Animal studies

This article is about the academic discipline of Animal Studies. For scientific studies using animals as test subjects, see Animal testing.

Animal studiesis a relatively new academic field that examines the complex and multidimensional relationships between nonhuman and human animals. It includes scholars from sociology, biology, veterinary medicine, health science, social work, art history, anthropology, film studies, history, environmental studies, psychology, literary studies, geography, political science, religious studies, philosophy, women's studies, gender studies, and ethnic studies. The field remains largely undefined and does not have any predominant or unifying approaches to study.

Example Areas of Study

• The social construction of animals and what it means to be animal
• The zoological gaze
• The human-animal bond
• Parallels between human-animal interactions and human-technology interactions
• The symbolism of animals in literature and art
• The history of animal domestication
• The intersections of speciesism, racism, and sexism
• The place of animals in human-occupied spaces
• The religious significance of animals throughout human history
• Exploring the cross-cultural ethical treatment of animals

Example papers from Society & Animals include:

"Placing the Wild in the City:'Thinking with' Melbourne’s Bats" (Thomson 2007)

"More Than a Furry Companion: The Ripple Effect of Companion Animals on Neighborhood Interactions and Sense of Community" (Wood et al. 2007)

"Engaging the Animal in the Moving Image" (Porter 2006)

"Hunting and Illegal Violence Against Humans and Other Animals: Exploring the Relationship" (Flynn 2006)

"Between Ideals, Realities, and Popular Perceptions: An Analysis of the Multifaceted Nature of London Zoo" (Ito 2006)

Related Authors

• Kenneth Shapiro
• Arnold Arluke
• Jennifer Wolch
• Donna Haraway
• Steven Baker
• Tom Beauchamp
• Lynda Birke
• Stephen R. L. Clark
• Jonathan Burt
• Marion Copeland
• Joan Dunayer
• Jody Emel
• Clifton P. Flynn
• Phillip Armstrong

Scholarly and Academic Journals

• Society & Animals
• Anthrozoös
• Humanimalia
• Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science
• Journal of Animal Law & Ethics
• Journal for Critical Animal Studies

Criticism

The emergent nature of animal studies as a field produces the possibility for non-advocacy based research (some which is even tolerant of practices such as vivisection or lifestock farming), as well as for research that either consciously or unconsciously works on behalf of either animal welfare or rights agendas as part of a single-issue ideological approach. These tendencies can be seen in journals such as Society & Animals and Anthrozoos, as well as on public listservs for the field such as H-Net's H-Animal and H-Nilas (Nature in Legend and Story) lists.

In contrast to these mainstream orientations of animal studies, as well as to conservative tendencies prominent throughout the animal welfare and animal rights movements, the Institute for Critical Animal Studies has sought since 2003 to develop a Critical Animal Studies that:

• 1. Pursues interdisciplinary collaborative writing and research in a rich and comprehensive manner that includes perspectives typically ignored by animal studies such as political economy.

• 2. Rejects pseudo-objective academic analysis by explicitly clarifying its normative values and political commitments, such that there are no positivist illusions whatsoever that theory is disinterested or writing and research is nonpolitical.

• 3. Eschews narrow academic viewpoints and the debilitating theory-for-theory’s sake position in order to link theory to practice, analysis to politics, and the academy to the community.

• 4. Advances a holistic understanding of the commonality of oppressions, such that speciesism, sexism, racism, ablism, statism, classism, militarism and other hierarchical ideologies and institutions are viewed as parts of a larger, interlocking, global system of domination.

• 5. Rejects apolitical, conservative, and liberal positions in order to advance an anti-capitalist, and, more generally, a radical anti-hierarchical politics, This orientation seeks to dismantle all structures of exploitation, domination, oppression, torture, killing, and power in favor of decentralizing and democratizing society at all levels and on a global basis.

• 6. Rejects reformist, single-issue, nation-based, legislative, strictly animal interest politics in favor of alliance politics and solidarity with other struggles against oppression and hierarchy.

• 7. Champions a politics of total liberation which grasps the need for, and the inseparability of, human, nonhuman animal, and Earth liberation in one comprehensive, though diverse, struggle; to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr.: a threat to liberation anywhere is a threat to liberation everywhere.

• 8. Deconstructs and reconstructs the socially constructed binary oppositions between human and nonhuman animals, a move basic to mainstream animal studies, but also looks to illuminate related dichotomies between culture and nature, civilization and wilderness and other dominator hierarchies to emphasize the historical limits placed upon humanity, nonhuman animals, cultural/political norms, and the liberation of nature as part of a transformative project that seeks to transcend these limits towards greater freedom and ecological harmony.

• 9. Openly engages controversial radical politics and militant strategies used in all kinds of social movements, such as those that involve economic sabotage and high-pressure direct action tactics.

• 10. Seeks to create openings for critical dialogue on issues relevant to Critical Animal Studies across a wide-range of academic groups; citizens and grassroots activists; the staffs of policy and social service organizations; and people in private, public, and non-profit sectors. Through – and only through -- new paradigms of ecopedagogy, bridge-building with other social movements, and a solidarity-based alliance politics, it is possible to build the new forms of consciousness, knowledge, social institutions that are necessary to dissolve the hierarchical society that have enslaved this planet for the last ten thousand years.

The Institute is composed of an international board of scholars and publishes a bi-annual journal and conducts an annual conference at various universities throughout the United States.

See Also

• Anthrozoology
• Critical Animal Studies

External links

• Animals & Society Institute
• Animal Studies and Film: An interview with Matthew Brower, professor of graduate Art History at York University
• Animal Studies Bibliography compiled by Linda Kalof, Amy Fitzgerald, Jennifer Lerner and Jessica Temeles