Jakob von Uexküll: The Concept of Umwelt and its Potentials for an Anthropology Beyond the Human

ABSTRACT

In his book A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, originally published in1934, Jakob von Uexküll argued that all living beings – no matter how simple or complex – had to be understood as subjects, and that the worlds they lived in were constituted through their specific ways of perceiving their Umwelten. This article focuses on an exploration of Uexküll’s argument set out in this classic text, considering its relevance for contemporary thought in anthropology that seeks to move beyond the human to embrace more-than-human world making and multispecies perspectives. Despite its largely positive reception in anthropology and other disciplines the paper also points to possible problems and limitations that Uexküll’s argument might pose for more-than-human anthropology by considering the ethnographic example of falconry practice in which humans and birds of prey, learn to communicate and cooperate in hunting.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjectivity
• communication
• learning
• multispecies ethnography
• birds

Acknowledgements

This article emerged from a postdoctoral fellowship as part of the ERC funded project Arctic Domus at the University of Aberdeen. I am thankful to Marianne Lien, Gisli Pálsson, David Anderson, Marion Cronin and Hakon Caspersen, as well as colleagues from Aberdeen, for their comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful for the insightful comments of two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A Foray presented ideas, previously developed elsewhere, in an accessible way aimed at a broad public audience.

2 The term anthropomorphism still plays a role in debates about how humans relate to and understand other animals and their environments. It is usually defined as the attribution of human characteristics to non-human beings or things (Ingold 2000). For a critical view on the term see Milton (2005); see also Daston and Mitman (2005). For a discussion of anthropomorphism and animal behaviour science see Kennedy (1992).

3 Portmann (1956: 90) observed that Uexküll never quite fully breaks free from mechanistic and deterministic interpretations of life, despite an increasing conviction of their false premises.

4 For a more in-depth discussion of the development of Uexküll’s thought see Mildenberger’s (2007) analysis of the historical context of Uexküll’s work. Rüting (2004) offers an English introduction to Uexküll’s work and draws on Mildenberger’s work. See also Brentari (2015, chapter 2), and Buchanan (2008, chapter 1).

5 Even though his political thought can be described as nationalistic and anti-Semitic, there is evidence that from the early 1930s onwards Uexküll distanced himself from the politics of the National Socialists and especially their anti-Semitic ideology. In a letter to the wife of racial thinker Huston Stewart Chamberlain, whose book Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1899) became a central basis of the racial ideology of the Third Reich and with whom Uexküll maintained a friendly relationship until his death, Uexküll appeals to Chamberlain’s widow to use her influence on Hitler to save Germany. In the letter he expresses concern about the treatment of Jewish colleagues at German universities and refers to it as ‘the worst form of barbarism’ (von Uexküll 1964; quoted in Brentari 2015: 41).

6 For a discussion of relational ontology see also Abram and Lien (2011). For a critical view on the ontological turn in anthropology and the centrality of practice see Gad et al. (2015).

7 The term was often used in confused ways. Uexküll complained, for instance, that it was used interchangeably with terms such as milieu and Umgebung. It was only in the 1960s that the term’s meaning stabilised and Umwelt came to mean ‘environment’ and the plural usage of the term disappeared. It was largely due to the work of German biologist August Thienemann, Uexküll’s competitor, that the ecological or objective use of the term came to prevail over Uexküll’s subjective understanding (Stella & Kleisner 2010).

8 The Uexküllian idea of a multiplicity of subjective worlds, understood as spheres encircling individual organisms, was part of a longer history of German romantic and nationalist thought. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was an early influence on this movement and early on praised the close connection between nation (Volk) and homeland (Heimat). Ideological strains of thought such as these, associated with the Romantic movement, have subsequently been appropriated by racist philosophies. This is most clearly expressed in the Nazi ideology and doctrine of Blut und Boden (blood and soil), which highlighted the inborn connection between a pure race and its native environment. The term likely appeared for the first time in Oswald Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlandes (1923). Here Spengler deals, amongst other things, with the connection of race (Blut) and the environment in which it arose. According to Spengler, the Volk (nation) and its land were connected biologically and mystically, a view that was absorbed by the Nazis into the development of their ideological system. Biologists that adhered to National Socialist ideologies used Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt by connecting it with this doctrine. As Stella and Kleisner (2010) argue, this usage of the term has no inherent resemblance to Uexküll’s understanding of the term. It ignored the premise of more-than-human subjectivism, a key aspect that makes Uexküllian thought relevant and interesting beyond his time.

9 Buchanan (2008), for instance, argues that Uexküll’s theory foreshadows a theory of intersubjectivity of living beings that lies at the root of any study of life. For a discussion of a phenomenological approach to the study of animal life see also Lestel et al. (2014).

10 These varying interpretations can also be seen in the philosophical debate, where Heidegger has used Uexküll’s Umwelt concept to further inscribe a divide between humans and animals (Heidegger 1995). For a discussion of Heidegger’s philosophy in relation to animals see Calarco (2004).

11 Uexküll studied human–dog communication in the cases of blind people and their guide dogs. See a review in Magnus (2015) and an example of a zoosemiotic study of human–dog communication in Magnus (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ERC Advanced Grant 295458.