Elizabeth Oriel - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Elizabeth Oriel
Jacaranda Trees, Place, and Affect: An Analysis of Australian Newspaper Articles, 1900-2023
Plant Perspectives, 2024
The jacaranda tree, native to South and Central America and the West Indies, yet planted ornament... more The jacaranda tree, native to South and Central America and the West Indies, yet planted ornamentally on all continents (except Antarctica), inspires colonial imaginaries and outpourings of poetic verse, exerting influence as a placemaker. One of the almost 50 jacaranda species, Jacaranda mimosifolia, commonly called ‘blue jacaranda’, is native to the Andes mountains of Bolivia and Argentina, though planted in Australia starting in 1865. With purple-ish mauve, trumpet-shaped blossoms that can last weeks to two months in springtime, jacaranda trees enact forms of vegetal (tree) influence on humans while also being objectified in colonial efforts to beautify and civilise; these complex relations exist in fields of place-making and unmaking processes. This paper tracks the discourses related to this jacaranda-blooming cyclical event in Australian newspapers across 123 years (1900–2023), exploring complex multi-directional relationships that build place across vegetal affective fields and remake place in settler colonial processes. Contributing to environmental humanities’ discussions of place, power, affect and vegetal influence in Critical Plant Studies, this paper uncovers how placemaking is a multispecies and affective process, and how the vegetal is a powerful force that is also objectified in settler discourses and processes of unmaking. Journalism has prominent placemaking roles as well, trans-forming spaces discursively into places of meaning with social and cultural constructions;placemaking occurs both in human-plant relations and through the journalistic medium.
Interspecies ecocultural identities in human–elephant cohabitation
Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Sep 30, 2014
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how "being human" is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview-furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric paradigm, yet alternate eco-centric paradigms offer an inclusive model that may help dismantle the artificial wall between humans and nature. In this paper, I explore these ecocentric paradigms and the implications of an associated worldview for human perceptions, self-awareness, communication, narrative, and research.
Conversing with Dolphins: The Holy Grail of Interspecies Communication?
Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric par...
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how "being human" is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview-furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropoce...
Routledge handbook of ecocultural identity
Social & Cultural Geography, 2021
Ecocultural Identity is a book for our times. To enable identity with an ‘ecocultural’ framing is... more Ecocultural Identity is a book for our times. To enable identity with an ‘ecocultural’ framing is potent as we grapple with environmental problem-solving on a global scale.One of the first matters ...
Conversing with Dolphins: The Holy Grail of Interspecies Communication?
Interspecies ecocultural identities in human–elephant cohabitation
Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
Well-being as an effective assessment concept and tool for evaluation of harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) care practices in captivity and conservation in the wild
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric para...
Conference on Compassionate Conservation, 2015
In certain coastal areas of the world, humans and non-human coastal systems and species including... more In certain coastal areas of the world, humans and non-human coastal systems and species including marine mammals, live within a general trend of thriving and even at times, mutually collaborative cohabitation. In these areas, awareness increases among fishermen, ferry and tour boat operators, leisure boaters, farmers and other human residents as to impacts of their activities on coastal habitats, with some pro-actively taking measures to protect marine life. In some regions, orcas and bottlenose dolphins regularly approach, initiate sociable contact, and engage in complex forms of interspecies interaction. Exploring such examples reveals the roots of a continuum of positive cohabitation, ranging from neutral, passive co-existence, to active sometimes mutual collaboration. Cohabitation research combines ecological, biological, and behavioral data as evidence of coastal system thriving, and interviews with human residents to understand relevant perceptions, attitudes, influences, and experiences. In this initial phase of research, we present preliminary comparisons between a relatively thriving area in the Hebrides, Scotland with the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, an area of marine ecological collapse. Inspired by the late Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, who developed eight design principles for common pool resources through numerous cross-comparisons, we plan to uncover practical commonalities of positive cohabitation, allowing for variability in how each area thrives. These results can be applied, taught, promoted, and reinforced, as Ostrom’s have, through education, conservation, and government efforts towards protecting coastal communities. Ostrom’s Law states that “a resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory”; cohabitation research learns from real relationships, which can guide the rich theoretical work on social & ecological systems, re-thinking the human/nature divide. Conservation efforts, justifiably, tend to focus on negative cohabitation, and yet positive cohabitation as a model to study and replicate is a neglected research area. Models of positive cohabitation inform conservation and wellbeing studies for humans and other species, as the ties that bind involve a unique dependence on mutual thriving.
