Paper short abstract:

This paper, part of a research program on human-macaque relationships in Ifrane National Park, Morocco, presents the diverse and complex representations of monkeys, between anthropomorphism and wildness, questioning the wild/domestic duality and showing the inter-twos in human-animal relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of an interdisciplinary research program called COHUMAG (Understanding the spatial reaction norms of humans and Barbary macaques to engineer new solutions for sustainable coexistence - Ecology, sociology and anthropology) that focuses on humans-macaques’ relationships in the national park of Ifrane in the Middle-Atlas in Morocco. Conflicts between humans and macaques have been increasing in this region for the past ten years. The program aims to analyse these situations and contribute to some possible solutions.

This paper will present a panorama of the diverse and complex perceptions and representations of monkeys within local populations. These representations are indeed a complex combination of anthropomorphism, forms of domestication and rejection of domestication, and idealization of the “wild monkey”. Monkeys can be perceived in various ways depending on the context and the people, and diverse representations can coexist in the same individuals, for example as a former human by divine punishment in the Muslim religion, as an idealize “wild animal” who should go back to wilderness (Cronon, 1996), as a pest when they damaged agriculture, as an economic domesticated attraction in tourism, etc. These representations allow us to interrogate the concept of wilderness and the duality wild/domestic showing various forms of inter-twos.

This paper will present this ongoing research interrogating the concepts of wilderness, and the wild/domestic duality in human-animal relationships, through the analyse of the complex and diverse representations of monkeys within the local population of Ifrane National Park in Morocco.