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.

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.

College Students’ Experiences of Nonhuman Animal Harm in the United States and The Bahamas

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 752-775
Author(s):  
William J. Fielding ◽  
Travis W. Cronin ◽  
Christina Risley-Curtiss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Teaching Animal

Abstract This study compares and contrasts experiences of harm to nonhuman animals in the lives of 830 college students in The Bahamas and the United States. Overall, students in The Bahamas were more likely to have been exposed to seeing animals harmed (65%) than those in the United States (16%), and they were more likely to have seen an animal killed (22% in The Bahamas and 12% in the United States). Bahamian students reported a higher rate of participation in harming animals than United States students. Stray animals were at greater risk of harm than animals designated as companion animals. The occurrence of coerced harm to animals including zoophilia was low. Participants were indirect victims of animal harm at older ages than the ages at which they had first witnessed or participated in harming animals. Cross-societal implications of harming animals are discussed in the context of teaching animal welfare.

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.

Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to Compassionate Conservation: The Case of Wild Horses in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Christine Reed
Keyword(s):  
Native Species ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Fertility Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Wild Horse ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract Human-animal studies have taken a “wild turn” because of growing concern that the urgency to preserve or restore native species and ecosystems has led to overlooking the pain and suffering inflicted upon nonhuman animals targeted as threats to that cause. Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is used to examine the case of wild horses in the American West. Federal law protecting them predates amendments requiring managers to regulate their numbers because of conservation. I conclude that the wild horse program meets Nussbaum’s definition of compassion in important respects, and that temporary fertility control, long-term pastures, and adoptions fulfill her criteria of justice, but with important qualifications. The capabilities approach relies on the possibility of rational discourse about the protection of wildlife individuals, but that consensus might apply only to certain species. In addition, “culture wars” plaguing the U.S. threaten the possibility of a consensus about compassion and justice for nonhuman animals.

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.

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.

The 1970s

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Borstelmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Retirement Plans ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Oil Crisis ◽  
American Society

This book looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, this book creates a new framework for understanding the period and its legacy. It demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more—and less—equal. This book explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America. Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens' confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the movement for civil rights grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. And developments were not limited to the United States. Many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China. Placing a tempestuous political culture within a global perspective, this book shows that the decade wrought irrevocable transformations upon American society and the broader world that continue to resonate today.

Terrified

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Bail
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Muslim Americans ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Face ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Public Sphere

In July 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of a small fundamentalist church in Florida, announced plans to burn two hundred Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Though he ended up canceling the stunt in the face of widespread public backlash, his threat sparked violent protests across the Muslim world that left at least twenty people dead. This book demonstrates how the beliefs of fanatics like Jones are inspired by a rapidly expanding network of anti-Muslim organizations that exert profound influence on American understanding of Islam. The book traces how the anti-Muslim narrative of the political fringe has captivated large segments of the American media, government, and general public, validating the views of extremists who argue that the United States is at war with Islam and marginalizing mainstream Muslim-Americans who are uniquely positioned to discredit such claims. Drawing on cultural sociology, social network theory, and social psychology, the book shows how anti-Muslim organizations gained visibility in the public sphere, commandeered a sense of legitimacy, and redefined the contours of contemporary debate, shifting it ever outward toward the fringe. The book illustrates the author's pioneering theoretical argument through a big-data analysis of more than one hundred organizations struggling to shape public discourse about Islam, tracing their impact on hundreds of thousands of newspaper articles, television transcripts, legislative debates, and social media messages produced since the September 11 attacks. The book also features in-depth interviews with the leaders of these organizations, providing a rare look at how anti-Muslim organizations entered the American mainstream.

(Re)Made in America: Survivorship after the Shoah

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-44
Author(s):  
Alyson Cole
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
The Third ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Negative Attributes ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

Until the l970s, ‘survivor’ referred predominantly to individuals who outlived others in the aftermath of disaster, or stood to inherit the remains of an estate; it was not imbued with evaluative connotations. In the United States today, however, survivorship abounds with positive meanings. This transvaluation rests on three intersecting trajectories that together transformed survivorship from denoting that one sustained or was spared a hardship to signifying a superior social status. The first trajectory follows the aftermath of the Shoah, when survivors acquired moral authority as victims of and public witnesses to a new violation, ‘crimes against humanity’. The second tracks the stigmatization of the term ‘victim’ in American public discourse. A consequence of struggles over the welfare state and other progressive policies, victimhood is now associated less with specific harms or injuries, and more with the supposed negative attributes of the victim herself. The third traces how survivorship became integral to the recuperative strategies of new therapeutic disciplines addressing the traumatized – from war veterans and rape victims to cancer patients. These three processes coalesced to create and legitimize a hierarchical opposition between ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’, transforming these terms into political categories and emblems of personal and group identity. In this essay, I argue that the victim/survivor binary constitutes one juncture where neoliberalism converges with Trump-era populism.

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