Anna Feuerstein & Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo (red.), Childhood and Peethood in Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Childhood Studies and Animal Studies (original) (raw)

Editorial: Child-Animal Relations and Care as Critique

Journal of Childhood Studies, 2020

Childhood scholars have for some time worked toward the idea that instead of being situated in their own micro worlds, waiting rooms, or margins, children should be viewed and accounted for as full participants of society. This special issue aligns with this aspiration, while broadening the notion of what counts as society. It asks how to live and care in a society that does not consist of adult human individuals only, but instead counts children and other-than-human animals in the realm of the social and the societal. By inviting authors to think about child-animal relations and care, we wish to shed light on the ways in which other animals are relevant for human children’s lives, and vice versa, and to argue for the importance of these relations for society in the conflicting times we live in now.

Childhood Animalness: Relationality, Vulnerabilities, and Conviviality

2018

This paper traces how animals have been and are reduced to mere objects for use in child development, examining historical and contemporary trends in developmental literature. We alternatively present scholarship that delves into children’s and animals’ subjective encounters and intersecting worldhoods as critical of more anthropocentric developmental psychology models. We utilize continuity as a model that emerges from our field work in order to make various suggestions about the ethics that emerge from children’s embodied experiences with animals, including felt senses of vulnerability, death, and precarity. Finally, we finish the chapter by outlining potential pedagogical directions that encourage deeper reflections about the precariousness of childhood lives, lived differently and J. Russell (*) Department of Animal Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA e-mail: russellj@canisius.edu L. Fawcett Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, T...

Animal Studies: Let’s Talk About Animal Welfare and Liberation Issues in Childhood

Society & Animals

This article examined reasons why information pertaining to nonhuman animal welfare and liberation should be introduced during childhood. Studies indicate that animal-welfare activists’ and abolitionists’ efforts to date may be insufficient given the pervasive environmental destruction and ongoing animal suffering. Moreover, research reveals that education related to animal welfare and liberation is systematically excluded from children’s education, and they thus remain unaware of the sources and associated health hazards of meat they consume. Conversely, children’s knowledge about animal welfare increases when exposed to literature on the topic, which enables them to make informed choices regarding meat consumption. This paper draws on animal-welfare and liberation literature to argue that augmenting children’s knowledge about animal welfare and liberation can foster children’s understanding, language, philosophy, and ability to make informed choices about their relationship with a...

Guest Editor's Introduction: Animals in Children's Lives

Society & Animals, 1999

... Guest Editor's Introduction: Animals in Children's Lives James Serpell1 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ... The origins of such fears have been the subject of considerable debate. Some have argued for an innate basis for these emotions (Jersild & Holmes, 1935; Morris, 1967). ...

From Child–Animal Relations to Multispecies Assemblages and Other-Than-Human Childhoods

Barn, 2023

This article discusses how childhood studies could be enriched with a focus on child-animal relations, multispecies assemblages and other-than-human childhoods. First, research on child-animal relations prior to, and at, the animal turn is presented. It is argued that the dominant utilitarian and adult-centered views respond poorly to the significance children themselves see in their relations with other-than-human animals. The article then moves on to the concept of multispecies assemblages. Viewing childhoods as multispecies from the outset allows one to draw attention to the specific and situated relationalities amidst natural, cultural, technological, economic, and political forces. Finally, attention is drawn to otherthan-human childhoods. The differences, hierarchies, connections and unequal possibilities that arise from being born and growing up as a member of a distinct species amidst societal processes are discussed. Additionally, childhood is suggested to be an important concept through which to give detail, specificity, and a critical edge to the work of multispecies research.

Review of Our Children and Other Animals

Between the Species, 2016

Cole and Stewart's 2014 release, Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood, offers an important sociological contribution to liberatory vegan research. The book's primary value is its critical examination of childhood socialization processes that habituate humans to speciesism through the institutions of family, education, and mass media.

Editorial: Children and Companion Animals: Psychosocial, Medical and Neurobiological Implications

Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 2018

Editorial on the Research Topic Children and Companion Animals: Psychosocial, Medical, and Neurobiological Implications This Research Topic presents experiences with companion animals provided to children in varied settings. Methods include monitoring of the ongoing interaction of children with companion animals, or conducting interviews or surveys, as well as experimental interventions where changes occurring with the presence of the animal are assessed. Children in Austria, Germany, Jamaica, Japan, and the United Kingdom, as well as a minority from the United States, are represented in these studies. aNiMals iN EduCatioNal CoNtExts Nakajima contrasts two approaches: incorporating animals into school curricula or employing them in interventions to facilitate specific learning. Animal-rearing is a Japanese educational tradition, specified by the Japanese government in the course of study for formal elementary education. Matsuda (1, 2), a science educator, laid the theory and methods showing the value for children of rearing animals; it thus became a method of teaching. "Education through assisting animals, " embeds animalrearing within formal education as an educational tool. Koda et al. describe how some classrooms integrate rearing goats into instruction at urban schools in Japan. Children share responsibility for feeding, cleaning, and caring for the goats, while working with teachers. Teachers view experience with goats as beneficial to the children. Challenges during holidays and weekends require cooperation among faculty and parents. Some teachers would be cautious about recommending goat-keeping to other schools unless they were very well-prepared. More conventionally for animal-assisted education, Schretzmayer et al. tested an intervention using a dog to facilitate reading performance and physiological relaxation of third graders lacking reading proficiency. Although a calming effect of the dogs might have been expected due to an oxytocin effect (3), the presence of a dog was associated only with short-term improvements in reading performance, and small changes in cortisol and behavior, for these children with low reading skills. PEt aNiMals for ChildrEN Although most exposure of children to pets is at home, exactly how children interact with the pets at home is unknown. Westgarth et al. employed a large database to assess dog-walking by children