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1 results

  • Chapter 7 - The Political Bee (Apis politica)

  • Julia Kindt, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    The Trojan Horse and Other Stories
    Published online:
    09 November 2023
    Print publication:
    11 January 2024, pp 163-186

  • Summary

    This chapter investigates the peculiar human habit of attributing political qualities to honeybees. It shows that by distinguishing a ‘queen bee’ from ‘workers’ we continue a tradition that has its roots in classical antiquity and in Aristotle’s inclusion of honeybees among the zōa politika (the ‘political animals’). The chapter asks why honeybees ‘need’ politics and why human politics ‘needs’ honeybees. The answer to these questions in the context of the ancient world shows what is at stake in current attempts to draw lines between humans and other social animals. The chapter shows that for the purpose of theorizing about human politics as well as in the scientific study of the natural world itself, to naturalize often means to normalize. The chapter shows that this frequently occurs in ways that resonate with what has been called ‘the naturalist fallacy’: the idea that because something occurs in nature it is by definition good.