Returning the Look

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 523-534
Author(s):  
Gioia Barnbrook
Keyword(s):  
Human Actions ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Look ◽  
Selection Of

It has been argued that a contemporary penchant for wildlife images serves to cloak the various destructive impacts human actions have on nonhuman animals, as well as to distract us from our ever-decreasing direct encounters with them. However, this form of media has also demonstrated its effectiveness as a method for communicating conservation messages to the wider public. This paper seeks to examine this tension through an analysis of a famous reunion clip from the documentary Christian the Lion (1971), exploring how audiences have reacted to this clip through a selection of YouTube comments and asking what these comments can tell us about contemporary ideas relating to human/animal inter-subjectivity.

scholarly journals Human–Animal Relations in Business and Society: Advancing the Feminist Interpretation of Stakeholder Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Tallberg ◽  
José-Carlos García-Rosell ◽  
Minni Haanpää
Keyword(s):  
Stakeholder Theory ◽  
Business And Society ◽  
Feminist Interpretation ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Care Relationships ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Animal Care ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractStakeholder theory has largely been anthropocentric in its focus on human actors and interests, failing to recognise the impact of nonhumans in business and organisations. This leads to an incomplete understanding of organisational contexts that include key relationships with nonhuman animals. In addition, the limited scholarly attention paid to nonhumans as stakeholders has mostly been conceptual to date. Therefore, we develop a stakeholder theory with animals illustrated through two ethnographic case studies: an animal shelter and Nordic husky businesses. We focus our feminist reading of Driscoll and Starik’s (J Bus Ethics 49:55–73, 2004) stakeholder attributes for nonhumans and extend this to include affective salience built on embodied affectivity and knowledge, memories, action and care. Findings reveal that nonhuman animals are important actors in practice, affecting organisational operations through human–animal care relationships. In addition to confirming animals are stakeholders, we further contribute to stakeholder theory by offering ways to better listen to nontraditional actors.

Canine Rescue as a Social Movement: The Politics of Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 670-687
Author(s):  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Advocacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Animal Bond ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Politics Of Love

Abstract Canine rescue is a growing movement that affects the lives of tens of thousands of nonhuman animals and people every year. Rescue is noteworthy not only for its numbers, but also because it challenges common understandings of animal advocacy. Popular accounts often portray work on behalf of animals as sentimental, individualistic, and apolitical. In fact, work on behalf of animals has always been political, in multiple ways. It is characterized both by internal political tensions, especially between animal rights and welfare positions, and by complex relations to the broader public sphere. I analyze canine rescue, with a focus on pit bull rescue, to show that an important segment of canine rescue movements adopts an explicitly political approach which blurs the divide between rights and welfare, addresses the social context of the human-animal bond, and links animal advocacy to social justice.

Introduction: managing and experiencing an equestrian event.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Katherine Dashper ◽  
Guðrún Helgadóttir ◽  
Ingibjörg Sigurðardóttir
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of key findings in the wider field of event studies, focusing mainly on sports events as our case study is primarily an elite sporting competition. We then introduce the idea of multispecies events, drawing on insights from human-animal studies to consider how the active involvement of nonhuman animals shapes all aspects of the event experience. After discussing equestrian tourism and equestrian events more broadly, we introduce the case study event - Landsmót, the National Championships of the Icelandic horse - in more detail to provide the reader with important background information to the event which provides the empirical base and therefore unites subsequent chapters. The chapter ends with an overview of the research process underpinning the book and an outline of the chapter contributions that enable holistic critical examination of a multispecies event and cultural festival.

scholarly journals Visualizing Human-Animal-Technology Relations

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bear ◽  
Katy Wilkinson ◽  
Lewis Holloway
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Dairy Farms ◽  
Visual Ethnography ◽  
Human Research ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Robotic Milking

This paper explores the potential for less anthropocentric approaches to researching human-nonhuman relations through visual ethnography, critically examining the conceptualization of nonhuman animals as participants. Arguing that method in animal studies has developed more slowly than theory, it proposes visual approaches as a way of foregrounding nonhuman animals’ behavior and actions in “social” research. Questioning the meaning of “participation,” this challenges underlying anthropocentric assumptions of visual ethnography. The paper presents a comparison of approaches used in studying sites, moments and movements of robotic milking on United Kingdom dairy farms: field notes, still photography, and digital video. While visual approaches are not a panacea for more-than-human research, we suggest that they offer a means through which nonhumans might “speak for themselves.” Rather than presenting definitive accounts, including video in such work also leaves the actions of nonhumans open to further interpretation, destabilizing the centrality of the researcher.

