“The primrose resembles a poem and both poem and primrose resemble the poet.” ( Bateson, 1974–1991, p. In contrast with this man, stands the poet, to whom, according to Bateson, the primrose can be something more: a self-reflexive recognition. As a form of poetic introduction to the problem of anthropomorphism, I would like to cite an excerpt from a poem by William Wordsworth already used by Bateson in a paper about aesthetics entitled “The creature and its creation.” In this poem Wordsworth mocks a man in these words:īecause the primrose is “just” a yellow thing over there, this man is unable to relate to the flower. How do people manage to make sense of animals? One answer, provided by the biologist and anthropologist Bateson (Bateson), is that people make sense of plants or animals when they can perceive the “pattern which connect” them to that animal or plant.

Such studies could bring new insights in the study of how ordinary people make sense of animal behaviors in real-life situations.

Rooted in pragmatist theory as well as in contemporary anthropological studies, this paper offers an original perspective for in depth ethnographic and empirical studies of anthropomorphism-in-situation. The author’s goal is to articulate a plausible an alternative conception of anthropomorphism as a situated direct perception of human properties by someone who is engaged in a given situation and sensitive to what the animal is doing to them.

Its aim is to challenge the conception of anthropomorphism as the attribution/inference of human properties to a non-human animal – particularly as a special case of the theory of mind. This paper explores anthropomorphism in human–animal interactions from the theoretical perspectives of pragmatism and anthropology of human–animal communication. Laboratory of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.

Assigning human traits to animals