Animal studies

Animal Studies is a recently recognized field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross-disciplinary ways. Scholars from fields as diverse as art history, anthropology, film studies, history, sociology, biology, psychology, literary studies, geography, philosophy and feminism or queer theory seek to understand both human-animal relations now and in the past, and to understand animals as beings-in-themselves separate from our knowledge of them. Because the field is still developing, scholars and others have some freedom to define their own criteria and structure for the field.

In part, Animal Studies developed out of the animal rights movement and was grounded in ethical questions of how best to co-exist with other species: whether it could ever be right to eat animals, whether it could ever be right to do scientific tests on animals if animals were not the end beneficiaries of such studies, etc. Works in this vein include the Australian philosopher Peter Singer's seminal work Animal Liberation (book) and John Maxwell Coetzee's "The Lives of Animals" (1999).

Cultural historians took a different approach, seeking to understand how representations of animals function to create our understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. To what extent do we always necessarily anthropomorphize the other when looking at animals? Is it impossible not to bring our own biases and prejudices with us when we "objectively" observe animals? For instance, in Donna Haraway's book, "Primate Visions" in a chapter entitled "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936", she shows how the taxidermist Akeley who created the dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History created the family groupings to appear as the traditional "Nuclear family" with heterosexual parents and 2.5 offspring, despite the fact that he'd seen very different behavior and groupings when observing, for instance, Great Apes in the wild. [ Donna Haraway. [http://www.jstor.org/view/01642472/ap020012/02a00020/0 Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936] JSTOR article.] Contrawise, people often mistakenly identify with animals, thinking that they understand the thought processes of species other than their own. This is the theme of Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man in which bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell believed that he was to some extent part of the bear community and that he understood the mindsets and social hierarchies of the bears he documented, only to be killed by a bear at the end of the film. Given the complexity of human-animal relations, one aspect of animal studies is to emphasize that animals are very like us, and yet not at all like us, in interesting ways. As Claude Lévi-Strauss's famous dictum puts it, "animals are good to think with."

Critical Animal Studies

The emergent nature of animal studies as a field produces the possibility for non-advocacy based research (some which is even tolerant of practices such as vivisection or lifestock farming), as well as for research that either consciously or unconsciously works on behalf of either animal welfare or rights agendas as part of a single-issue ideological approach. These tendencies can be seen in journals such as [http://www.psyeta.org/ Society & Animals] and [http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/CCAB/anthro~1.htm Anthrozoos] , as well as on public listservs for the field such as H-Net's [http://www.h-net.org/~animal/ H-Animal] and [http://www.h-net.org/~nilas/ H-Nilas] (Nature in Legend and Story) lists.

In contrast to these mainstream orientations of animal studies, as well as to conservative tendencies prominent throughout the animal welfare and animal rights movements, the [http://criticalanimalstudies.org Institute for Critical Animal Studies] has sought since 2003 to develop a Critical Animal Studies that:

*1. Pursues interdisciplinary collaborative writing and research in a rich and comprehensive manner that includes perspectives typically ignored by animal studies such as political economy.

*2. Rejects pseudo-objective academic analysis by explicitly clarifying its normative values and political commitments, such that there are no positivist illusions whatsoever that theory is disinterested or writing and research is nonpolitical.

*3. Eschews narrow academic viewpoints and the debilitating theory-for-theory’s sake position in order to link theory to practice, analysis to politics, and the academy to the community.

*4. Advances a holistic understanding of the commonality of oppressions, such that speciesism, sexism, racism, ablism, statism, classism, militarism and other hierarchical ideologies and institutions are viewed as parts of a larger, interlocking, global system of domination.

*5. Rejects apolitical, conservative, and liberal positions in order to advance an anti-capitalist, and, more generally, a radical anti-hierarchical politics, This orientation seeks to dismantle all structures of exploitation, domination, oppression, torture, killing, and power in favor of decentralizing and democratizing society at all levels and on a global basis.

*6. Rejects reformist, single-issue, nation-based, legislative, strictly animal interest politics in favor of alliance politics and solidarity with other struggles against oppression and hierarchy.

*7. Champions a politics of total liberation which grasps the need for, and the inseparability of, human, nonhuman animal, and Earth liberation in one comprehensive, though diverse, struggle; to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr.: a threat to liberation anywhere is a threat to liberation everywhere.

*8. Deconstructs and reconstructs the socially constructed binary oppositions between human and nonhuman animals, a move basic to mainstream animal studies, but also looks to illuminate related dichotomies between culture and nature, civilization and wilderness and other dominator hierarchies to emphasize the historical limits placed upon humanity, nonhuman animals, cultural/political norms, and the liberation of nature as part of a transformative project that seeks to transcend these limits towards greater freedom and ecological harmony.

*9. Openly engages controversial radical politics and militant strategies used in all kinds of social movements, such as those that involve economic sabotage and high-pressure direct action tactics.

*10. Seeks to create openings for critical dialogue on issues relevant to Critical Animal Studies across a wide-range of academic groups; citizens and grassroots activists; the staffs of policy and social service organizations; and people in private, public, and non-profit sectors. Through – and only through -- new paradigms of ecopedagogy, bridge-building with other social movements, and a solidarity-based alliance politics, it is possible to build the new forms of consciousness, knowledge, social institutions that are necessary to dissolve the hierarchical society that have enslaved this planet for the last ten thousand years. [ [http://criticalanimalstudies.org/about.htm "What is Critical Animal Studies?"] , Institute for Critical Animals Studies]

The head of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies is the philosopher Steven Best. The Institute is composed of an international board of scholars and publishes a bi-annual journal and conducts an annual conference at various universities throughout the United States.

References

External links

* [http://modernmask.org/film/Animal_Studies.html Animal Studies and Film: An interview with Matthew Brower, professor of graduate Art History at York University]
* [http://ecoculturalgroup.msu.edu/bibliography.htm Animal Studies Bibliography compiled by Linda Kalof, Amy Fitzgerald, Jennifer Lerner and Jessica Temeles]