Urban Cages and Domesticated Humans

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A B S T R A C T In this article, the study assessed the domestication process of humankind within the frame of urbanization and power accumulation. Within this framework, by giving various examples from chicken farms. The study express the author’s opinions on the analogy of the “liberated human beings” in cities and the “free range” chickens in farms. It has also been tried to explain how a city acts as a human farm. Cities are governed by the ones holding power similar to the farms are ruled by farmers and humans during their history of civilization have lost their right of deciding on their lives and fates against this power as the domesticated animals in farms. It is necessary to give up these cities which are models of life organizations from the Old and the Middle Ages. Models of settlements which became even more inhumane as results of modernization and neoliberalization strategies. The study revealed that With the scientific and technologic improvements and the developments of in science and humanities, it is possible to easily replace the city model of communal life with a better one -The one in which people can be more free and happy and will give more life to the earth and contribute to the aliveness within it.

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Urban Cages and Domesticated Humans *Dr.Hossein Sadri Department of Architecture, Girne American University, Turkey A B S T R A C T In this article, the study assessed the domestication process of humankind within the frame of urbanization and power accumulation. Within this framework, by giving various examples from chicken farms. The study express the author’s opinions on the analogy of the “liberated human beings” in cities and the “free range” chickens in farms. It has also been tried to explain how a city acts as a human farm. Cities are governed by the ones holding power similar to the farms are ruled by farmers and humans during their history of civilization have lost their right of deciding on their lives and fates against this power as the domesticated animals in farms. It is necessary to give up these cities which are models of life organizations from the Old and the Middle Ages. Models of settlements which became even more inhumane as results of modernization and neoliberalization strategies. The study revealed that With the scientific and technologic improvements and the developments of in science and humanities, it is possible to easily replace the city model of communal life with a better one -The one in which people can be more free and happy and will give more life to the earth and contribute to the aliveness within it. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2017) 1(1), 76-84. https://doi.org/10.25034/1761.1(1)76-84 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2017 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. INTRODUCTION The chickens in the below picture (Figure 1) demanding their rights and freedom. They want the industrial farms to be banned. They dream to derive a natural life. More precisely, this is not fully possible. Because these are birds tamed by humans from various phasianidae for approximately 6000 years (Clauer, 2017). They did not exist in a pure and untouched nature. Instead, they came into existence with the help of humans as a result of the domestication process. They lived by accompanying human societies for many years. In my opinion, rather than going back to an untouched nature, their demands only involve freedom. Perhaps, they do not remember that kind of nature. They, just like us, may not even have any ideas about that nature. The freedom they desire is to escape from the human dominance and its accumulated power. They want to have equal rights and wills with humans in sharing their habitats with them. They claim to be able to decide for their own destiny. They reject the existence for humans and request the conditions that they can exist only for life. In principal, these chickens want to have a kind of freedom which actually all of us are dreaming it; a freedom including all the “developments” we have reached today and without going back to the pure nature. Figure1. Freedom for Chickens (United Poultry Concerns, 1999). 2. HUMAN DOMESTICATION AND CHICKEN FARMS While writing the history of domestication, historians state that humans were tamed when domesticating animals (Mikanowski, 2016). In fact, we are now domesticated humans, so, we are not humans of nature. Just as dogs, the human species we recognize in today’s context do not exist in nature. The living being called human is a domesticated animal species, similar to the chickens above. This domestication started as a result of agriculture and moving into the settled life. Accordingly, the food habit of humans changed and, their jaw structure and digestive system developed in a different way. More importantly, modes of their movements were changed and their mobility was decreased. As humans settled, their dreams, fears, the way they use their mind and socialize, shortly, everything related to them was transformed. In other words, they became domesticated. In time, within the settlements built by themselves in the nature they came from, they turned into farm animals. As the settlements expanded and the cities were formed, things got out of control and the management of the farm passed to a smaller class. Autodomesticated Humans were taken captured in the urban farms they have built themselves. They lost their sovereignty on their destiny and became slaves. They were exploited. However, what is worse is, despite all, they learnt to be happy for having food to eatin the farm in which they are running day and night after the interests of the farm owners while concerning about their future. As the power accumulated and technology improved, humans became less distinguishable from chickens living in the industrial farms. Life difficulty of the workers arising from the industrialization in England in the 19th century came with oppositions and resistances. Observing the poverty and exploitation in London and parallel to this some attempts to organize struggles against it, Marx came to the point that the workers would make a revolution and this tyranny would be destroyed. In 1848, collaboratively with Engels, they wrote a text andintroduced the reasons of this desperate situation and the ways to get over them. Assuming that no one could tolerate these conditions, they anticipated that the workers would revolt, capture the entire farm and establish a new order in which such injustices, violence and oppressions would not exist (Marx, and Engels, 1848). In fact, the workers did revolts and achieved great successes in their conflicts. However they did not change the order. In accordance with the structure of their fights which was mostly in the format of the trade union movement and concentrated in a national level, they could accomplish significant results in increasing the welfare level of workers in the so called developed countries. As a result of this one and a half century old organized conflict, the shape, format and geography of the industrial production, exploitation and war was changed.

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