What Three Social Science Theories Applied to Animals and Human-Animal Relations Reveal About Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) Conservation.
International Congress of Conservation Biology, 2012
Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three const... more Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three constructs in the social sciences have recently been applied to this arena, making them relevant to consider in wildlife management practices. Research on animal language, cognition and abilities has facilitated applications of these theories or constructs. Social exchange theory, the capabilities approach, and post-traumatic stress disorder all arose originally from human-centered studies, but now apply to animals and human-animal relationships. Each of these theories has important insights, which may inform gray wolf (Canis lupus) conservation, especially when marred by human-wolf conflict. The first from Anthropology explains the reciprocality in human-animal relationships, the second from Philosophy and Economics recommends understanding wellbeing as the ability to express one’s capacities (both for humans and wolves), and the third from Psychology speaks to the injuries that result from violence or from witnessing injury or death. We will examine a particular case study of wolf conservation in the Yellowstone National Park area and draw both critique and strategies from these theories.
Biocommunication, 2016
The scientist's quest for communication with dolphins can be as fraught with mystery and mishaps ... more The scientist's quest for communication with dolphins can be as fraught with mystery and mishaps as an archetypal search for the Holy Grail. At every turn, scientists encounter millennial-old, romantized notions about iconic dolphins teaming with logistical challenges and plodding methodologies struggling to keep pace with, and identify, even a singular, solid thread running through an intricate web of data. When it comes to dolphins, scientific paradigms merge with policy, politics, emotion, and ethics in stimulating, yet sometimes turbid, waters. Our search for clarity through meaningful analysis to adequately (let alone elegantly) explain our findings about dolphins can be both an enviable quest and an
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
One could map the diversity of human-elephant relationships on the landscape and, correspondingly... more One could map the diversity of human-elephant relationships on the landscape and, correspondingly, map the continuum of these interspecies dynamics on both human and elephant psyches. The mind or psyche is an ecological system, as landscapes are, and these systems reflect and mirror one another. Accordingly, landscape designs correspond to and materialize subjective positions and perceptions. Across Asia and Africa, human-elephant conflict occurs within a complex nexus of ecological, subjective and social relations that inform and emerge from one another. This chapter explores this nexus, with attention to the interplay of landscape, land-based practices, and ecocultural identities for both humans and elephants in India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya. Highly disrupted and fragmented landscapes, altered by human activity, become especially challenging systems for human and elephant coexistence. Historically, human and elephant lifeways and cultures formed interweaving and often mirroring patterns of mobility and shared permeable spaces. Working with extant literature, we explore how these patterns reflect pluralistic or dialogic relations and hegemonic or monologic influences. Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin argues the world and existence are dialogic, with different contesting perspectives coexisting, though this reality can be overlain with monologue which subsumes difference into one voice, one perspective. In certain areas within elephant ranges, traditional dialogic patterns have been losing out to a complex mix of monologic anthropocentric land designs, often precipitated by colonial rule. We argue that historic trans-species negotiations and relations generate and are generated by selves that are hybrid forms, acknowledging interdependencies and mingling amid shared more-than-exclusive spaces, mirrored in permeable concepts of self. We begin tracing the historic route from cohabitation to conflict, and we discuss how conflict reflects monologic relations to landscapes and selves. We then explore how dialogic identities touch the social, subjective and physical spaces for humans and elephants, and examine movement and shared permeable spaces and the loss of these in relation to human-elephant coexistence.
