Mapping Child-Animal Care Relations in Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Amy Mulvenna
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Water Buffalo ◽  
Caring Relationships ◽  
Child Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
Companion Species ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Caring Relations ◽  
Animal Care

This article explores caring relations between child characters and sentient animals in two tales by Australian author-illustrator Shaun Tan. Each of Tan’s 15 Tales from Outer Suburbia are set in an “outer” suburban world replete with curious critters. These include a silent and stoic water buffalo, an unmoving dugong (manatee), and other surprising companion species. In this article, the author unpacks the caring relationships between child protagonists and the sentient creatures they encounter in two selected tales by focusing specifically on those processes that bring these characters together in curious encounters: that is, processes of embodied mapping. Emphasis is placed on enchantment and movement, and, in particular, moments given to pausing, lingering, and reflection. The author argues that both the fields of human-animal studies and the social studies of childhood can gain from exploration of the subtleties of these moments.

Entomotourism: The Allure of the Arthropod

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 733-750
Author(s):  
Raynald Harvey Lemelin ◽  
Elizabeth Y. S. Boileau ◽  
Constance Russell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Monarch Butterfly ◽  
Whale Watching ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wildlife Tourism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Public Imagination

AbstractWildlife tourism is often associated with charismatic megafauna in the public imagination (e.g., safaris, whale watching, bear viewing). Entomotourism (insect-focused tourism) typically is not on the radar, but each year thousands of peoples visit monarch butterfly congregations and glow worm caves, and participate in guided firefly outings. Elsewhere, millions of peoples visit butterfly pavilions, insectariums, and bee museums. Calculations of visitation numbers aside, researchers in tourism studies have largely ignored the appeal of these animals, relegating these types of activities to the recreational fringe. By highlighting the popularity of entomotourism, this article challenges the vertebrate bias prevalent in the social sciences and seeks to move entomotourism from the margins to the mainstream of research on tourism in human/animal studies.

Human-Animal Studies, G.H. Mead, and the Question of Animal Minds

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Gallagher†
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Contemporary Approach

In the field of human-animal studies (has), also known as anthrozoology, the question of nonhuman animal minds is central. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the social psychological G.H. Mead was among the first to take an explicitly contemporary approach to the question of mind in nature. Mead’s approach to the question of the nature of mind is consistent with contemporary science. His approach was characterized by empiricism, interdisciplinarity, comparative behavior and anatomy, and evolutionary theory. For Mead, symbolic language was required for mind as he defined it. This stipulation has been called into question by scholars today. The evidence for the nature of animal minds today suggests that a symbolic language is not required for conscious awareness, deliberation, and decision making. Nonetheless, Mead has an historical relevance to the field ofhasfor both the breadth of his work on the nature of consciousness, his contemporary approach, and the fact that some of his insights could be useful to contemporary scholars who are exploring the nature of mind, both human and nonhuman.

scholarly journals Daphne the Cat: Reimagining human–animal boundaries on Facebook

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 1290-1306
Author(s):  
Verónica Policarpo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

How are companion animals, and cats in particular, built as Otherness, on social media? And how are human–animal boundaries reconfigured along the flow of online digital interactions? This article tries to answer these questions drawing on the story of female cat Daphne, as reported on the official Facebook page of a Portuguese animal shelter. Based on both narrative analysis and categorical content analysis of the posts and comments around the story, the article discusses the social construction of nonhuman animals, bringing together concepts from human–animal studies, science and technology studies, and media studies. It argues that, through digital practices on social media, animals are done and undone. Two emergent and conflicting versions of the same animal, Daphne, are constructed throughout the unstable and contingent flow of digital exchanges: the-animal-victim and the-animal-maladjusted. As such, digital practices become also animal practices, contributing to normative definitions of what an animal ‘is’. As a result, human–animal boundaries are reinstalled and reinforced, and the animals themselves become, once more and paradoxically, invisible.

Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater: Towards a Sociology of the Human-Animal Abuse ‘Link’?

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nik Taylor ◽  
Tania Signal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Animal Abuse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Interest ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Sociological Thought ◽  
Human Social Life

The prevalence of animals in society, and recognition of the multiplicity of roles they play in human social life, has invoked significant interest from certain subsections of the social sciences. However, research in this area, to date, tends to be at an empirical and inherently psychological level. It is the contention of the current article that we need to redress this imbalance if we are to create a legitimate space wherein sociology can be used to investigate human-animal relations/interactions. In order to achieve this, an examination of the foundations of sociological thought is needed. This is explored in the current article through the use of one substantive, highly topical, subject in human-animal studies: the human-animal abuse ‘link.’

