Related Papers
Springer
Animals in Our Midst: The Challenges of Co-existing with Animals in the Anthropocene
2021 •
jozef keulartz
This Open Access book brings together authoritative voices in animal and environmental ethics, who address the many different facets of changing human-animal relationships in the Anthropocene. As we are living in complex times, the issue of how to establish meaningful relationships with other animals under Anthropocene conditions needs to be approached from a multitude of angles. This book offers the reader insight into the different discussions that exist around the topics of how we should understand animal agency, how we could take animal agency seriously in farms, urban areas and the wild, and what technologies are appropriate and morally desirable to use regarding animals. This book is of interest to both animal studies scholars and environmental ethics scholars, as well as to practitioners working with animals, such as wildlife managers, zookeepers, and conservation biologists.
Changing Relationships With Non-Human Animals in the Anthropocene -An introduction
2016 •
jozef keulartz
This is the introductory chapter of the volume Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans; Blurring Boundaries in Human-animal Relationships, Springer, October 2016, edited by Bernice Bovenkerk and Jozef Keulartz. In this introduction we address the following topics. The first section deals with the Anthropocene - What is it? When did it start? How did it develop? The second section shows how the concept works as a major bone of contention that divides the academic community into those who consider the Anthropocene a planetary catastrophe and those who embrace the human domination over the Earth as a great achievement. The third section considers the biodiversity conservation options in the age of humans. The fourth and final section provides an overview of this volume.
Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide in the Anthropocene
Manuel Arias Maldonado
This is the title of my chapter in the recently published "Political Animals and Animal Politics", edited by Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg (Palgrave 2014). I upload here both the Table of contents and the Introduction. A summary of my chapter within the latter says the following: "Manuel Arias-Maldonado opens by arguing that the translation of the call in animal ethics for a ‘more equal’ treatment of animals intoenvironmental and animal politics must start with the recognition of ourselves as political animals, and that recognition must take account of the specific kind of animal that we humans are: the exceptional animal, defined by a relatively open nature. Arias-Maldonado suggests a novel way to foster a more fraternal relationship between human beings and animals. He argues that an approach based on similarities between individual animals and humans has a limited political potential. Transcending the traditional ethical debate, he explores an alternative way of organising our social – rather than individual – relationship to animals, defined by the refinement rather than abolition of human domination. Departing from the notion that the human being is the exceptional animal, Arias-Maldonado argues that domination can and should evolve into sympathy towards animals, and he makes the case for a viable form of sympathy: one that employs technology in order to balance animal needs and human wishes".
História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos
The animal question: the Anthropocene’s hidden foundational debate
2021 •
Abel Alves
As globalization accelerated after 1492, often in the service of European imperial expansion, human destruction of the habitat in which animals could express their natural behaviors also increased. Within this context, the question arises: just how much are we like other animals, and if they are like us, how much do we owe them? From the 1500s to the 1800s, travelers, imperialists, the colonized, and intellectuals tried to answer this question and produced three positions: animals as mere exploitable devices; confusion about animals’ status and what we owe them, and concern about the suffering of nonhuman animals, their freedom to express their behaviors, and their very existence.
Animals in the Anthropocene. Human–animal relations in a changing semiosphere | University of Stavanger (Norway)
Lucia Zaietta
17–19 Settembre 2015 University of Stavanger (Norway) Animals in the Anthropocene. Human–animal relations in a changing semiosphere Zaietta L. (2015), "Ineinander", the lateral kinship between human beings and animals in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology
"Radical Hope: Rethinking Multispecies Work in the Anthropocene," a commentary on Jocelyne Porcher, Living With Animals: A Utopia for the 21st Century.