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric paradigm, yet alternate eco-centric paradigms offer an inclusive model that may help dismantle the artificial wall between humans and nature. In this paper, I explore these eco-centric paradigms and the implications of an associated worldview for human perceptions, self-awareness, communication, narrative, and research.
Books by Elizabeth Oriel
Affective Ecologies and Multispecies Social Contracts Amidst Humans, Elephants, and a Landscape in Sri Lanka
Upcoming Book: Composing Worlds with Elephants: Interdisciplinary Dialogues
Dialogic Elephant and Human Relations in Sri Lanka as Social Practices of Cohabitation
Intimate Relations: Communicating (in) the Anthropocene, 2021
Conference Presentations by Elizabeth Oriel
Paper Presented at the International Congress for Conservation Biology, Baltimore, MD, 2013
Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three const... more Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three constructs in the social sciences have recently been applied to this arena, making them relevant to consider in wildlife management practices. Research on animal language, cognition, and abilities has facilitated applications of these theories or constructs. Social exchange theory, the capabilities approach, and post-traumatic stress disorder all arose originally from human-centered studies but now apply to animals and human-animal relationships. Each of these theories has important insights, which may inform gray wolf (Canis lupus) conservation, especially when marred by human-wolf conflict. The first from Anthropology explains the reciprocality in human-animal relationships, the second from Philosophy and Economics recommends understanding wellbeing as the ability to express one’s capacities (both for humans and wolves), and the third from Psychology speaks to the injuries that result from violence or from witnessing injury or death. We will examine a particular case study of wolf conservation in the Yellowstone National Park area and draw both critique and strategies from these theories.
Jacaranda Trees, Place, and Affect: An Analysis of Australian Newspaper Articles, 1900-2023
Plant Perspectives, 2024
The jacaranda tree, native to South and Central America and the West Indies, yet planted ornament... more The jacaranda tree, native to South and Central America and the West Indies, yet planted ornamentally on all continents (except Antarctica), inspires colonial imaginaries and outpourings of poetic verse, exerting influence as a placemaker. One of the almost 50 jacaranda species, Jacaranda mimosifolia, commonly called ‘blue jacaranda’, is native to the Andes mountains of Bolivia and Argentina, though planted in Australia starting in 1865. With purple-ish mauve, trumpet-shaped blossoms that can last weeks to two months in springtime, jacaranda trees enact forms of vegetal (tree) influence on humans while also being objectified in colonial efforts to beautify and civilise; these complex relations exist in fields of place-making and unmaking processes. This paper tracks the discourses related to this jacaranda-blooming cyclical event in Australian newspapers across 123 years (1900–2023), exploring complex multi-directional relationships that build place across vegetal affective fields and remake place in settler colonial processes. Contributing to environmental humanities’ discussions of place, power, affect and vegetal influence in Critical Plant Studies, this paper uncovers how placemaking is a multispecies and affective process, and how the vegetal is a powerful force that is also objectified in settler discourses and processes of unmaking. Journalism has prominent placemaking roles as well, trans-forming spaces discursively into places of meaning with social and cultural constructions;placemaking occurs both in human-plant relations and through the journalistic medium.
Interspecies ecocultural identities in human–elephant cohabitation
Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Sep 30, 2014
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how "being human" is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview-furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric paradigm, yet alternate eco-centric paradigms offer an inclusive model that may help dismantle the artificial wall between humans and nature. In this paper, I explore these ecocentric paradigms and the implications of an associated worldview for human perceptions, self-awareness, communication, narrative, and research.
Conversing with Dolphins: The Holy Grail of Interspecies Communication?
Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric par...
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how "being human" is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview-furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropoce...
Routledge handbook of ecocultural identity
Social & Cultural Geography, 2021
Ecocultural Identity is a book for our times. To enable identity with an ‘ecocultural’ framing is... more Ecocultural Identity is a book for our times. To enable identity with an ‘ecocultural’ framing is potent as we grapple with environmental problem-solving on a global scale.One of the first matters ...
Conversing with Dolphins: The Holy Grail of Interspecies Communication?
