Animals in Our Midst: An Introduction (original) (raw)
Related papers
Animals in Our Midst: The Challenges of Co-existing with Animals in the Anthropocene
Springer, 2021
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
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.
The animal question: the Anthropocene’s hidden foundational debate
História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, 2021
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.
Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide in the Anthropocene
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".
Human Relationships with Domestic and Other Animals: One Health, One Welfare, One Biology
Animals
Simple Summary：In a situation where human actions are damaging much of the life of the world, it is important to remember that the basic concepts of biology, welfare, and health are the same for humans and all other animals. Human actions have wide consequences and we need to change the way we interact with other living beings. An understanding of the concepts of one health, one welfare, one biology, and their application to daily decisions about production systems, public policies, markets, and consumers could mitigate current negative impacts. In particular, an understanding of human relationships with animals used for food, work, or company helps in dealing with challenges concerning their use and system sustainability, including the animal's welfare. Animal welfare should always be considered in our relationships with animals, not only for direct impacts, e.g. manipulations, but also for indirect effects, e.g., on the environment, disease spread, natural resource availability, culture, and society. Abstract：Excessive human population growth, uncontrolled use of natural resources, including deforestation, mining, wasteful systems, biodiversity reduction by agriculture, and damaging climate change affect the existence of all animals, including humans. This discussion is now urgent and people are rethinking their links with the animals we use for clothing, food, work, companionship, entertainment, and research. The concepts of one health, one welfare, and one biology are discussed as a background to driving global change. Nothing should be exploited without considering the ethics of the action and the consequences. This review concerns domesticated animals, including those used for human consumption of meat, eggs, and milk; horses kept for work; and dogs kept for company. Animal welfare includes health, emotional state, and comfort while moving and resting, and is affected by possibilities to show behavior and relationships with others of the same species or with humans. We show some examples of the relations between humans and domesticated animals in the environmental context, including zoonotic diseases, and consider the consequences and the new paradigms resulting from current awareness.
Species at War? The Animal and the Anthropocene
Paragraph
Environmental politics has become inextricably entwined with planetary deep time. This article calls for a reconceptualization of the relation between humans and nonhuman nature. It rejects the ontological singularity of the human, either as a biological species (Homo) or as a planetary super-agent (Anthropos) and argues for a perspective centred on companionship and shared vulnerability. Animal philosophy serves here to counter a growing tendency to generalize and address the human species at large, in the singular. The cultural force of the animal, it is suggested, stems from a productive tension between the abstract singular (‘the Animal’) and the unique specificity of each particular nonhuman other. In the context of Anthropocene Studies, references to Anthropos follow a similar logic. The planetary future of humans cannot be deduced from any specific geopolitical context or expressed through universalizing categories. It must be understood, against the vertiginous backdrop of g...
Animals are Key to Human Development
www.ifaw.org, 2020
In response to the social and economic challenges humans are facing, the United Nations (UN) developed a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to help countries set priorities and measurable targets to drive progress toward key human development and environmental areas with the goal of eradicating challenges to sustainable development by 2030. The SDGs target multiple issues including poverty, lack of access to clean drinking water, gender inequality, and limited women’s rights, but one of the most pressing issues is conserving our remaining biodiversity. As many as one million species are in danger of going extinct with current trends. The record levels of income inequality, lack of fresh drinking water, and global pandemics such as the COVID-19 outbreak have been linked to the degradation of earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity. It has become clear that protecting wildlife, ensuring animal welfare, and conserving habitats are crucial to achieving the SDGs and improving human well-being. Although the SDGs certainly provide a thorough breakdown of most social issues plaguing the earth, they do so through an economic and human development focus. However, as this report conveys, the conservation of wildlife and welfare of domestic and wild animals are key to achieving the SDGs. Through key examples, this report outlines how animals affect different aspects of sustainable development and provides recommendations for policy makers to incorporate animals into country- and local-level implementation of the SDGs.
In: Justice and Food Security in a Changing Climate 64-72 (Hanna Schübel & Ivo Wallimann-Helmer eds., Wageningen Academic Publishers, The Netherlands) (peer-reviewed) (2021)
The climate crisis is often presented as a crisis for humans. It is, however, also a crisis for other animals with whom we share this planet. This raises the question of what we owe to animals in this crisis, which is not merely an ethical one. Indeed our relationships with other animals are distinctively political, raising new demands for policy making and change in political institutions and practices. In this process, it is key to recognize nonhuman animal agency, in order to do justice to them and to be able to overcome the human exceptionalism that led to the ecological crises we are facing.