The social relationships between humans and our closest nonhuman species (e.g., dogs, cats, and horses) are complex and subject to change. This complexity contradicts the popular phenomenon of using these animals in medical interventions for mental health (i.e., animal assisted therapy). This article uses anthropological research and ethnographic examples from the Central Coast, Australia, to exemplify the conflicts, contradictions, and realities of our companion animals’ relationship to human mental health. Using a phenomenological perspective, the article examines the complex realities in (...) which companion animals (being living, fluctuating, mortal creatures) experience trauma, respond to human behaviors, and ultimately change throughout their lives, making them less “manageable” as mental health support while still valuable as a longer-term relationship. Companion animals maintain an extremely important position in the emotional lives of their human companions. However, their position in human worlds has purpose beyond therapeutic utility. Future research and use of companion animals for mental health purposes should carefully reconsider the implications of using living creatures in medical models and instead seek to better understand how our companion animals allow humans to access alternate ways of thinking throughout their lives. (shrink)

As a farmer from Ayrshire, Robert Burns's subsistence depended on successful interactions with farmed animals. This close contact with nonhumans conditions his poetry on animals. Even the free-living beings he documents are mediated by his agrarian experience. If his background as a farmer allows Burns to study animals on a daily basis, his poet persona permits him to document their activities with fidelity. The ethical dilemma, though, this dual position created in Burns's poems, foregrounds difficulty in negating the imbalance of (...) power between humans and other species. This disparity is nowhere more evident than in his verse “To a Mouse.”. (shrink)

The use of animals in ceremonial contexts is universal. Throughout history, across cultures, in both religious and secular settings, animals are often seen as mere symbols rather than as individuals with the capacity to be harmed in ritual performances. While some ritualized uses of animals are unquestionably cruel (e.g., the Islamic ritual sacrifice of sheep at Eid al-Adha), the morality of other uses (e.g., the ritual release of animals at Buddhist festivals) is less certain. This article examines what stance animal (...) advocates should take toward the ritualized release of animals, arguing that, on the whole, the inclusion of animals in ritual activity perpetuates the misguided and anthropocentric notion that animals are instruments for human use. Since ritualized animal release is a prominent feature of Buddhist tradition, this article pays particular attention to the effects of “merit-making” ceremonies on animals across Asia. (shrink)

The Japanese are rumored to have a deep understanding of nature and therefore a deeper bond to the natural world as well as the creatures that inhabit it. However, recent studies to determine the attitudes, knowledge, and behavior of the Japanese toward free-living animals have proven the popular image of a nature-loving people to be misleading. Instead, the results have displayed an almost frightening ethical and ecological indifference toward free-living animals. In order to understand this contradictory attitude toward nonhuman animals, (...) I claim that it is necessary to take a closer look at the ancient Chinese encyclopedic sources that have shaped the discipline of honzōgaku 本草学 (“natural history”) in early modern Japan. This article aims to show how the depiction and descriptions of nonhuman animals in medieval Chinese encyclopedias were passed on to Japan and became the basis of their knowledge of the nonhuman world. (shrink)

The 4Ns constitute four broad categories—normal, natural, necessary, and nice—into which justifications for the cultural practice of consuming certain animals (carnism) fall. Here, the 4Ns are applied to another ideology that also negatively impacts nonhuman animals: pronatalism, the cultural and political pressures to have your own biological children. Pronatalism has led to overpopulation and overconsumption, which are major drivers of factory farming and habitat destruction. In this context, the 4Ns are critiqued and countered. Those involved in animal welfare/ethics are encouraged (...) to increase their awareness of the interrelatedness of pronatalism and animal welfare. Using existing theories in the field, such as the 4Ns, can help with this process. (shrink)

Unrestricted reproductive rights for domesticated animals, including the right to roam freely, will have serious consequences for domesticated animals in today's world. While political and legal theories focus on population control to justify fertility restrictions, they do so to save animals’ lives, and one consequence of restricting domesticated animals’ reproductive rights is many more animal deaths. Further, theorists have explored whether population control methods unjustifiably infringe on animals’ rights and argue that at least some are not only justified but arguably (...) mandated under animal rights theories. And finally, it is doubtful today that unbridled reproductive rights for domesticated animals that protect their rights to freedom of association and mobility is in their best interests. (shrink)

Political and legal theories of animal rights tend to raise the issue of domesticated animals’ sexuality and reproduction as a matter of population management and therefore concentrate too narrowly on providing justification for fertility restrictions. In this article, I argue that the normative logic underpinning the historical evolution and conceptual development of the fundamental right to health in international law, in its paradigm shift from population control to health rights, is consistent with initiating a similar transition in the domesticated animal (...) case. Without the relevant legal rights protections in place, individual interests in having control over, and making decisions about, their sexuality and reproduction get subordinated to the imperative of achieving sustainable population goals, resulting in the violation of bodily integrity and self-determination. What is missing from the present discussion of domesticated animals’ sexuality and reproduction is a rights-based discourse. I seek to address this gap in the literature by drawing on the existing human rights law norms to develop a conception of sexual and reproductive rights for domesticated animals as a shared yet differentiated fundamental right to health. I show that the realization of this right for domesticated animals is conditional upon a set of freedoms and entitlements, such as the freedom of choice, association, and mobility, as well as access to a range of health facilities, goods, and services. The aim is to introduce a new way of thinking about domesticated animals’ sexuality and reproduction as a rights and agency issue not just a population and fertility control dilemma. (shrink)

Even though many poets have shone a light on the lives of other-than-human animals, poems remain a rich yet largely unexplored source of ethical sensitivity toward them. I will argue that an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of animals as depicted in works by Christopher Smart (1722–1771) and William Stafford (1914–1993) can lead directly to an apprehension of the ethical significance of those animals. As captured in their poems, the beauty of animals—their embodied subjectivity and individuality—compels disinterested attention as a (...) proper mode of response in both the poet and the reader. This response generates attitudes of respect, wonder, humility, and gratitude that have powerful ethical import. Smart and Stafford present us with not only the aesthetic meaning of animals but also with the ethical significance that flows from that meaning. That significance refines and enlarges the moral imagination of their readers. (shrink)

Advertising produced by the meat industry aims to stimulate positive feelings and thoughts about the exploitation of nonhuman animals. Propaganda techniques, such as glittering generalities, euphemism, virtue signaling, framing, and appealing to authority all comprise strategies used by this industry to convince consumers of the worthiness and appeal of its products. Mechanisms of moral disengagement, such as displacement of responsibility, normalization, and joke-making/humorization have also been detected within almost all varieties of meat industry advertising. Within this milieu, meat industry advocates (...) appear to abandon all concern about marginalizing, disenfranchising, and disparaging animals. (shrink)