Interspecies ecocultural identities in human–elephant cohabitation
Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
Well-being as an effective assessment concept and tool for evaluation of harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) care practices in captivity and conservation in the wild
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric para...
Conference on Compassionate Conservation, 2015
In certain coastal areas of the world, humans and non-human coastal systems and species including... more In certain coastal areas of the world, humans and non-human coastal systems and species including marine mammals, live within a general trend of thriving and even at times, mutually collaborative cohabitation. In these areas, awareness increases among fishermen, ferry and tour boat operators, leisure boaters, farmers and other human residents as to impacts of their activities on coastal habitats, with some pro-actively taking measures to protect marine life. In some regions, orcas and bottlenose dolphins regularly approach, initiate sociable contact, and engage in complex forms of interspecies interaction. Exploring such examples reveals the roots of a continuum of positive cohabitation, ranging from neutral, passive co-existence, to active sometimes mutual collaboration. Cohabitation research combines ecological, biological, and behavioral data as evidence of coastal system thriving, and interviews with human residents to understand relevant perceptions, attitudes, influences, and experiences. In this initial phase of research, we present preliminary comparisons between a relatively thriving area in the Hebrides, Scotland with the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, an area of marine ecological collapse. Inspired by the late Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, who developed eight design principles for common pool resources through numerous cross-comparisons, we plan to uncover practical commonalities of positive cohabitation, allowing for variability in how each area thrives. These results can be applied, taught, promoted, and reinforced, as Ostrom’s have, through education, conservation, and government efforts towards protecting coastal communities. Ostrom’s Law states that “a resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory”; cohabitation research learns from real relationships, which can guide the rich theoretical work on social & ecological systems, re-thinking the human/nature divide. Conservation efforts, justifiably, tend to focus on negative cohabitation, and yet positive cohabitation as a model to study and replicate is a neglected research area. Models of positive cohabitation inform conservation and wellbeing studies for humans and other species, as the ties that bind involve a unique dependence on mutual thriving.
What Three Social Science Theories Applied to Animals and Human-Animal Relations Reveal About Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) Conservation.
International Congress of Conservation Biology, 2012
Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three const... more Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three constructs in the social sciences have recently been applied to this arena, making them relevant to consider in wildlife management practices. Research on animal language, cognition and abilities has facilitated applications of these theories or constructs. Social exchange theory, the capabilities approach, and post-traumatic stress disorder all arose originally from human-centered studies, but now apply to animals and human-animal relationships. Each of these theories has important insights, which may inform gray wolf (Canis lupus) conservation, especially when marred by human-wolf conflict. The first from Anthropology explains the reciprocality in human-animal relationships, the second from Philosophy and Economics recommends understanding wellbeing as the ability to express one’s capacities (both for humans and wolves), and the third from Psychology speaks to the injuries that result from violence or from witnessing injury or death. We will examine a particular case study of wolf conservation in the Yellowstone National Park area and draw both critique and strategies from these theories.