Lively Cities

2015 ◽  
pp. 541-570
Author(s):  
Marcus Owens ◽  
Jennifer Wolch
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Urban Ecosystems ◽  
Global Dynamics ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Age Of Ecology

The study of nonhuman animals in urban ecosystems is a recent but expanding field. This chapter explores the ways in which human-animal relationships in cities have historically been framed and argues that a consideration of nonhuman animals is vital to a robust urban theory in the age of ecology. The places of animals within the urban planning and design professions that shape cities are elucidated, along with contemporary developments in ecology that increasingly inform city planning, design, and management. The chapter then highlights four global dynamics that promise to radically reshape urban animal ecologies, and concludes with a call for lively cities characterized by the coexistence of people and animals.

scholarly journals Knocking on the Door of Human-Animal Studies: Valuing Work Across Disciplinary and Species Borderlines

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Hamilton ◽  
Laura Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Abstract We argue that human-animal studies (HAS) literature is essential for theorizing work because it fosters a reflexive questioning of humanist power and a more sophisticated understanding of the co-dependency and co-creativity between the species. We highlight that the neglect of nonhuman animals in organization studies stems from a preoccupation with contemporary industrialization, human forms of rationality, and the mechanisms of capital exchange. Drawing upon the example of sheep and shepherding, we illustrate how a flexible approach to studying the value and worth of work is made possible by attending to other-than-human activity and value co-creation. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of work and its value needs a more species-inclusive approach to foster a less reductively anthropocentric canon of interdisciplinary scholarship in the field.

Bestiarium Judaicum

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Geller
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Heinrich Heine ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals (pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes, etc.) disseminated for millennia to debase and bestialize Jews (the Bestiarium Judaicum), this work asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers employ such figures in their narratives and poems? Bringing together Jewish cultural studies (examining how Jews have negotiated Jew-Gentile difference) and critical animal studies (analyzing the functions served by asserting human-animal difference), this monograph focuses on the writings of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Gertrud Kolmar, H. Leivick, Felix Salten, and Curt Siodmak. It ferrets out of their nonhuman-animal constructions their responses to the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species “Jew” were depicted. Along with close textual analysis, it examines both personal and social contexts of each work. It explores how several writers attempted to subvert the identification of the Jew-animal by rendering indeterminable the human-animal “Great Divide” being played out on actual Jewish bodies and in Jewish-Gentile relations as well as how others endeavored to work-through identifications with those bestial figures differently: e.g., Salten’s Bambi novels posed the question of “whether a doe is sometimes just a female deer,” while Freud, in his case studies, manifestly disaggregated Jews and animals even as he, perhaps, animalized the human. This work also critically engages new-historical (M. Schmidt), postcolonial (J. Butler and J. Hanssen), and continental philosophic (G. Agamben) appropriations of the conjunction of Jew and animal.

The Dog-Eared Dictionary: Human-Animal Alliance in Chinese Civilization

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 589-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Huot
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Olfactory Ability ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Functional Versatility

What does the dog mean in Chinese culture? The answers can be found in China's first dictionary, theShuowen jiezi, written by Xu Shen in 121 CE. TheShuowenholds cynological knowledge well beyond the dog's olfactory ability, because it includes notes on vocalization discrimination, situational gait, and even behavioral and personality traits. The dog is also upheld as the representative of all nonhuman animals, undoubtedly because of its morphological and functional versatility but certainly also because it was the human's main interface and companion at the beginning of Chinese civilization. The Chinese graphs for the word “dog” embody both views: generically animalistic or eerily resembling human depictions. As a rift slowly took place in the partnership between humans and dogs when urbanization began, the graphs themselves were manipulated to clearly demarcate one from the other. Eventually dogs became discursive scapegoats. This paper traces the destiny of the dog in semantic and graphic terms.

Constructing the Biotech Nonhuman Animal: Instrumentalism and Ambivalence

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 439-458
Author(s):  
Sari Ung-Lanki
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Scientific Journal ◽  
Science And Society ◽  
Nature Biotechnology ◽  
Animal Mind ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Insight Into

This article was designed to give insight into the role of biotechnology in redefining the complex human-animal relations of our times. In particular, it is used to examine accounts of nonhuman animals and animal usage in the context of biotechnology, as covered in the leading scientific journalNature Biotechnology. Data consist of editorials, commentaries, and research news for four years (N= 104), and has been analyzed using discourse analysis. The journal constructs a consistent, yet one-sided, view on animals as they are represented through physico-material, technical and biomedical discourses, as well as discourses on human benefits and manageable risks. The biotechnological epistemology of the animal is positioned at the far end of the subjectification-instrumentalization continuum in our treatment of other animals. It also clashes with simultaneous discussions on animal mind, subjectivity, and moral status. These developments are likely to further intensify the discrepancies in human-animal relations in science and society.

Not by Bread Alone: Symbolic Loss, Trauma, and Recovery in Elephant Communities

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Gay Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Social Breakdown ◽  
Symbolic Loss ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

AbstractLike many humans in the wake of genocide and war, most wildlife today has sustained trauma. High rates of mortality, habitat destruction, and social breakdown precipitated by human actions are unprecedented in history. Elephants are one of many species dramatically affected by violence. Although elephant communities have processes, rituals, and social structures for responding to trauma—grieving, mourning, and socialization—the scale, nature, and magnitude of human violence have disrupted their ability to use these practices. Absent the cultural, carrier groups (murdered elephant matriarchs and elders) who traditionally lead and teach these healing practices, humans must assume the role. Trauma theory has brought attention to victims' severe, sustained psychological damage. Looking through the lens of trauma theory provides a better understanding of how systematic violence has affected individuals and groups and how the pervasive nature of traumatic events affects human-nonhuman animal relationships. The framing of recent trauma theory compels conservationists to create new relationships—neither anthropocentric nor powerbased—with nonhuman animals. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Kenya, shows how humans, taking on the role of interspecies witness, bring orphan elephants back to health and help re-build elephant communities shattered by genocide.

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