” (II, §199), “The Legislative acts against the Trust reposed in them, when they endeavour to invade the Property of the Subject” (II, §221), and “The Reason why Men enter into Society, is the preservation of their Property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a Legislative, is, that there may be Laws made, and Rules set as Guards and Fences to the Properties of all the Members of the Society, to limit the Power, and moderate the Dominion of every Part and Member of the Society” (II, §222). This is but a sampling of comments on the importance of property drawn from the entirety of the Second Treatise.

What, then, does it mean “to appropriate”? And is Locke correct in claiming that appropriation makes something “be his, and so his, i.e., a part of him”? Read literally, Locke’s claim is that appropriation of a thing makes that thing “a part of him.” It is not simply that the common is “privatized,” but that the common is made “a part of him,” of a particular individual – “a part of him” not unlike an arm or a leg or a kidney.
Appropriation combines two words: ‘ap-’ and ‘propriation.’ The English prefix, ‘ap,’ derives from the Latin prefix ‘ad,’ meaning ‘to,’ especially associated with the idea of ‘rendering.’ Hence, the first meaning of ‘appropriation’ is ‘to propriate.’ The simple meaning of ‘propriate’ is “to make one’s own.” We’ll return to this idea of “to make one’s own” shortly. Propriation has two significant alternative meanings: first, “Annexed or attached to an estate as a piece of property” and “Assigned or attached to a particular person.” The OED suggests that this latter meaning is equivalent to appropriate. Looking at appropriate, there are four relevant meanings – all in use when Locke was writing: (1) “To make (a thing) that private property of any one, to make it over to him; to set apart”; (2) “To take possession of for one’s own, to take to oneself”; (3) “To allot, annex, or attach a thing to another as an appendage”; (4) “To devote, set apart, or assign to a special purpose or use.” Appropriate entered into English via the French word “appropre,” which, like appropriate, derives from the Latin words “ad-” and “propius” meaning literally, “to render to one’s own.” Again, we see a similar cluster of meanings: (1) “to assign as private property or possession to; to set apart for a special purpose”; (2) “to assign or attribute as proper to”; (3) “to make one’s own; to take possession of.” Propre, here, carries the same sense as “proper” as in “to act properly” or a “proper noun.” Proper has meanings of correctness, but also of self-hood. The same meanings are found in “property”: a particular characteristic (the property of being hard), of belonging to a particular proprium or self, and of propriety or correctness (especially in manners, dress, etc; how one carries and presents oneself). Etymologically, “appropriate” appears to carry a number of meanings relevant to Locke’s theory: an idea of self, an idea of annexing, an idea of attaching, and an idea of correctness.

But, what about “private”? The English word “private,” like its French equivalent, derives from the Latin word “privatus.” In Latin, something that is privatus is “restricted for the use of a particular person or persons”; a private person is someone “not holding public office,” but also an “individual.” In medieval Latin, privatus becomes privatum meaning both “privy” (as in “privy to secrets”) and, euphemistically, as a “latrine” (as in where one does one private business; that which no one else is privy to). Private, in Latin as in English, is opposed to the public, to the common, but is also opposed to openness (in the sense of secrecy) and associated with the genitals and defecation. Hence, to be private is to be de-prived from the public, from the common and from the open. We can see many of these meanings in the Latin words privare (to deprive, to rob, to debar from the use of, to prevent from having, to release, to relieve) and privus (separate, single, individual, private, peculiar, deprived). Hannah Arendt is instructive on this point, “To live an entirely private life means above all to be deprived of things essential to a truly human life: to be deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by others, to be deprived of an ‘objective’ relationship with them that comes from being related to and separated from them through the intermediary of a common world of things, to be deprived of the possibility of achieving something more permanent than life itself.”

