This book provides reflection on the increasingly blurry boundaries that characterize the human-animal relationship. In the Anthropocene humans and animals have come closer together and this asks for rethinking old divisions. Firstly, new scientific insights and technological advances lead to a blurring of the boundaries between animals and humans. Secondly, our increasing influence on nature leads to a rethinking of the old distinction between individual animal ethics and collectivist environmental ethics. Thirdly, ongoing urbanization and destruction of (...) class='Hi'>animal habitats leads to a blurring between the categories of wild and domesticated animals. Finally, globalization and global climate change have led to the fragmentation of natural habitats, blurring the old distinction between in situ and ex situ conservation. In this book, researchers at the cutting edge of their fields systematically examine the broad field of human-animal relations, dealing with wild, liminal, and domestic animals, with conservation, and zoos, and with technologies such as biomimicry. This book is timely in that it explores the new directions in which our thinking about the human-animal relationship are developing. While the target audience primarily consists of animal studies scholars, coming from a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, sociology, psychology, ethology, literature, and film studies, many of the topics that are discussed have relevance beyond a purely theoretical one; as such the book also aims to inspire for example biologists, conservationists, and zoo keepers to reflect on their relationship with animals. (shrink)

The Human-Animal Boundary shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the question "what is human?" with the question "what is animal?" The objective is to expand the imaginative scope of human-animal relationships by combining perspectives from different disciplines, traditions, and cultural backgrounds.

The relationship between animal ownership and owners' health has received increasing attention in the recent human-companion animal literature. This article considers a new aspect of the human-companion animal relationship, that of compatibility between pet and owner. Compatibility is viewed as the fit between the animal and the owner on physical, behavioral, and psychological dimensions. A postal survey was used to test the hypothesis that compatibility has influences on physical and mental health that are (...) independent of those due to owners' level ofpet attachment and human social support. A sample group of 176 pet owners completed a questionnaire containing a new measure of compatibility as well as standard measures of pet attachment, human social support, and mental and physical health. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that people who are relatively more compatible with their pets report better mental health overall and fewer physical symptoms. Social support was positively associated with mental health. Pet attachment was also positively associated with mental health, but negatively with physical health. (shrink)

Figuring Animals is a collection of fifteen essays concerning the representation of animals in literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and cultural practice. At the turn of the new century, it is helpful to reconsider our inherited understandings of the species, some of which are still useful to us. It is also important to look ahead to new understandings and new dialogue, which may contribute to the survival of us all. The contributors to this volume participate in this dialogue in (...) a variety of ways--through personal experience, natural history, cultural studies, philosophical inquiry, art history, literary analysis, film studies, and theoretical imagining, and through a combination of these trains of thought. The essays expose weaknesses in western epistemological frames of reference that for centuries have limited our views and, thus, our experiences of animal being, including our own. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and define self psychology and its concepts so that they can be applied toward a new understanding of the human-nonhuman animal bond. The paper utilizes selected literature from both self psychology and the human-animal bond fields. The paper contains four primary conclusions: 1. Self psychology provides a unique model for understanding the depth and meaning of human-animal relationships; 2. Companion animals and humans can be (...) equally important in their selfobject roles; 3. Self psychology can offer a model for understanding individual differences in attachment to companion animals; and 4. A future direction includes finding ways to assess self psychology constructs in order to measure the depth and function of the selfobject relationship. (shrink)

Animals have encountered cruelty and suffering throughout the ages. It is something perpetrated up till this day, particularly, in factory farms, animal laboratories, and even in the name of sports or amusement. However, since the second half of the twentieth century, there has been growing concerns for animal welfare and the protection of animal rights within the discourse of environmentalism, developed mainly in the West. Nevertheless, a recently developed Islamic Ecological Paradigm rooted in the classical Islamic traditions (...) contests the ‘Western’ monopoly of modern environmentalism, sug­gesting that there is much in Islamic traditions dealing with environmental issues in­cluding non-human animal species. IEP asserts that several centuries ago Islamic traditions significantly focused on and strongly advocated for animal welfare and animal rights. This paper explores and examines animal rights within the broader spectrum of Islamic environmentalism or Islamic eco-ethic. While the philosophical roots of IEP concerning animal rights date far back in seventh century, it can potentially make both ethical and educational contributions to the twenty-first century environmentalism and animal rights movements. (shrink)

