scholarly journals Taking Animal Perspectives into Account in Animal Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Eva Meijer ◽  
Bernice Bovenkerk
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Cognition And Emotion ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Animal Agency

AbstractRecent years have seen an explosion of interest in nonhuman animal agency in different fields. In biology and ethology, new studies about animal languages, cultures, cognition and emotion are published weekly. In the broad field of animal studies, the symbolic and ontological human-animal distinction is challenged and other animals are presented as actors. These studies challenge existing approaches to animal ethics. Animals are no longer creatures to simply think about: they have their own perspectives on life, and humans can in some instances communicate with them about that. Animal ethics long determined individual moral rights and duties on the basis of nonhuman animal capacities, but this often measures them to human standards and does not take into account that nonhuman animals are a heterogeneous group in terms of capabilities as well as social relations to humans. The questions of whether animals have agency, and how we should morally evaluate their agency, are especially urgent because we live in an age in which humans dominate the lives of large numbers of other animals. The Anthropocene has shaped the knowledge and technology for humans to realize that animals have more agency than has been assumed, but ironically it is also an epoch where animal agency is increasingly curtailed. This leads to new conflicts and problems of justice. How should animal ethics deal with the new knowledge and challenges generated in the Anthropocene? In this chapter we defend a relational approach to animal ethics, viewing other animals as subjects capable of co-shaping relations.

Hunting the Exotic: Practices, Discourses, and Narratives of Hunting in New Zealand

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-308
Author(s):  
Arianne Carvalhedo Reis
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Exotic Animal ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper makes a contribution to nonhuman animal studies by discussing the tensions in practices, discourses, and narratives of hunting in a settler postcolonial society. It aims to present a discussion of how the imperialist construct of the “exotic” is applied to nonhuman animals. The focus of the paper is on the different roles the exotic animal status plays in the hunting experience in New Zealand, and how other agencies also play a part in the construction of the hunting discourses and personal narratives in relation to the exotic animal. The paper concludes that the exotic concept is closely linked to a celebration of New Zealand’s distinctiveness from their colonizer. Always a process of “Othering,” the exotic status not only impinges on the relationship established with the nonhuman animal prey, but also leads to an inconsistent discourse that implies a speciesist position, one which is nonetheless consistent with a dominionist performance.

scholarly journals George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 182-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhoda Wilkie ◽  
Andrew Mckinnon
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Symbolic Interactionism ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

The turn towards nonhuman animals within sociology has shed a critical light on George Herbert Mead, his apparent prioritisation of language and the anthropocentric focus of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). Although Herbert Blumer canonised Mead as the founder of this perspective he also played a key role in excising the evolutionary and ‘more-than-human’ components in Mead's work. This intervention not only misrepresented Mead's intellectual project, it also made symbols the predominant concern in Blumer's version of SI. Since groundbreaking animal sociologists in America framed much of their thinking in opposition to SI's emphasis on language, because it excluded alingual animal others from sociological consideration, Mead's Mind, Self, and Society has largely functioned as a negative classic within this sub-field. Although some scholars recognise there is more in Mead's work that is potentially applicable to this interspecies area the attempt to recover what might be helpful has yet to begin (e.g. Alger & Alger 1997 ). This paper suggests that if the ambiguities and contradictions that exist alongside Mead's oft-quoted anthropocentrisms are also attended to this may open up a more positive reading and use of Mead's work for animal sociology.

scholarly journals Comment: The Current State of Nonhuman Animal Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-159
Author(s):  
Joost Leuven
Keyword(s):  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Current State ◽  
Moral Importance ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Animal Agency ◽  
Moral Philosophers

AbstractNonhuman animals frequently rebel against human domination. The existence of such cases of rebellion forces us to consider the moral importance of agency in nonhuman animal lives. It is necessary that moral philosophers look critically at the topic of self-realization in nonhuman animals. By reflecting on the attempts by the authors in this section of the book to do just that, this comment aims to make sense of nonhuman animal agency in the Anthropocene.