“The thing appropriated is a thing distinct from common property. Now this feature is also shared by all religious and sacred things.” Both proprius and privatus contain ideas of “setting apart.” This is quite significant because another set of Latin word carry associated meanings. Sacre refers to the gods and anything in their power; sacer refers to a priest; and sanctum refers to something that which is set apart. The sacred is something that is set aside or set apart, that can only accessed by particular people in accordance with particular rituals. That which the sacred is aside from is the profane – the common, the everyday. “The sacred thing is, par excellence, that which the profane must not and cannot touch with impunity. [...] Sacred things are things protected and isolated by prohibitions; profane things are those things to which the prohibitions are applied and that must keep at a distance from what is sacred.” But, at the same time as being characterized by this absolute heterogeneity, the sacred is also radically ambivalent: the sacred is just as liable to be accursed as not – the sacred is not necessarily ‘holy’ or ‘clean’; it can also be ‘dirty’ and ‘dangerous.’ Hence, it is not just the meanings of ‘setting apart’ that are common to sacred, property and appropriation, but also the meanings of correctness and dirtiness. Arendt again, “all civilizations have rested upon the sacredness of private property.”

Appropriation, then, as the removal of a thing from the common and the subsequent transformation of that thing into private property carries a number of contradictory elements: correctness, neatness, secrecy, theft, toilets, intimacy, genitals, individual, separate.

The work known as Feminine Monarchie was first published in 1609 by Charles Butler went through a number of editions during the course of the seventeenth century in England. The original 1609 edition was entitled The Feminine Monarchie or a Treatise Concerning Bees, and the Due Ordering of Them: Wherein the Truth, Found Out by Experience and Diligent Observation, Discovereth the Idle and Fondd Conceipts, Which Many Haue Written Anent This Subject. Another edition was published in 1623, this time with a new title: The Feminine Monarchie, or The History of Bees: Shewing Their Admirable Nature, and Properties, Their Generation, and Colonies, their Gouernment, Loyaltie, Art, Industrie, Enemies, Warres, Magnanimitie, &c. Together With the Right Ordering of Them From Time to Time; And the Sweet Profit Arising Thereof. This edition would be re-printed under the same title in 1634. Three years later, in 1637, Butler’s book was anthologized by Gervase Markham in a large collection entitled Cheape and Good Husbandry for the Well-Ordering of All Beasts and Fowles, and For the General Cure of Their Diseases. Lastly, in 1673 and again in 1682, Butler’s book would appear, this time in Latin translation (of the 1623 edition) with the title Monarchia Foeminina, sive, Apum Historia.

Rather than presenting an exception, Butler was but the first in an entire discourse on bees and English politics in the seventeenth century. In 1637, the same year in which Markham’s Cheape and Good Husbandry was published, a book by Richard Remnant appeared under the title A Discourse or Historie of Bees: Shewing Their Nature and Usage, and the Great Profit of Them. A second discourse – on diseases affecting various “smutty wheat” – was appended. In the mid sixteen-fifties, a couple of books returned to the political theme. 1655 saw the publication of The Reformed Common-Wealth of Bees written by Samuel Hartlib (the elder) as a series of letters to his son, Sammuel Hartlib, Esq. In 1657 Samuel Purchas published A Theatre of Politicall Flying-Insects: Wherein Especially the Nature, the Vvorth, the Vvork, the Wonder, and the Manner of Right-Ordering of the Bee, is Discovered and Described. Purchas’s work contained two appendices, one of which concerned “meditations, and observations theological and moral on that subject.”

A third resurgence of interest in the relation between politics and bees occurs in the sixteen-eighties immediately prior to the Glorious Revolution. Of particular importance and interest is Moses Rusden, the royal beemaster’s, A Full Discovery of Bees: Treating of Their Nature, Government, Generation & Preservation of the Bee published in 1685. As mentioned above, Butler’s Feminine Monarchie would also appear in a new Latin edition in 1682.

A concern with bees wasn’t limited to the royal beekeepers, but was also taken up seriously by political theorists. Hobbes presents a case in point where the bee qua social or political animal appears in all three of his major political treatises. While overtly discussing Aristotle’s classification of the bee as a political or social animal in Politics and The History of Animals, Hobbes is just as likely addressing himself to people like Butler and Rusden.