Brett Mizelle
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy
Indigenizing the Anthropocene? Specifying and situating multi-species encounters
2020 •
Matthew Adams
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to articulate a meaningful response to recent calls to “indigenize” and “decolonize” the Anthropocene in the social sciences and humanities; and in doing so to challenge and extend dominant conceptualisations of the Anthropocene offered to date within a posthuman and more-than-human intellectual context. Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a radical material and relational ontology, purposefully drawing on an indigenous knowledge framework, as it is specifically exemplified in Maori approaches to anthropogenic impacts on species and multi-species entanglements. The paper takes as its focus particular species of whales, trees and humans and their entanglements. It also draws on, critically engages with, and partially integrates posthuman and more-than-human theory addressing the Anthropocene. Findings – The findings of this study are that we will benefit from approaching the Anthropocene from situated and specific ontologies rooted in place, which can frame multi-species encounters in novel and productive ways. Research limitations/implications – The paper calls for a more expansive and critical version of social science in which the relations between human and more-than-human becomes much more of a central concern; but in doing so it must recognize the importance of multiple histories, knowledge systems and narratives, the marginalization of many of which can be seen as a symptom of ecological crisis. The paper also proposes adopting Zoe Todd’s suggested tools to further indigenize the Anthropocene – though there remains much more scope to do so both theoretically and methodologically. Practical implications – The paper argues that Anthropocene narratives must incorporate deeper colonial histories and their legacies; that related research must pay greater attention to reciprocity and relatedness, as advocated by posthuman scholarship in developing methodologies and research agendas; and that nonhuman life should remain firmly in focus to avoid reproducing human exceptionalism. Social implications – In societies where populations are coming to terms in different ways with living through an era of environmental breakdown, it is vital to seek out forms of knowledge and progressive collaboration that resonate with place and with which progressive science and humanities research can learn and collaborate; to highlight narratives which “give life and dimension to the strategies – oppositional, affirmative, and yes, often desperate and fractured – that emerge from those who bear the brunt of the planet’s ecological crises” (Nixon, 2011, p. 23). Originality/value – The paper is original in approaching the specific and situated application of indigenous ontologies in some of their grounded everyday social complexity, with the potential value of opening up the Anthropocene imaginary to a more radical and ethical relational ontology.
Srinivasan K., (2015) The welfare episteme: Street dog biopolitics in the Anthropocene, in Animals in the Anthropocene: Critical Perspectives on Non-human Futures (eds. Boyd M., Chrulew M., Degeling C., Mrva-Montoya A., Probyn-Rapsey F., Savvides N., Wadiwel D.), Sydney University Press, 201-220
Krithika Srinivasan
Exploring the animal turn : Human-animal relations in science, society and culture. Editors Erika Andersson Cederholm, Amelie Björk, Kristina Jennbert, Ann-Sofie Lönngren
2014 •
Kristina Jennbert, Susan McHugh
Animals´ omnipresence in human society makes them both close to and yet remarkably distant from humans. Human and animal lives have always been entangled, but the way we see and practice the relationships between humans and animals – as close, intertwined, or clearly separate – varies from time to time and between cultures, societies, and even situations. By putting these complex relationships in focus, this anthology investigates the ways in which human society deals with its co-existence with animals. The volume was produced within the frame of the interdisciplinary “Animal Turn”-research group which during eight months in 2013–2014 was hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies, Lund university, Sweden. Along with invited scholars and artists, members of this group contribute with different perspectives on the complexities and critical issues evoked when the human-animal relationship is in focus. The anthology covers a wide range of topics: From discussions on new disciplinary paths and theoretical perspectives, empirical case-studies, and artistic work, towards more explicitly critical approaches to issues of animal welfare. Phenomena such as vegansexuality, anthropomorphism, wildlife crimes, and the death of honey-bees are being discussed. How we gain knowledge of other species and creatures is one important issue in focus. What does, for example, the notion of wonderment play in this production of knowledge? How were species classified in pre-Christian Europe? How is the relationship between domesticated and farmed animals and humans practiced and understood? How is it portrayed in literature, or in contemporary social media? Many animals are key actors in these discussions, such as dogs, cows, bees, horses, pigeons, the brown bear, just to mention a few, as well as some creatures more difficult to classify as either humans or animals. All of these play a part in the questions that is at the core of the investigations carried out in this volume: How to produce knowledge that creates possibilities for an ethically and environmentally sustainable future.
International Library of Environmental Agriculture and Food Ethics
Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring boundaries in human-animal relationships
2016 •
jozef keulartz
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 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.
