Intersectional disgust? Animals and (eco)feminism

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Twine
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Intersectional Theory ◽  
Feminist Work

This paper explores tensions between feminisms on the issue of nonhuman animals. The possibility of a posthuman or more-than-human account of intersectionality is explored through the retelling of an encounter with a feminist academic colleague and her experience of disgust toward a book I was carrying (Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, Adams and Donovan, 1995). I argue that such disgust responses can be read as the affective embodiment of unacknowledged human/animal hierarchy and act to impede intersectional theory and politics. Moreover this disgust response is paradigmatic of a certain feminist disavowal of ecofeminism misread as a stereotypical representation of essentialist thinking. Reversing this I argue that it is humanist disgust rather than ecofeminism that may be seen as ‘out of date’ especially when one appreciates how the more-than-human have come to occupy a significant place in both feminist work and the broader humanities and social sciences. In conclusion the paper claims that feminist engagement with nonhuman animals is entirely consistent with its multi-faceted interrogation of dualist ontology, and, whilst the ethics of this engagement may be complex, it is no longer tenable for feminist work to exclude nonhuman animals from its understanding of sociality, politics or ethics.

scholarly journals Notes from a field: A qualitative exploration of human-animal relations in a volunteer shepherding project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Adams ◽  
James Ormrod ◽  
Sarah Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Animal Interaction ◽  
Qualitative Exploration

There is a burgeoning interest in human–animal relations across the social sciences and humanities, accompanied by an acceptance that nonhuman animals are active participants in countless social relations, worthy of serious and considered empirical exploration. This article, the first of its kind as far as the authors are aware, reports on an ongoing qualitative exploration of an example of contemporary human–animal interaction on the fringes of a British city: volunteer shepherding (‘lookering’). Participants are part of a conservation grazing scheme, a growing phenomenon in recent years that relies on increasingly popular volunteer programmes. The primary volunteer role in such schemes is to spend time outdoors checking the welfare of livestock. The first section of the article summarises developments in more-than-human and multispecies research methodologies, and how the challenges of exploring the non- and more-than-human in particular are being addressed. In the second section, we frame our own approach to a human–animal relation against this emerging literature and detail the practicalities of the methods we used. The third section details some of our findings specifically in terms of what was derived from the peculiarities of our method. A final discussion offers a reflection on some of the methodological and ethical implications of our research, in terms of the question of who benefits and how from this specific instance of human–animal relations, and for the development of methods attuned to human–animal and multispecies relations more generally.

Toward a Postcolonial, Posthumanist Feminist Theory: Centralizing Race and Culture in Feminist Work on Nonhuman Animals

Hypatia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 527-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maneesha Deckha
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Race And Culture ◽  
Feminist Work

Posthumanist feminist theory has been instrumental in demonstrating the salience of gender and sexism in structuring human–animal relationships and in revealing the connections between the oppression of women and of nonhuman animals. Despite the richness of feminist posthumanist theorizations it has been suggested that their influence in contemporary animal ethics has been muted. This marginalization of feminist work—here, in its posthumanist version—is a systemic issue within theory and needs to be remedied. At the same time, the limits of posthumanist feminist theory must also be addressed. Although posthumanist feminist theory has generated a sophisticated body of work analyzing how gendered and sexist discourses and practices subordinate women and animals alike, its imprint in producing intersectional analyses of animal issues is considerably weaker. This leaves theorists vulnerable to charges of essentialism, ethnocentrism, and elitism despite best intentions to avoid such effects and despite commitments to uproot all forms of oppression. Gender‐focused accounts also preclude understanding of the importance of race and culture in structuring species‐based oppression. To counter these undesirable pragmatic and conceptual developments, posthumanist feminist theory needs to engender feminist accounts that centralize the structural axes of race and culture.

scholarly journals Notes from a field: a qualitative exploration of human–animal relations in a volunteer shepherding project

2021 ◽  
pp. 146879412110180
Author(s):  
Matthew Adams ◽  
James Ormrod ◽  
Sarah Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Animal Interaction ◽  
Qualitative Exploration

There is a burgeoning interest in human–animal relations across the social sciences and humanities, accompanied by an acceptance that nonhuman animals are active participants in countless social relations, worthy of serious and considered empirical exploration. This article, the first of its kind as far as the authors are aware, reports on an ongoing qualitative exploration of an example of contemporary human–animal interaction on the fringes of a British city: volunteer shepherding (‘lookering’). Participants are part of a conservation grazing scheme, a growing phenomenon in recent years that relies on increasingly popular volunteer programmes. The primary volunteer role in such schemes is to spend time outdoors checking the welfare of livestock. The first section of the article summarises developments in more-than-human and multispecies research methodologies, and how the challenges of exploring the non- and more-than-human in particular are being addressed. In the second section, we frame our own approach to a human–animal relation against this emerging literature and detail the practicalities of the methods we used. The third section details some of our findings specifically in terms of what was derived from the peculiarities of our method. A final discussion offers a reflection on some of the methodological and ethical implications of our research, in terms of the question of who benefits and how from this specific instance of human–animal relations, and for the development of methods attuned to human–animal and multispecies relations more generally.

scholarly journals Animal fans: Toward a multispecies fan studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Lee Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Creative Play ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Nonhuman Species

In an exploration of the potential for (and implications of) animal fans—not human fans of animals but nonhuman animals as fans—situated in ongoing debates about the personhood of nonhuman species, I suggest ways that the animal turn taking place in the humanities and social sciences might affect fan studies. I focus on four characteristics associated with both human fans and nonhuman animals: culture, emotionality, sociality, and capacity for creative play.

scholarly journals Editor's Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Green
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

This special issue of the journal was conceived in 2015 when the Stout Centre at Victoria University of Wellington held a conference on 'The History of Emotions'. The history of emotions is a new, but rapidly expanding, field of scholarly enquiry across the humanities and social sciences. Internationally, for example, it has drawn together social/cultural historians with historians of science and medicine. Reflecting this interdisciplinary engagement various participants in the 2015 conference discussed human-animal relationships and animal emotions, both of which are particularly apposite in the context of a New Zealand economy heavily dependent upon the rural pastoral sector. The first six articles in this issue therefore respond to a diverse set of questions and contexts in the history of emotions.

The Problem of Anthropomorphous Animals: Toward a Posthumanist Ethics

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 520-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Varsava
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

This article examines arguments in favor of and against the anthropomorphism of nonhuman animals across the natural and social sciences. Delineating the political agendas underpinning each side of the debate, the essay demonstrates how both sides embody an anthropocentric paradigm. Both anthropo-denial (resistance to anthropomorphism) and anthropo-insistence (affirmation of anthropomorphism) ultimately depend upon and reinscribe the human/animal binary, a binary both speciesist and specious. This article argues for a posthumanist ethics, which discards as ethically pernicious the humanist “human,” along with the moral code that revolves around it.

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