Anthropocentrism as a social phenomenon: semiotic and ethical implications

How thick is the line that separates a huge, decorated-yet-intact boar served in a fancy restaurant, and an anonymous plastic-packaged cut-in-pieces chicken breast in a supermarket? They might look like two aesthetically and culturally opposite extremes in one sense; and like two forms of perception and display of one single thing, the product animal, on the other. What, if any, are the common denominators between these two (and of course many other) instances of the human–animal relationship?

The present article shall attempt to explore the idea of otherness as applied to the human–other animal relationship, to introduce the concept and distinguish different typologies of anthropocentrism, and to classify the anthropocentric attitudes, in order to understand them as a social phenomenon and as the result of a semiotic process. For each attitude, a sort of schematic identity card will be proposed, with emphasis on origins and prototypes, plus some practical examples.