Animating the Bible’s Animals

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Stone
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Species Difference ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Companion Species ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter discusses the potential relevance of interdisciplinary animal studies for biblical interpretation. The story of Jacob and his family in Genesis 25–32 is examined from the perspective of a “critical animal hermeneutics.” Three features of such a hermeneutics, characteristic of contemporary animal studies, are emphasized: (1) the constitutive importance of “companion species,” emphasized by Donna Haraway, including in Israel’s case goats and sheep; (2) the instability of the human/animal binary, emphasized by Jacques Derrida and other thinkers; and (3) ubiquitous associations between species difference and differences among humans, particularly, in the case of biblical literature, gender and ethnic differences. Each of these features is used to read the story of Jacob and several related biblical texts.

scholarly journals Comparative Literature, Companion Species and the Camel

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-69
Author(s):  
Charis Olszok
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Companion Species ◽  
Local Tradition ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Central Term

This article brings together theories of both real and literary animals’ readability within Animal Studies and of untranslatability within comparative literature more broadly. Through a focus on Ibrāhīm al-Kūnī’s al-Tibr, in comparison with Mahasweta Devi's ‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay and Pirtha’, I read the central human-animal encounters through both their cultural specificity and the wider ‘animal tropes’ to which they point, situating them within local tradition and the flows of world literature. I then shift to an examination of how both texts, through interspecies encounter, theorize the very processes of readability and comparability which they invite. Animals, I suggest, emerge as sites of ‘secrets’, hinting at the dictates of censorship as they shield symbolic import, or at the local which must be preserved from appropriation, and, above all, at a dimension of ‘otherness’ which can never be fully grasped. In al-Tibr, I examine this through a reading of the camel as ‘ āya’ (sign), a central term within Arabic cosmology, and, in ‘Pterodactyl’, through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's influential reading of ‘ethical singularity’ in the story.

scholarly journals On the Fringe: Sheepdogs and Their Status Within Bronze Age Ontologies in Scandinavia

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Kristin Armstrong Oma
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depositional Patterns ◽  
Human Animal

This contribution draws mainly on images of dogs, humans and sheep from Nordic Bronze Age rock art sources, but living arrangements within the household and depositional patterns of dog bones on settlements are also considered to extrapolate an understanding of the physical reality and ontological role of sheepdogs within the social aspects of the practice of herding. I use theories from the interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies to understand how socialisation, habituation and trust create a seamless choreography between human, dog and sheep.

scholarly journals Lupine Becomings—Tracking and Assembling Romanian Wolves through Multi-Sensory Fieldwork

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran O’Mahony ◽  
Andrea Corradini ◽  
Andrea Gazzola
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Animal

AbstractThis paper outlines the fieldwork methods utilized by ecologists in (re)presenting wolves in Romania. By revealing the processes and performances of this aspect of wildlife conservation, the paper highlights the complex more-than-human assemblages that make up wolf ecology. It briefly discusses the waysHAS(Human-Animal Studies) and the social sciences have addressed conservation and unpacked the oft obscured hinterland of bodies and technologies. It then blends field stories and ethnographic narrative to emphasize the multi-sensory techniques employed in non-invasive wolf research. By using this novel case, the paper contextualizes the significance of concepts such as becoming, affect, and attunement in creating partial affinities between researchers and wildlife. It argues that these contribute to an emplaced knowledge that allows practices to adapt to contingencies in field. This is important when modern, remote technologies aimed at minimizing effort in the field are seen to be a panacea for monitoring elusive wildlife.

scholarly journals Where Are the Nonhuman Animals in the Sociology of Climate Change?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Richard Twine
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Environmental Sociology ◽  
Journal Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract The emergence of interdisciplinary animal studies during recent decades challenges sociologists to critically reflect upon anthropocentric ontology and to paint a more comprehensive picture of the social. This article focuses on the recent emergence of the sociology of climate change during the last twenty years, with a warning that it may have proceeded without critical interrogation of residual humanism evidenced by the exclusion of nonhuman animals. The inclusion of these nonhuman animals in the discussion of human/animal relations is vital in the societal discourse of climate change. After surveying key texts and leading journal literature, it is clear that this discussion of human/animal relations is lacking or altogether omitted. It is then worth considering how animalized environmental sociology could contribute to redefining the discipline of sociology as a whole.

Kiwi chicken advocate talks with Californian dog companion

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Potts ◽  
Donna Haraway
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Laboratory Science ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
Feminist Scholar ◽  
Companion Species ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The University

An influential feminist scholar in the field of human-animal studies, Donna Haraway (Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz) has over the past couple of decades provided ground-breaking critiques of such subjects as twentieth century primatology (and its links to race, gender and first-world/third-world politics), the place of nonhuman animals in laboratory science, and the phenomenon of pedigree dog breeding. Her most recent work focuses on our relationships with ‘companion species’, a term Haraway employs in her analysis of the diverse forms of human-animal interactions and exchanges that are part of everyday life. Drawing from ecological developmental biology, she suggests that companion species are the fruit of ‘multispecies reciprocal inductions’. In the following interview with Annie Potts (Co-Director, the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies), Donna Haraway discusses her views on, amongst other things, feminism and multispecies issues, human exceptionalism and posthumanism, and the pleasures of ‘becoming with’ our companion species.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document