Multispecies Entanglements in the Gulf: Reflections on Phenomenology, Object-Oriented Ontology, and the Nature of Cognition

ABSTRACT

This paper is a product of qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork which looked at interactions between Emirati people and camels. Both in traditional Bedu contexts and among contemporary breeders/riders/racers in the Arabian Gulf, camels have been useful to people as an economic resource or symbolic tool, but they have also been agents creating paths for human cultural activity. They are the lens through which people observe their society, yet they are also perceived as beings with lifeworlds of their own. In a humanizing effort they can represent what is inherently cultural, but they can also be seen as separate beings that inform people’s worldviews. Recognizing animals’ agency, observing the obliteration of subject–object boundaries in animal-centric cultures requires fundamental ontological revisions. This paper aims to propose a paradigm useful for multispecies ethnography studies, rooted in exploring entanglements between anthropological phenomenology and object-oriented ontology. Appreciating the central roles of experience, embodiment, and senses in human connections with animals make phenomenology a potent analytical framework for such studies. Ontologically speaking, the essence of interactions between camels and their Emirati aficionados can represent the nature of people’s being-in-the-world, shaping their mental universe and cognitive processes. The main contributions of the research include using empirical evidence to address some of the recurring criticisms of object-oriented ontology and positioning these analyses within the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council countries) context, which has rarely been done before.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropological phenomenology
• Arabian Gulf
• camels
• human–animal interaction
• object-oriented ontology

Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank Oxford Center for Islamic Studies for providing intellectual and institutional support during my residency there as a Visiting Fellow. This article was written during my affiliation at Oxford’s Research Center between January and June 2023. My profound gratitude goes to Nathalie Arnold Koenings (Hampshire College) who actively participated in the formulation of research questions and discussions on main areas of research focus, and to my indispensable Emirati research assistants: Reem Abdulwahab AlAwadhi, Zahra Darwish AlSuwaidi, Reem Syed Fayyaz, and Nouf Nayef AlRafaei.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Present-day camel farms (ezba) and racing tracks are the most frequent environments of human–camel extended interactions in the UAE.

2 Certain societies interpret the idea of embodiment in interactions with animals literally – in the North American Maritime Peninsula, people wore shark teeth in order to see the world through sharks’ eyes (Betts et al., 2012).

3 Researchers from University of Michigan (Gendron et al., 2023) have recently discovered that fruit flies live shorter when exposed to the continuous sight of dead flies. They develop signs of premature aging and die faster as opposed to those flies that are not confronted with the death of their own species. Such findings delineate the self-awareness and surprising degree of consciousness of insects.

Additional information

Funding

I extend my gratitude to Zayed University for funding this research as part of a RIF Grant (2021–2023) and Provost’s Fellowship Award (2023).