The article compares the research programs of teaching symbolic language to chimpanzees, pointing on the dichotomy between artificial language vs. ASL, and the dichotomy between researchers who decided to establish emotional relationships between themselves and the apes, and those who have seen apes as instrumental devices. It is concluded that the experiments with the most interesting results have been both with artificial language and ASL, but with strong affiliation between researchers and animal involved in the experiments. The experiments (...) on talking apes are not so much experiments in psycholinguistics (how far can animal learn human language) but wonderful experiments in the communities of communication between human beings and great apes. (shrink)

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, new anatomical investigations of the brain and the nervous system, together with a renewed interest in comparative anatomy, allowed doctors and philosophers to ground their theories on sense perception, the emergence of human intelligence, and the soul/body relationship in modern science. They investigated the anatomical structures and the physiological processes underlying the rise, differentiation, and articulation of human cognitive activities, and looked for the “anatomical roots” of the specificity of human (...) intelligence when compared to other forms of animal sensibility. This edited volume focuses on medical and philosophical debates on human intelligence and animal perception in the early modern age, providing fresh insights into the influence of medical discourse on the rise of modern philosophical anthropology. Contributions from distinguished historians of philosophy and medicine focus on sixteenth-century zoological, psychological, and embryological discourses on man; the impact of mechanism and comparative anatomy on philosophical conceptions of body and soul; and the key status of sensibility in the medical and philosophical enlightenment. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of results from an Australian Research Council-funded project "Sentiments and Risks: The Changing Nature of Human-Animal Relations in Australia." The data discussed come from a survey of 2000 representative Australians at the capital city, state, and rural regional level. It provides both a snapshot of the state of involvement of Australians with nonhuman animals and their views on critical issues: ethics, rights, animals as food, risk from animals, native versus introduced animals, hunting, fishing, (...) and companionate relations with animals. Its data point to key trends and change. The changing position of animals in Australian society is critical to understand, given its historic export markets in meat and livestock, emerging tourism industry with its strong wildlife focus, native animals' place in discourses of nation, and the centrality of animal foods in the national diet. New anxieties about risk from animal-sourced foods and the endangerment of native animals from development and introduced species, together with tensions between animals' rights and the privileging of native species, contribute to the growth of a strongly contested animal politics in Australia. © 2007 Brill Academic Publishers. (shrink)

This article examines the place of human and animal subjectivity in two autobiographically informed texts by Hélène Cixous. It takes her view on the word ‘human’ and the figure of Fips, the dog of the Cixous family, as a point of departure. By thinking through this figure, I argue, Cixous analyses the dehumanizing logic of colonialism and anti-Semitism in Algeria and develops her own response to such kinds of political evils, arguing for human relationality and (...) class='Hi'>animal corporeality. The article shows that Cixous’ meeting with Fips creates a stigma that, belatedly, breaks through the barrier between herself and the dog; the reopening of the wound takes place in a poetical writing that reveals an intense ‘animal humanity’ formed by communal suffering, finiteness, and love. The lesson Cixous learns from the memory of Fips the dog is how to become ‘better human’. This becoming is also an assault on the false humanism of the colonial project and on racialized social exclusion. (shrink)

One of the most widely used procedures applied to non-human animals or pre-linguistic humans is the “violation of expectation paradigm”. Curiously there is almost no discussion in the philosophical literature about it. Our objective will be to provide a first approach to the meta-theoretical nature of the assumptions behind the procedure that appeals to the violation of expectation and to extract some consequences. We show that behind them exists an empirical principle that affirms that the violation of the (...) expectation of certain mental rules generates surprise. We then proceeded to discuss the nature of these “mental rules”. We show that, as is often the case with theoretical concepts proposed by theories, they do not have a fixed interpretation. This will allow us to show that the usual relationship found in the developmental psychology literature between this experimental paradigm and cognitive approaches (which interpret experimental results in terms of higher-level mental activities) is not necessary. Finally, we relate this experimental design with the mark test and the inequity aversion test and discuss the possible ampliation of the application of the empirical principle of violation of expectation. (shrink)

Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human–Animal Studies by Margo deMello aims to provide a comprehensive review of the emerging discipline known as human–animal studies. The aim of the book is twofold: to serve both as a useful overview of a vast literature for scholars and as an accessible introductory textbook for students. The book is most impressive in its breadth, yet brief entries are sometimes at the expense of a more nuanced discussion, so that (...) both the complexity of human–animal relationships and important scholarly distinctions are overlooked. These concerns aside, Animals and Society is a very enjoyable read and is well suited for people who do not need to engage with the scholarship. -/- . (shrink)

Ethical reflection deals not only with the moral standing and handling of animals, it should also include a critical analysis of the underlying relationship. Anthropological, psychological, and sociological aspects of the human–animal-relationship should be taken into account. Two conditions, asymmetry and ambivalence, are taken as the historical and empirical basis for reflections on the human–animal-relationship in late modern societies. These conditions explain the variety of moral practice, apart from paradoxes, and provide a framework to systematize (...) class='Hi'>animal ethical problems in a broader field. This allows the development of ideal relationships as moral orientation across anthropocentric or sentientistic ethical theories. These ideal relationships are called the patronage-model, the friendship-model and the partnership-model. The ethical problem of creating transgenic animals is discussed in the light of these ideal relationships. (shrink)

Stakeholder 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. (shrink)

This book explores interdisciplinary approaches to animal-focused curriculum and pedagogy in environmental education, with an emphasis on integrating methods from the arts, humanities, and natural and social sciences. Each chapter, whether addressing curriculum, pedagogy, or both, engages with the extant literature in environmental education and other relevant fields to consider how interdisciplinary curricular and pedagogical practices shed new light on our understandings of and ethical/moral obligations to animals. Embracing theories like intersectionality, posthumanism, Indigenous cosmologies, and significant life experiences, (...) and considering topics such as equine training, meat consumption and production, urban human-animal relationships, and zoos and aquariums, the chapters collectively contribute to the field by foregrounding the lives of animals. The volume purposefully steps forward from the historical marginalization of animals in educational research and practice. (shrink)

Situated at the intersection of animal studies and literary theory, this book explores the remarkable and subtly pervasive web of animal imagery, metaphors, and concepts in the work of the Jewish-Italian writer, chemist, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Relatively unexamined by scholars, the complex and extensive animal imagery Levi employed in his literary works offers new insights into the aesthetical and ethical function of testimony, as well as an original perspective on contemporary debates surrounding human-animal (...) relationships and posthumanism. The three main sections that compose the book mirror Levi’s approach to non-human animals and animality: from an unquestionable bio-ethical origin ; through an investigation of the relationships between writing, technology, and animality ; to a creative intellectual project in which literary animals both counterbalance the inevitable suffering of all creatures, and suggest a transformative image of interspecific community. (shrink)

A transformative vision for human-animal relations on personal, social, and environmental levels. The Three Ethologies offers a fresh, affirmative vision for rebuilding human-animal relations. Venturing beyond the usual scholarly and activist emphasis on restricting harm, Matthew Calarco develops a new philosophy for understanding animal behavior—a practice known as ethology—through three distinct but interrelated lenses: mental ethology, which rebuilds individual subjectivity; social ethology, which rethinks our communal relations; and environmental ethology, which reconfigures our relationship to the (...) land we co-inhabit with our animal kin. Drawing on developments in philosophy, (eco)feminist theory, critical geography, Indigenous studies, and the environmental humanities, Calarco casts an inspiring vision of how ethological living can help us to reimagine our ideas about goodness, truth, and beauty. (shrink)

