Animal Ethics and Human Learning (original) (raw)
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This paper contributes to the debate about the absence of nonhuman animals in environmental and sustainable education (ESE) and the challenge of the anthropocentric characterisation of European education. Relating to the debate about a pluralistic approach in ESE as a ‘one-species only pluralism’, we draw on Val Plumwood’s ecofeministic dialogical interspecies ethics and Rosi Braidotti’s understanding of a posthuman/nomadic subjectivity. By regarding ‘difference’ as a constituting force, we present a ‘critical pluralistic’ approach to human-animal relationships in ESE. Instead of drawing new lines of moral consideration for nonhuman beings, an ethical and political appreciation of what nonhuman others can do in ESE is suggested. Recommendations for educational practice are to recognise nonhuman agency to reveal political and ethical dimensions, recognise the agency of non-living animals and stay in conflicts and ‘study up’ and develop an immanent critique, which could lead to alternative pedagogical approaches to human-animal relationships in different cross-curricula settings.
Re-examining the human-nonhuman animal relationship through humane education
Research Handbook on ChildhoodNature, Springer International Handbooks onf Education, 2018
In the time of the Anthropocene the human species’ destructive effect on the planet and other nonhuman species is evident. The socialisation process of children plays a significant role in the preservation of a speciesist Western society, as the exploitation, captivity and instrumental use of nonhuman animals are normalised through the reproduction of speciesist messages in the educational setting, through children’s media and our language use, which all reinforce the idea of nonhuman animals as the other. Speciesism, the underlying ideology that excludes nonhuman animals from the sphere of moral concern and legal protection, is dependent on its reproduction, just as other dominant ideologies. The exploitation of nonhuman animals and human-nonhuman animal hierarchy is further normalised through environmental education and welfare education and the notion of the humane use of nonhuman animals. Can our treatment of nonhuman animals be characterised as humane? What does it mean to be humane? This article examines how humane education can refute speciesist messages, as it offers children the tools to identify and critically assess interconnected webs of oppression and thus re-examine the human-nonhuman relationship.
LEARNING FROM NONHUMAN ANIMALS: TOWARDS AN ETHICS OF POSTHUMANITIES
ENSEMBLE, 2021
Throughout the debated discourse of humanism, humans were considered as the only species endowed with reason and moral values. The result was an andro/anthropocentric humanism that divided everything into hierarchies and confined everything within boundaries. European model of higher education has undoubtedly been an enforcement of humanist ideas and ideologies which established certain humans as exceptional and superior to other 'non-privileged' humans and nonhuman animals. In this era of posthumanism all the imposed and imbibed boundaries between the human and nonhuman are being questioned, challenged and eliminated to create an open network of cross-species encounters. In this context this article through the theories of Posthuman philosophy and Critical Animal Studies proposes a shift towards posthuman ethics of inclusion and understanding in the field of classical humanities in India. This can be achieved by employing post ontological methods to create and understand nonhuman representations. Theories and studies by posthuman scholars like Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe, Graham Harman form the basis of this paper. This article is an acknowledgement as well as an advocation of the shift happening across disciplines from humanities to post humanities, which however is yet to make a movement in education in India.
Posthuman Pedagogy of the Common Worlds of Children and Animals – From Independence to Relationality
Nauki o Wychowaniu. Studia Interdyscyplinarne
The author’s intent is to describe the concept of pedagogy of the common worlds of children and animals embedded in the framework of posthuman philosophy. In its assumptions, the child’s essence is tightly connected to non-human beings, individuals and forces, existing in the common worlds of life. Children and animals living in those worlds are not beings separated from one another, but relational and causative ones, affecting and influencing each other. The pedagogy of the common worlds of children and animals is broadly understood as an educational practice, which allows children to maintain non-hierarchical relations with animals during interspecies encounters. It offers children an unconventional way of discovering, exploring and acting, because it allows them not to learn “about” the world, but rather to learn together “with” the world. Staying in heterogeneous common worlds and establishing deep relations with them is hence connected with the need to care about the common goo...
Education Sciences , 2019
The so-called "animal turn", having been on the agenda for around 15 years in the humanities and social sciences, is gaining force also in the educational sciences, typically with an orientation toward posthumanist ontologies. One particular space where educational "more-than-human" relations are debated is the field of education for sustainable development (ESD). This paper responds to two recent contributions to this debate, both positioned within ESD frameworks. The purpose of this response is twofold: First, to give a critical account of the knowledge claims of the two articles, their overlaps and divergences, as well as their implications for pedagogical practice and their potential consequences for the position of animals in education and in society at large. The meaning and usefulness of analytic tools such as "critical pluralism" and "immanent critique" in relation to animals in education is discussed, as well as whose realities are represented in ESD, revealing contested spaces of teaching and learning manifested through an "enlightened distance" to anthropocentrism in-between compliance and change. The second purpose is to sketch a foundation of reflective practice for critical animal pedagogies, offering a critical theory-based form of resistance against recent posthumanist configurations of the "animal question" in education and beyond.
Education for Total Liberation: Critical Animal Pedagogy and Teaching against Speciesism
Educational Studies, 2019
Education for Total Liberation: Critical Animal Pedagogy and Teaching against Speciesism is a collection of articles showing how critical animal studies scholars have addressed animal liberation and interconnecting issues of oppression with a diverse range of tactics. The book is a welcome addition to the field of education research, which despite a growing interest in human-animal relations, animal rights, environmental sustainability and social justice, has yet to sufficiently bridge the gap between theory and practice, and has often failed to address speciesism and interconnecting issues of oppression (see e.g. Spannring, 2017; Pedersen, 2010; Martusewicz, Edmundson, & Lupinacci, 2015). This is where critical animal studies (CAS) can offer an "important starting point for organizing around social justice, since it includes speciesism within its intersectional understanding" (p. 5). The diverse collection of articles fall under the praxis of critical animal pedagogies, which aims to demonstrate "what education can be if humans are not the center of focus and understood as superior" (p. 6). Given the time we are living in, transforming education into a space where critical voices are heard and new perspectives are welcome is a necessary feat. The book aims to serve as "a springboard for how to develop further ideas on intersectional organizing or more practically engaged education" (p. 10) to advance liberation, critically address anthropocentrism and attack "the oppression that solidifies itself through a form of liberal humanism" (p. 6). Central to CAS is that theory be tied to action and the premise of the book is to offer examples of CAP in practice. The articles demonstrate how speciesism and animal exploitation are often normalized and overlooked in educational contexts and how the authors have tackled the shortcomings found in their respective educational contexts. The
A posthuman approach to human-animal relationships: advocating critical pluralism
Environmental Education Research
This paper contributes to the debate about the absence of nonhuman animals (The term 'nonhuman animal' is used to emphasise the interconnection with the human being, viewed as a human animal. Using this terminology does not avoid a homogenising, stereotyping and simplifying of a multiplicity of animal (and human) beings. Nonetheless, we think that such a 'simplification' of concepts is inescapable in academic discussions concerning humans and nonhuman animals.) in environmental and sustainable education (ESE) and the challenge of the anthropocentric characterisation of European education.
Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring boundaries in human-animal relationships
International Library of Environmental Agriculture and Food Ethics, 2016
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.