scholarly journals Normative Tensions in the Popular Representation of Children with Disabilities and Animal-Assisted Therapy

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Eric Mykhalovskiy ◽  
Rita Kanarek ◽  
Colin Hastings ◽  
Jenna Doig ◽  
Melanie Rock
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Children With Disabilities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Therapeutic Benefit ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Animal Assisted Therapy ◽  
Therapy Animals ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
The Disabled

This article contributes to the critical disability and human-nonhuman animal studies literatures through a discourse analysis of newspaper stories about animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and children with disabilities published in the United States and Canada. The articles in our corpus form a recognizable genre that we call AAT human-nonhuman animal interest stories. We pose two central questions of the genre: (1) how is the therapeutic value of AAT constituted? and (2) what are the effects, in discourse, of associating nonhuman animals and children with disabilities in narratives of therapeutic benefit? We emphasize the normative tensions associated with the representation of children with disabilities and nonhuman animals in news stories about AAT. On one hand, news articles objectify children with disabilities, inscribe their need to be made “normal” and silence their own experiences of AAT. On the other hand, they are written in ways that extend and strengthen the disabled body and self through connections with nonhuman therapy animals. They disrupt sharp species distinctions and present narratives of how interspecies relationships formed through participation in AAT co-constitute the agency of nonhuman therapy animals and children with disabilities. We argue that the normative tensions in the popular representation of AAT present important possibilities for intervening in public discourse about disability and nonhuman animals.

scholarly journals Advancing Ethical Principles for Non-Invasive, Respectful Research with Nonhuman Animal Participants

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Van Patter ◽  
Charlotte Blattner
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Voluntary Participation ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Abstract Animal studies scholars are increasingly engaging with nonhuman animals firsthand to better understand their lifeworlds and interests. The current 3R framework is inadequate to guide respectful, non-invasive research relations that aim to encounter animals as meaningful participants and safeguard their well-being. This article responds to this gap by advancing ethical principles for research with animals guided by respect, justice, and reflexivity. It centers around three core principles: non-maleficence (including duties around vulnerability and confidentiality); beneficence (including duties around reciprocity and representation); and voluntary participation (involving mediated informed consent and ongoing embodied assent). We discuss three areas (inducements, privacy, and refusing research) that merit further consideration. The principles we advance serve as a starting point for further discussions as researchers across disciplines strive to conduct multispecies research that is guided by respect for otherness, geared to ensuring animals’ flourishing, and committed to a nonviolent ethic.

scholarly journals Apparatuses of Animality: Foucault Goes to a Slaughterhouse

2010 ◽  
pp. 89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Thierman
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Foucauldian Analysis

The work of Michel Foucault is not often considered in animal ethics discussions, but I believe that many of his insights can be fruitfully extended into this area of philosophical inquiry. In this paper, I present the slaughterhouse as a technology of power that is complicit in the domination and objectification of both human and nonhuman animal subjects. I begin by arguing that Foucault’s notion of an “apparatus” is a useful methodological tool for thinking about the constellation of spaces and discourses in which various bodies (both human and nonhuman) find themselves enmeshed. Next, I outline Foucault’s multifaceted conceptualization of “power,” and I consider whether it makes sense to think of other animals as implicated in “power relations” in the various Foucauldian senses. Finally, I analyze a journalistic account of a contemporary slaughterhouse. Here, I argue that a variety of hierarchies (spatial, racial, species, etc.) dovetail to create an environment in which care and concern are virtually impossible. By coupling a Foucauldian analysis with certain insights developed in the bioethical work of Ralph Acampora, I offer a normative critique of an institution that has pernicious effects on both human and nonhuman animals.