This book examines the works of major artists between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, as important barometers of individual and collective values toward non-human life. Once viewed as merely representational, these works can also be read as tangential or morally instrumental by way of formal analysis and critical theories. Chapter Two demonstrates the discrimination toward large and small felines in Genesis and The Book of Revelation. Chapter Three explores the cruel capture of free roaming animals and how artists depicted (...) their furs, feathers and shells in costume as symbols of virtue and vice. Chapter Four identifies speciest beliefs between donkeys and horses. Chapter Five explores the altered Dutch kitchen spaces and disguised food animals in various culinary constructs in still life painting. Chapter Six explores the animal substances embedded in pigments. Chapter Seven examines animals in absentia-in the crafting of brushes. The book concludes with the fish paintings of William Merritt Chase whose glazing techniques demonstrate an artistic approach that honors fishes as sentient beings. (shrink)

In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, ...

In art and literature, animals appear not only as an allegoric representation but as a reference which troubles the border between humanity and animality. The aim of this book is to challenge traditional ways of confronting animality with humanity and to consider how the Darwinian turn has modified this relationship in postmodern narratives. The subject of animality in culture, ethics, philosophy, art and literature is explored and reevaluated, and a host of questions regarding the conditions of co-existence of (...) humans and animals is asked: Should discourse ethics now include entities that initially seemed mute and were excluded from discussions? Does the modern animal rights movement need a theology, and vice versa, is there a theology that needs animals? Are animals in literature just metaphors of human characters, or do they reveal something more profound, a direction of human desires, or a fantasy of transgressing humanity? This book provides answers and thus gives a new impetus to a so far largely overlooked field. (shrink)

Feminist science studies have given scant regard to non-human animals. In this paper, we argue that it is important for feminist theory to address the complex relationships between humans and other animals, and the implications of these for feminism. We use the notion of performativity, particularly as it has been developed by Karen Barad, to explore the intersections of feminism and studies of the human/animal relationship. Performativity, we argue, helps to challenge the persistent dichotomy between (...) class='Hi'>human/culture and animals/nature. It emphasizes, moreover, how animality is a doing or becoming, not an essence; so, performativity allows us to think about the complexity of human/animal interrelating as a kind of choreography, a co-creation of behaviour. We illustrate the discussion using the example of the laboratory rat, who can be thought of both in terms of a materialization of specific scientific practices and as active participants in the creation of their own meaning, alongside the human participants in science. There are three, intertwined, senses in which we might think about performativity - that of animality, of humannness, and of the relationship between the two. Bringing animals into discussions about performativity poses questions for both feminist theory and for the study of human/animal relationships, we argue: both human and animal can conjointly be engaged in reconfiguring the world, and our theorizing must reflect that complexity. We are all matter, and we all matter. (shrink)

Slaughter sets the debate about what is acceptable to do to animals at an extremely low bar. Recently, there has been considerable investment in developing cell-based meat, an alternative meat production process that does not require the raising and slaughtering of animals, instead using muscle cells cultivated in a bioreactor. We discuss the animal ethics impacts of cell-based and plant-based meat on human-animal interactions from animal welfare and rights perspectives, focusing on industrial meat production scenarios. Our (...) hypothesis is that the insertion of cell-based meat in the global meat market may alleviate farm animal suffering and potentially restore resources for wild fauna. We employed a conservative estimation of the cell-based meat contribution to the global meat market in the year 2040 to analyze the consequences for human-animal relationships for both wild animals and farmed domesticated animals. We discuss possible effects of an animal cell domestication process, previously described as the second domestication, on human-animal relationships. We consider its potential to reduce the impact of human demographic changes and land use on animal life, in particular whether there would be increased biomass availability and free land for wild animals. We anticipate a major reduction in animal suffering due to the decrease in the number of individual animals involved in food production, which justifies the adoption of cell-based meat from a utilitarian perspective. For the conventional animal food production that remains, further consideration is needed to understand which systems, either high or low welfare, will be retained and the impact of the innovation on the average farm animal welfare. Additionally, it seems likely that there will be less acceptance of the necessity of animal suffering in farming systems when meat production is uncoupled from animal raising and slaughter, supported by a deontological perspective of animal ethics. Consequent to this is anticipated the mitigation of relevant barriers to animal protection and to the recognition of animals as subjects by legislation. Thus, the development of the alternative meats may be related to a significant change in our relationship with non-human animals, with greater benefits than the prima facie effects on farm animals. (shrink)

