The Making of the Brave Sheep or … the Laboratory as the Unlikely Space of Attunement to Animal Emotions (original) (raw)
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Unlikely Space of Attunement to Animal Emotions
2021
Cohen (2003) argued that animals, humans, and objects must be appraised together as they form various, temporary clusters of active beings. In this article, drawing on material semiotics and actor-network theory insights, I look at one such temporary cluster of animal scientists and sheep brought together in a specific experiment and a set of animal science practices dedicated to exploring sheep emotions. This experiment was carried out at an animal science farm and laboratory of the National Institute of Agricultural Research in Clermont Ferrand, France, as part of a project on farm animals’ emotions (EmoFarm, 2010–2015). Here, I argue, the laboratory can be seen as an unlikely space of attunement to farm animals’ emotions, and the sheep body, to borrow from Latour, is what leaves a dynamic trajectory by which she learns to register and become sensitive to what the world is made of (Latour 2004, 205). By looking at this temporary cluster of active beings and what they produce, I en...
Original Artic le THE BECOMINGS OF SUBJECTIVITY IN ANIMAL WORLDS
2016
When philosophers deal with the issue of the difference between human and animal beings, there is always a double ‘‘we’ ’ that imposes itself: ‘‘we’ ’ know that ‘‘we’ ’ are different. In order to resist these ‘‘we’s’ ’ the author has explored certain situations in which human and animals work together, and more extensively the everyday practices of cow and pig breeders. Interviewing the breeders, however, highlights an important issue: might the question of ‘‘the’ ’ difference, as philosophers have outlined it, be of interest to those who work with animals? Letting them construct ‘‘their’ ’ questions, we learn that these practices are best described in terms of achievement. Therefore, the questions that breeders think should be addressed are not the differences between human and non-human beings but rather the differences between situations, which offer both humans and animals different opportunities to accomplish subjectivities.
The Becomings of Subjectivity in Animal Worlds
Subjectivity, 2008
When philosophers deal with the issue of the difference between human and animal beings, there is always a double ''we'' that imposes itself: ''we'' know that ''we'' are different. In order to resist these ''we's'' the author has explored certain situations in which human and animals work together, and more extensively the everyday practices of cow and pig breeders. Interviewing the breeders, however, highlights an important issue: might the question of ''the'' difference, as philosophers have outlined it, be of interest to those who work with animals? Letting them construct ''their'' questions, we learn that these practices are best described in terms of achievement. Therefore, the questions that breeders think should be addressed are not the differences between human and non-human beings but rather the differences between situations, which offer both humans and animals different opportunities to accomplish subjectivities.
developed gradually from the Paleolithic era at least 50,000 years ago, when our ancestors and their dogs followed and even lived alongside herds of horses, aurochs, sheep, and reindeer during their seasonal migrations. Gradually this developed into young animals after weaning, and then having shaped their understanding and determined the meanings of complex and subtle behaviours. The result is a semiotic dance of cooperation, coercion, nurturing, and killing. Humans have selectively bred dogs to aid them in the tasks of moving sheep from pasture to pasture, to barns, and into pens for medicating, shearing, hoof trimming, castrating, and killing for food. Following the work of Vicki Hearne and Donna Haraway on dog training and cross-species communication, and the gestural linguistic theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this paper will analyse the cooperation between human handler and herding dog that enables the precise control of sheep.
Introduction: The semiotics of animal representations
the rest of the living, reflection on animal representations is, in the context of human understanding, ultimately self-reflection. With contributions from seven countries on three continents, we believe that this collection of essays comprises an eloquent and reasonably representative portrayal of current and modern analysis of animal representations. The chapters are elaborated by scholars brought together by the first international conference ever devoted explicitly to zoosemiotics, Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations, arranged in Tartu, Estonia, April 4-8, 2011. Methodologies applied include philosophical, ecocritical, autobiographical, postcolonial, historical, and phenomenological research. All these approaches are tied together by a common understanding of semiotics as an analytical tool enabling us to conceptualise the meaning of animals, as well as the meaning in animals and in animal lives. Some subjects of inquiry recur in different chapters. The protagonists and antagonists treatedbesides humansinclude insects and birds, sheep and dogs, fish and marmotsjust a small selection of our fellow species, for whom our mutual understanding may often prove to be a matter of life and death. With the following chapters we hope to demonstrate that the explanatory power of zoosemiotics, combined with the array of the aforementioned approaches in the study of animal representations, may offer some new and exciting perspectives in our still long way to mutual understanding with animals. While applying a range of different theories and methodologies, this book is grounded in a rich semiotic approach to the study of animal representations. The semiotic toolbox provides scholars from various backgrounds with means to analyse phenomena that can be approached from both sides of the traditional nature/culture dividenot least due to the emerging academic fields of biosemiotics and ecosemiotics. In these, plus zoo-semioticsoriginally framed as the semiotics of animal communication 1the study constituted by semiotics of animal representations has a firm scientific outlook (if still in development) at its base. To put it simply, this outlook is essentially equivalent with the idea that animals and other biological organisms, and ecosystems, can usefully be studied from the perspective of communication, signi-fication, and representationin short, from the perspective of meaning generation.
Emotions in farm animals: a new approach to animal welfare in applied ethology
Behavioural processes
One of the major topics of applied ethology is the welfare of animals reared by humans. Welfare can be defined as a state of harmony between an individual and its environment. Any marked deviation from this state, if perceived by the individual, results in a welfare deficit due to negative emotional experiences. In humans, verbal language helps to assess emotional experiences. In animals, only behavioural and physiological measurements help to detect emotions. However, how to interpret these responses in terms of emotional experiences remains an open question. The information on the cognitive abilities of farm animals, which are available but scattered, could help the understanding of their emotions. We propose a behavioural approach based on cognitive psychology: emotions can be investigated in farm animals in terms of the individual's appraisal of the situation. This evaluative process depends on: (a) the intrinsic characteristics of the eliciting event (suddenness, novelty, pleasantness); (b) the degree of conflict of that event with the individual's needs or expectations; and (c) the individual's coping possibilities offered by the environment. The result of such an evaluation determines the negative versus positive emotions. We propose an analysis of the emotional repertoire of farm animals in terms of the relationship between the evaluative process of the event on the one hand and the behavioural and physiological responses on the other hand. #
The event Animal Mind (Mente Animale) organized by SIUA across Italy in 2013 registered a great success of audience. SIUA, the School of Human-Animal Interaction founded and directed by Roberto Marchesini -the well-known cognitive ethologist who is also considered worldwide a leading figure within the field of human-animal interaction -planned in fact several conferences open to everyone who may be interested or intrigued by nonhuman animals lives. The major Italian cities touched by the event throughout the entire year were Turin, Milan, Rome, Verona, Trieste and Bologna. The events hosted scholars, animal rights activists and stakeholders who are in different ways involved in the animal issue in order to spread largely a new way and culture to think about nonhuman animal worlds.