scholarly journals Nonhuman Animal Suffering

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Peggs ◽  
Barry Smart
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Animal Suffering ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Each year millions of nonhuman animals are exposed to suffering in universities as they are routinely (ab)used in teaching and research in the natural sciences. Drawing on the work of Giroux and Derrida, we make the case for a critical pedagogy of nonhuman animal suffering. We discuss critical pedagogy as an underrepresented form of teaching in universities, consider suffering as a concept, and explore the pedagogy of suffering. The discussion focuses on the use of nonhuman animal subjects in universities, in particular in teaching, scientific research, and associated experiments. We conclude that a critical pedagogy of nonhuman animal suffering has the capacity to contribute to the establishment of a practical animal ethics conducive to the constitution of a radically different form of social life able to promote a more just and non-speciesist future in which nonhuman animals are not used as resources in scientific research in universities.

Experimenting at the Threshold: Sacrifice, Anthropomorphism, and the Aims of (Critical) Animal Studies

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 548-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly W. Benston
Keyword(s):  
Animal Models ◽  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Species Boundaries ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

Of all the beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think about are living creatures, because … they are in a certain way most closely akin to us, and … are at the same time separated from our ek-sistent essence by an abyss.—Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”Heir to the divided aristotelian vision of nonhuman creatures as, alternately, mute foils (Politics 9; BK. 1, Sec. 2) and behavioral mirrors (Parts 138–39, bk. 2, sec. 4) of “man,” the properly “political” animal, animal studies has displayed uncertainty about how and where to draw species boundaries. Among the provinces of this field of inquiry, none is more defined by this tension than laboratory biomedical research, where physiological correspondences underwrite animal models of human maladies, while presupposed ontological distinctions justify the consignment of nonhuman animals to treatment considered improper for human subjects. Conventionally, those distinctions have centered on a cluster of intellectual capabilities—reasoning, speaking, intending, remembering—the dearth or deficiency of which abrogates the nonhuman's right to dissent and legitimates the human claim of priority. “Animal studies” in this sense, designating a wide range of investigative operations employing nonhuman animal bodies, posits material resemblance and metaphysical incompatibility between researcher and the object of research.

Using the research on intergroup conflict in nonhuman animals to help inform patterns of human intergroup conflict

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda R. Ridley ◽  
Melanie O. Mirville
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Animal Groups ◽  
Interesting Article ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Abstract There is a large body of research on conflict in nonhuman animal groups that measures the costs and benefits of intergroup conflict, and we suggest that much of this evidence is missing from De Dreu and Gross's interesting article. It is a shame this work has been missed, because it provides evidence for interesting ideas put forward in the article.

scholarly journals The Ethics of Touch and the Importance of Nonhuman Relationships in Animal Agriculture

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Stress Reduction ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Physiological Responses ◽  
Animal Agriculture ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Reduction Methods ◽  
Salient Features

AbstractAnimal agriculture predominantly involves farming social animals. At the same time, the nature of agriculture requires severely disrupting, eliminating, and controlling the relationships that matter to those animals, resulting in harm and unhappiness for them. These disruptions harm animals, both physically and psychologically. Stressed animals are also bad for farmers because stressed animals are less safe to handle, produce less, get sick more, and produce poorer quality meat. As a result, considerable efforts have gone into developing stress-reduction methods. Many of these attempt to replicate behaviours or physiological responses that develop or constitute bonding between animals. In other words, humans try to mitigate or ameliorate the damage done by preventing and undermining intraspecies relationships. In doing so, the wrong of relational harms is compounded by an instrumentalisation of trust and care. The techniques used are emblematic of the welfarist approach to animal ethics. Using the example of gentle touching in the farming of cows for beef and dairy, the paper highlights two types of wrong. First, a wrong done in the form of relational harms, and second, a wrong done by instrumentalising relationships of care and trust. Relational harms are done to nonhuman animals, whilst instrumentalisation of care and trust indicates an insensitivity to morally salient features of the situation and a potential character flaw in the agents that carry it out.

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