I explore how some aspects of Foucoult’s work on power can be applied to human/animal power relations. First, I argue that because animals behave as “beings that react” and can respond in different ways to human actions, in principle at least, Foucoult’s work can offer insights into human/animal power relations. However, many of these relations fall into the category of “domination,” in which animals are unable to respond. Second, I examine different kinds of human (...) power practices, in particular, ways in which humans construct animal constitutions and animal subjectivities. Finally, I use a case study of a pet cat to show how such power practices may come together in a single instance. (shrink)

I explore how some aspects of Foucoult’s work on power can be applied to human/animal power relations. First, I argue that because animals behave as “beings that react” and can respond in different ways to human actions, in principle at least, Foucoult’s work can offer insights into human/animal power relations. However, many of these relations fall into the category of “domination,” in which animals are unable to respond. Second, I examine different kinds of human (...) power practices, in particular, ways in which humans construct animal constitutions and animal subjectivities. Finally, I use a case study of a pet cat to show how such power practices may come together in a single instance. (shrink)

The construction and use of space is highly structuring in the lives of household members of both human and non-human animals. The choice of social practice is embedded in the ways in which both human and non-human animals physically organize the world around them. The architectural vestiges of houses—both in terms of the distribution of material culture within and surrounding them, and architectural choices—provide frameworks for a social practice that was shared between humans and living, domestic (...) animals, or animal materiality. The notion of meeting points is explored via both its tangible and metaphorical aspects to approach the meetings—the physical performances and their significance—of humans and animals in the past. To gauge the potential likenesses and differences, two case studies are compared from the Late Bronze Age in Scandinavia and Early Iron Age in Sicily. Both case studies represent societies where domestic animals were present and formed part of the household subsistence. A framework is presented that takes into consideration the spatial potential of allowing human-animal relationships to unfold within the framework of the everyday social practice of the household. (shrink)

Scholarship on the early modern practice of animal trials in Europe has grown substantially in the last few decades. After a critical literature review pointing at the shortcomings of positivist approaches and of the interpretation of the phenomenon as a purely religious practice, I present Foucauldian genealogy as a more rigorous framework for understanding the purpose this peculiar practice may have served. The benefits of adopting a Foucauldian perspective are twofold. First, it allows for a subtle functionalism that (...) does not treat this tradition as a homogeneous block. Second, it gives an opportunity to introduce the animal body into Foucault’s genealogy of power, which rather focuses on the human body and interhuman relationships. (shrink)

In this chapter we outline the need to develop ethical frameworks to guide research on the role of animal-orientated health, therapeutic, and service interventions. We discuss findings from our research on uses of animals in therapeutic settings and benefits of human–canine interactions for human health. These stories from the field reveal that current ethics review processes do not recognise the animal as an equal partner in the potential reciprocal benefits and risks of therapeutic human–animal (...) relationships. We explore how these review processes frame research on the relationships between humans and non-human animals and use the ethical review system of Aotearoa/New Zealand as an example. We propose an ethical framework that goes beyond animal welfare legislation and recognises a range of non-human animal capacities. (shrink)