Biocommunication, 2016
The scientist's quest for communication with dolphins can be as fraught with mystery and mishaps ... more The scientist's quest for communication with dolphins can be as fraught with mystery and mishaps as an archetypal search for the Holy Grail. At every turn, scientists encounter millennial-old, romantized notions about iconic dolphins teaming with logistical challenges and plodding methodologies struggling to keep pace with, and identify, even a singular, solid thread running through an intricate web of data. When it comes to dolphins, scientific paradigms merge with policy, politics, emotion, and ethics in stimulating, yet sometimes turbid, waters. Our search for clarity through meaningful analysis to adequately (let alone elegantly) explain our findings about dolphins can be both an enviable quest and an
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020
One could map the diversity of human-elephant relationships on the landscape and, correspondingly... more One could map the diversity of human-elephant relationships on the landscape and, correspondingly, map the continuum of these interspecies dynamics on both human and elephant psyches. The mind or psyche is an ecological system, as landscapes are, and these systems reflect and mirror one another. Accordingly, landscape designs correspond to and materialize subjective positions and perceptions. Across Asia and Africa, human-elephant conflict occurs within a complex nexus of ecological, subjective and social relations that inform and emerge from one another. This chapter explores this nexus, with attention to the interplay of landscape, land-based practices, and ecocultural identities for both humans and elephants in India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya. Highly disrupted and fragmented landscapes, altered by human activity, become especially challenging systems for human and elephant coexistence. Historically, human and elephant lifeways and cultures formed interweaving and often mirroring patterns of mobility and shared permeable spaces. Working with extant literature, we explore how these patterns reflect pluralistic or dialogic relations and hegemonic or monologic influences. Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin argues the world and existence are dialogic, with different contesting perspectives coexisting, though this reality can be overlain with monologue which subsumes difference into one voice, one perspective. In certain areas within elephant ranges, traditional dialogic patterns have been losing out to a complex mix of monologic anthropocentric land designs, often precipitated by colonial rule. We argue that historic trans-species negotiations and relations generate and are generated by selves that are hybrid forms, acknowledging interdependencies and mingling amid shared more-than-exclusive spaces, mirrored in permeable concepts of self. We begin tracing the historic route from cohabitation to conflict, and we discuss how conflict reflects monologic relations to landscapes and selves. We then explore how dialogic identities touch the social, subjective and physical spaces for humans and elephants, and examine movement and shared permeable spaces and the loss of these in relation to human-elephant coexistence.
Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending t... more Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric paradigm, yet alternate eco-centric paradigms offer an inclusive model that may help dismantle the artificial wall between humans and nature. In this paper, I explore these eco-centric paradigms and the implications of an associated worldview for human perceptions, self-awareness, communication, narrative, and research.
Affective Ecologies and Multispecies Social Contracts Amidst Humans, Elephants, and a Landscape in Sri Lanka
Upcoming Book: Composing Worlds with Elephants: Interdisciplinary Dialogues
Dialogic Elephant and Human Relations in Sri Lanka as Social Practices of Cohabitation
Intimate Relations: Communicating (in) the Anthropocene, 2021
Paper Presented at the International Congress for Conservation Biology, Baltimore, MD, 2013
Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three const... more Wildlife management falls into the rapidly advancing field of human-animal relations. Three constructs in the social sciences have recently been applied to this arena, making them relevant to consider in wildlife management practices. Research on animal language, cognition, and abilities has facilitated applications of these theories or constructs. Social exchange theory, the capabilities approach, and post-traumatic stress disorder all arose originally from human-centered studies but now apply to animals and human-animal relationships. Each of these theories has important insights, which may inform gray wolf (Canis lupus) conservation, especially when marred by human-wolf conflict. The first from Anthropology explains the reciprocality in human-animal relationships, the second from Philosophy and Economics recommends understanding wellbeing as the ability to express one’s capacities (both for humans and wolves), and the third from Psychology speaks to the injuries that result from violence or from witnessing injury or death. We will examine a particular case study of wolf conservation in the Yellowstone National Park area and draw both critique and strategies from these theories.
Poster presented at the International Congress for Conservation Biology, Edmonton, Alberta , 2010
Historically, conservation focuses on the scale of populations and species. However, there has be... more Historically, conservation focuses on the scale of populations and species. However, there has been a growing awareness of the social and ecological key roles that individuals play. Further, concerns for animal welfare bring ethical attention. It is therefore no longer ethically nor practically cogent to ignore factors such as individual well-being in conservation design and monitoring. Drawing from a literature review and interviews with seal researchers, rehabilitation care-givers, and a veterinarian, we introduce and discuss well-being as a core concept for the conservation of harbor seals. We use a working definition of well-being as "integrity of form, function, the ability to strive and utilize one's abilities" as a backdrop to this synthesis of the natural behavioral repertoire and characteristics of harbor seals. This definition can aid in decisions that concern coastal and oceanic environmental policy, laws that govern how humans treat marine mammals in captivity, rehabilitation, and in the wild, and in any actions that impact harbor seal individuals and colonies.