Actions Speak Louder than Words: Close Relationships between Humans and Nonhuman Animals (original) (raw)
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In studying the lives and livelihoods of human beings, the social sciences and humanities oft en fi nd their lines of inquiry tugged in the direction of other, nonhuman beings. When Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963) suggested that "thinking with" animals was relevant and fruitful to the study of humankind, scholars began to follow these leads with academic rigor, enthusiasm, and creativity. Propelled into the new millennium by the passion of the environmental movement, compounded by natural and anthropogenic disaster, and now entrenched in the discourse of the Anthropocene, recent scholarship has simultaneously called into question the validity of human exceptionalism and expanded our social and political worlds to include animals and myriad other nonhuman beings. Th is move is paradoxical: as the signifi cance of human action on this planet has increased, the category of the human is continually challenged and redrawn. While contemporary posthumanist critique rethinks the importance of animals and strives to destabilize long-standing ontological exceptions, it does so just as the eff ects of human presence overwhelmingly single out our species as the dominant agents of planetary change (see Chakrabarty 2009; Steff en, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007).
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Two firsts are to be celebrated. The first is the inaugural volume of this journal, Relations, and the second is The Emotional Lives of Animals, the first conference of its kind in Italy. Together, they signify the continuing emergence of Human-Animal Studies in Italy and across the world. I understand Human-Animal Studies (HAS) to mean the study of our relations with animals and their relations with us. "Our interest lies in the intersections between human lives and human cultures", writes Margo DeMello, "and those of nonhuman animals, whether real or virtual" (DeMello 2010, XI).
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The term 'encounter' is multifaceted. Its primary meaning as the OED describes it is "[a] meeting face to face" that happens mostly "undesignedly or casually" (215). Deriving from the Old French encontre or the late Latin incontrāre, there is however also a confrontational quality inherent in the word. It is also "a meeting (of adversaries or opposing forces) in conflict; hence, a battle, skirmish, duel, etc." (215). The contrary aspects of presence, the accidental and unintentional, then, characterize encounters as well as violence, difference and rejection. Based on the definition of the term and its etymology, many questions and issues arise with regard to human-animal encounters. How do human and non-human animals interact? Where do encounters take place? How are those encounters represented in literature and the arts, and performed in socio-cultural practices? The present volume concentrates on these topics by focusing on the concept of 'encounter'. Issues, problems and questions of contact and interaction between human and non-human animals that are addressed in philosophy, literature, the fine arts and socio-cultural practices are discussed systematically and in a historically comprehensive manner in the contributions of this volume within a cultural studies perspective. The volume argues that the concept of 'encounter' has its place as a distinct and meaningful category next to theories of agency that recently have dominated the field of Human Animal Studies.
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Though they have not tended to be the focus of sociological attention in the past, interactions between humans and nonhuman animals are central to contemporary social life. This discussion presents the problems inherent in and the unique rewards offered by investigations of animal-human relationships. Of particular importance are the issues of whether one can and how one goes about assuming the perspective of alingual and/or nonhuman others. We also examine the inclination to intervene which arises when researchers gain intimate familiarity with animal perspectives in the typically unequal contexts in which they interact with humans. General issues of central sociological and social significance upon which the study of animal-human relationships can potentially shed light are identified.
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In 2005 a small group of academics gathered at the University of Western Australia for a modest yet highly significant interdisciplinary conference focused on scholarship in the emerging field of human-animal studies. A critical mass of academics from the University of Tasmania attended that first conference and pledged to host a second human-animal studies conference two years later. True to their word a second human-animal studies conference was held in Hobart, Australia, in 2007. The organisers called the second conference "Considering Animals" and the book under review here is a compilation of papers presented at that conference. The first striking feature of the book Considering Animals (hardback version), is the artwork on the dust jacket (Figure 1). While some may not pay a book's dust jacket much heed, I view Considering Animals stunning cover-art as quite a coup. In an age of publishing rationalisation and belt-tightening, I imagine that the editors must have fought hard for permission to display a colour image on the book's cover; and for the inclusion of such a large number of pictures throughout the book. If this is the case, then their persistence paid off. Not only is Yvette Watt's cover-art beautiful and thought provoking in and of itself, it also serves to remind readers that this book is dealing with a highly interdisciplinary field of academic inquiry. Human-animal studies is not only about words. It is about images, representation, art and interpretation. One of the most noteworthy features of the biannual Australian Animal Studies Group, and the Minding Animals, conferences is the extent to which visual and other creative artists contribute to the field. With the use of such powerful cover-art the editors give effect to the contribution made by creative arts to the emerging discipline of human-animal studies. The book opens with a forward by well-known ecologist Marc Becoff and an introduction by two of the book's editors: Carol Freeman and Elizabeth Leane. The remainder of the book consists of 14 papers by (often prominent) academics, all of who presented at the 2007 University of Tasmania "Considering Animals" conference.