This book strongly challenges the Western philosophical tradition's assertion that humans are superior to nonhuman animals. It provides a full and direct moral status of nonhuman animals. The book provides basis for a radical critique of the entire trajectory of animal studies over the past fifteen years. The key idea explored is of 'felt kinship' a sense of shared fate with and obligations to all sentient life. It will help to inspire some deep rethinking on the part of leading (...) exponents of animal studies. The book's strong outlook is expressed through an appeal for radical humility on the side of humans rather than a constant reference to the 'human-animal divide'. Historical figures examined in depth include Aristotle; Seneca, and Kant; contemporary figures examined include Christine Korsgaard and Martha Nussbaum. This book presents an account in which the tradition has proceeded based on impartial motivations at all, but instead has made a set of pointedly self-serving assumptions about the proper criteria for assessing moral worth. Readers of this book will gain exposure to a wide variety of thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition, historical as well as contemporary. This book is suitable for professionals working in nonhuman animal studies, students, advanced undergraduates, and practitioners working in the fields of philosophy, environmental studies, law, literature, anthropology, and related fields. (shrink)

Human-animal emotional relationships have a complicated interplay with public perceptions of the morality of animal use. Humans may build emotional relationships with companion species. These species are not usually intensively farmed in the United Kingdom, but they may be utilized during animal experimentation. From a relational ethical standpoint, the public may therefore perceive animal experimentation as being less acceptable than intensive farming. This study aimed to determine whether human-animal emotional relationships (...) affect public attitudes regarding use of animals in intensive farming and research. Responding to an online questionnaire, British citizens rated their agreement with 20 statements relating to their acceptance of intensive farming and animal experimentation, scientific research involving a given species, killing free-living animals, and consuming animals existing within companion and farming contexts. Positive correlations were found between public acceptance of intensive farming and animal experimentation, such that acceptance of animal experimentation corresponded with acceptance of intensive farming practices. This finding disproved our theory that the British public may perceive animal experimentation as less acceptable than intensive farming due to the use of companion species in scientific research. Public acceptance of animal experimentation also did not significantly differ between that involving companion or noncompanion species. However, respondents were more accepting of the consumption of a typical farmed animal raised for meat purposes than consuming an animal if it had been raised in a companion context or consuming a typical companion species raised in either a farmed or companion context. These findings illustrate that the human-animal relationship can influence public perceptions of the morality of animal use. (shrink)

Ecofeminists, environmental activists, and ecologists are calling humans to change our relationships to other-than-humans and more-than-humans. Indigenous people and knowledge systems are often exemplified as ways for non-Indigenous people to relate to these entities. While Indigenous people have historically participated in epistemologies and modes of perception that rendered them more able to connect to non-humans, these relationships have not always been peaceful or mutually advantageous. Examples are cited in which annihilating all beavers was the goal, and the fur (...) trade is cited as a time when Indigenous people in North America gained mastery over animals that had previously threatened them, leading to near extinction for some species in some locations over a short time. Bear–human marriage stories provide us with another way to view the human–animal relationship, which is sometimes violent. Through multiple conversations with Elders over time, I have been accumulating a sense of Indigenous North American (INA) theories of mind, self, and consciousness. I apply the results of my discussions to the question of whether we are creating a new consciousness of relations with non-humans that has not previously existed in INA thought, though it has its progenitors. I also apply insights from recent literature on psychedelics. This new thought arises from the current domination of the planet and animals by human beings and the relative lack of threat to humans from animals. Indeed, we are more dangerous to them than they are to us. Within this context, we can construct a new consciousness of non-humans, which has its historical antecedents and which is also entirely new. (shrink)

This article seeks to revisit the relationship between Rawls’s contractarianism and the moral status of animals, paying particular attention to the recent literature. Despite Rawls’s own reluctance to include animals as recipients of justice, and my own initial scepticism, a number of scholars have argued that his theory does provide resources that are useful for the animal advocate. The first type takes Rawls’s exclusion of animals from his theory of justice at face value but argues that animals can (...) still be protected within a moral realm independently of justice, or indirectly through the motivations of human contractors. The second type adapts his theory in a way that enables animals to be included within a contractarian theory of justice. It is argued, though, that none of the responses offered is successful in providing a sphere of protection for animals from within Rawls’s contractarian theory. It is doubtful if Rawls’s intention was for animals to receive a significant degree of protection within a moral realm independently of justice, and equally doubtful if the contractors in the original position would be motivated to act on behalf of animals. In the case of the second, whilst Rawlsian resources can be utilised to justify the attempt to amend the veil of ignorance so as to include animals, these are not dependent on a contractural agreement. Similarly, placing emphasis on social-co-operation as a means of incorporating animals into a theory of justice is flawed, not least because, paradoxically, it works for domesticated animals whilst they are being exploited. (shrink)

