Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Marcy Norton

What can contrasting approaches to animals tell us about human social organization?
While early modern Europe was structured by nested hierarchies—dividing species, genders, classes, and races—many Indigenous societies in the Americas emphasized reciprocity over domination. Understanding egalitarianism and hierarchy among humans requires attention to their relationships with other species. Similarly, European animal husbandry and South American animal familiarization reflect deeper social patterns. This upcoming lecture, will explore how familiarization aligns with friendship and how husbandry mirrors dominion, situating Marcy Norton's work against both stagiest models that conflate hierarchy with complexity and neo-Rousseauan readings that oversimplify early modern Indigenous life.