A passage regarding bees first appears in The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic written in 1640 (xix, ¶4-5):

And supposing how great a number soever of men assembled together for their mutual defence, yet shall not the effect follow, unless they all direct their actions to one and the same end; which direction to one and the same end is that which, chap. XII, sect. 7, is called consent. This consent (or conchord) amongst so many men, though it may be made by the fear of a present invader, or by the hope of a present conquest, or booty; and endure as long as that action endureth; nevertheless, by the diversity of judgments and passions in so many men contending naturally for honour and advantage one above another: it is impossible, not only that their consent to aid each other against an enemy, but also that the peace should last between themselves, without some mutual and common fear to rule them.

But contrary hereunto may be objected, the experience we have of certain living creatures irrational, that nevertheless continually live in such good order and government, for their common benefit, and are so free from sedition and war amongst themselves, that for peace, profit, and defence, nothing more can be imaginable. And the experience we have in this, is in that little creature the bee, which is therefore reckoned amongst animalia politica. Why therefore may not men, that foresee the benefit of concord, continually maintain the same without compulsion, as well as they? To which I answer, that amongst other living creatures, there is no question of precedence in their own species, nor strife about honour or acknowledgment of one another’s wisdom, as there is amongst men; from whence arise envy and hatred of one towards another, and from thence sedition and war. Secondly, those living creatures aim every one at peace and food common to them all; men aim at dominion, superiority, and private wealth, which are distinct in every man, and breed contention. Thirdly, those living creatures that are without reason, have not learning enough to espy, or to think they espy, any defect in the government; and therefore are contented therewith; but in a multitude of men, there are always some that think themselves wiser than the rest, and strive to alter divers ways; and that causeth war. Fourthly, they want speech, and are therefore unable to instigate one another to faction, which men want not. Fifthly, they have no conception of right and wrong, but only of pleasure and pain, and therefore also no censure of one another, nor of their commandeer, as long as they are themselves at ease; whereas men that make themselves judges of right and wrong, are then least at quiet, when they are most at ease. Lastly, natural concord, such as is amongst those creatures, is the work of God by the way of nature; but concord amongst men is artificial, and by way of covenant. And therefore no wonder if such irrational creatures, as govern themselves in multitude, do it much more firmly than mankind, that do it by arbitrary institution.

Essentially the same argument appears in De Cive (chap. V, ¶4-5), but with a slightly different preamble:

Among the animals which Aristotle calls political he counts not only Man but many others too, including the Ant, the Bee, etc. For although they are devoid of reason, which would enable them to make agreements and submit to government, still by their consenting, i.e. by desiring and avoiding the same objects, they so direct their actions to a common end that their swarms are not disturbed by sedition. Yet their swarms are still not commonwealths, and so the animals themselves should not be called political; for their government is only an accord, or many wills with one object, not (as a commonwealth needs) one will. It is true that among creatures who live by sense and appetite alone, accord of feelings is so lasting that nothing but their natural appetite is needed to maintain it and thus to keep peace among them. But it is otherwise with men.

A similar set of arguments appears in chapter xvii, ¶6-12 of Leviathan, this time with the following preamble: “It is true that certain living creatures (as bees and ants) live sociably one with another (which are therefore by Aristotle numbered amongst political creatures), and yet have no other direction than their particular judgments and appetites, nor speech whereby one of them can signify to another what he thinks expedient for the common benefit; and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do the same.”

Regarding the bee, Keith Thomas, in his Man and the Natural World (1983), recounts the following anecdote: “The ancient parallel between human society and the beehive was never more popular than in the Stuart period, when numerous published treatises on bee-keeping gave as much attention to the insects’ political virtues as to their practical utility. [...] Writers laid heavy emphasis on the hive’s monarchical structure, though the embarassing discovery that their monarch was not a king, as had always been assumed, but a queen, remained controversial until the 1740s. ‘A Queen-Bee,’ explained an encyclopedia in 1753, was the ‘term given by late writers to what used to be called the King-Bee.’”

More on Hobbes and bees – and wolves – later.