After reading the research of Mexican anthropologists concerning the possible retention of traditional indigenous African beliefs in contemporary Mexican communities of African descent, I interviewed women of the region who migrated to Atlanta, Georgia about their spiritual beliefs and practices. I was surprised by the similarities in their reports to those recorded by Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, who worked in Mexico over 60 years ago. I traveled to the town of Chautengo in coastal Guerrero state in 2005 to talk with women (...) about their beliefs, especially those that relate to the existence of a relationship between humans and animal-tonos. The human–animal-tono relationship exemplifies a belief in an intimate relationship between humans and totem animals. The well-being of the human partner depends upon the well-being of the animal. Keeping the human–animal relationship balanced is key in the conceptualization of illness and informs related healing practices. I present an interview with a woman from Chautengo with an interpretation that exemplifies the persistence of ideas related to human–animal relationships that are possibly informed by traditional indigenous African cosmologies, brought by enslaved Africans over 500 years ago, and have been archetypally preserved in isolated communities along the Pacific coast of Mexico. (shrink)

This book examines the context, meaning, and implications of animals' resistance to human exploitation from a perspective that considers both the animals' lived experiences and what their resistance reveals about the societies in which they resist.

This Handbook fills a large gap in current scholarly literature on animal abuse studies. It moves considerably beyond the debate that has traditionally dominated the discourse of animal abuse – the link between one-on-one interpersonal violence and animal abuse – and towards those institutionalised forms of animal abuse which are routine, everyday, socially acceptable and invisibilised. Chapters from expert contributors raise issues such as: the use of animals as edibles; vivisection; animal sexual assault; animals (...) used in sport and hunting; animal trafficking; the use of animals by youth gangs, by other groups and in war; species extinction; and the passivity of national and international organisations in combating animal abuse. The Handbook is a unique text: it is essential reading for students, researchers, academics, activists and policy makers involved in understanding and preventing animal abuse. (shrink)

I think there is something to be said in a positive and constructive vein about collective intentionality in non-human animals. Doing so involves probing at the concept of collective intentionality fairly directly (Section 2), considering the various forms that collective intentionality might take (Section 3), showing some sensitivity to the history of appeals to that concept and its close relatives (Section 4), and raising some broader questions about the relationships between sociality, cognition, and institutions by discussing two different (...) possible cases of collective intentionality in non-human animals: that of the social insects (Section 5) and that of highly social mammals, such as canines (Section 6). If the discussion here is on track, then the widely shared perspective on collective intentionality exemplified by the work of Searle and Tomasello needs to be reconsidered. (shrink)

Over the past decade cultural theory has seen a number of 'turns' - the materialist turn, the animal turn, the affective turn - that address the human as an affective, embodied, and ultimately vulnerable animal embedded in dense webs of more-than-human relations, in short as a posthuman phenomenon. Care philosophy shares this focus on embodiment and vulnerability in its insistence on interdependence as the defining condition of human life, making it well positioned for a posthuman (...) turn. To this end, Curious Kin in Fictions of Posthuman Care draws together contemporary narrative fictions that challenge humanist conceptions of care in their imaginative depiction of more-than-human affective bonds, arguing for an expansion care philosophy's central figure: the embodied, embedded, and encumbered 'human'.Fictional narratives of care between humans and robots, bioengineered creatures, clones, nonhuman animals, aliens or inanimate things, highlight the limits of humanist ethical models' capacity to register and accommodate posthuman relational intimacies, while gesturing towards a model of care able to accommodate networked interdependencies that extend beyond the human realm. Texts by Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, Louisa Hall, Eva Hornung, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bhanu Kapil, and Jesmyn Ward, along with films and television programmes like Robot and Frank, Under the Skin, and Real Humans, depict a range of scenarios in which more-than-human care relations not only supersede human-human relationships, but suggest new human/animal/machine ways of being that offer novel insights into the possible presents and futures of posthuman care. Curious Kin in Fictions of Posthuman Care reveals how these fictions do their own theorizing, imagining the politics, ethics and aesthetics of specific, contextualized scenarios of posthuman contact and companionship.Interweaving posthuman theory, care philosophy and contemporary fiction, Curious Kin in Fictions of Posthuman Care offers generative visions of care that make room for the incredible range of affects, energies, behaviours, attachments and dependencies that produce and sustain life in more-than-human worlds. (shrink)

Are there nonhuman animals who behave morally? In this paper I answer this question in the affirmative by applying the framework of care ethics to the animal morality debate. According to care ethics, empathic care is the wellspring of morality in humans. While there have been several suggestive analyses of nonhuman animals as empathic, much of the literature within the animal morality debate has marginalized analyses from the perspective of care ethics. In this paper I examine care (...) ethics to extract its core commitments to what is required for moral care: emotional motivation that enables the intentional meeting of another’s needs, and forward-looking responsibility in particular relationships. What is not required, I argue, are metarepresentational capacities or the ability to scrutinize one’s reasons for action, and thus being retrospectively accountable. This minimal account of moral care is illustrated by moral practices of parental care seen in many nonhuman animal species. In response to the worry that parental care in nonhuman animals lacks all evaluation and is therefore nonmoral I point to cultural differences in human parenting and to normativity in nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book will ask what it is to be human, what to be animal, and what are the natures of the relationships between them. This is accomplished with philosophical and ethical discussions, scientific evidence and dynamic theoretical approaches. Attitudes to Animals will also encourage us to think not only of our relationships to non-human animals, but also of those to other, human, animals. This book provides a foundation that the reader can use to (...) make ethical choices about animals. It will challenge readers to question their current views, attitudes and perspectives on animals, nature and development of the human-animal relationship. Human perspectives on the human-animal relationships reflect what we have learned, together with spoken and unspoken attitudes and assumptions, from our families, societies, media, education and employment. (shrink)

Recently the paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman has proposed what she calls the animal connection as the human trait that connects all other traits. Theologians and biblical scholars have proposed many relational, functional, and ontological interpretations of the image of God in humans and human nature, but have generally not included a connection with animals. Genesis 1–3, however, weaves human and animal creation in a variety of ways, and Adam's naming of other species implies they are understood (...) as family or kin. Thus Genesis 1–3 understands a relationship with other animals as integral to human becoming and uses family or kinship as a root metaphor for human–animal relations. (shrink)

Recently the paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman has proposed what she calls the animal connection as the human trait that connects all other traits. Theologians and biblical scholars have proposed many relational, functional, and ontological interpretations of the image of God in humans and human nature, but have generally not included a connection with animals. Genesis 1–3, however, weaves human and animal creation in a variety of ways, and Adam's naming of other species implies they are understood (...) as family or kin. Thus Genesis 1–3 understands a relationship with other animals as integral to human becoming and uses family or kinship as a root metaphor for human–animal relations. (shrink)

The creation of chimeras by introducing human stem cells into nonhu- man animals has provoked intense concerns. Addressing objections that appeal to human dignity, I focus in this essay on stem cell research intended to generate human neurons in Great Apes and rodents. After considering samples of dignity- based objections from the literature, I examine the underlying assumption that nonhuman animals have lower moral status than personsFwith particular attention to what it means to speak of higher (...) and lower moral statusFbefore evaluating the chimera research in question. I argue that (1) such experiments involving Great Apes should be prohibited out of respect for the research subjects and (2) such experiments involving rodents may or may not be permissible, depending on how we answer unresolved questions regarding rodents’ moral status. In the end, concerns about human dignity prove insignificant. (shrink)