Animal studies
Encyclopedia
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
, biology
, film studies
, geography
, history
, psychology
, literary studies, museology
, philosophy
, and sociology
; and from various theoretical perspectives, including: feminism
, marxist theory, and 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 liberation movement
and was grounded in ethical
questions about co-existence with other species: whether it is moral to eat animals, to do scientific research on animals for humans benefit, and so on. Works in this vein include the Australian philosopher Peter Singer
's seminal work, Animal Liberation
, and J. M. Coetzee's novel, The Lives of Animals.
Cultural historians take a different approach, studying how representations of animals create understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. To what extent do we anthropomorphize
animals? How can humans avoid bias in observing animals? For instance, Donna Haraway
's book, Primate Visions, examines how diorama
s created for the American Museum of Natural History
showed family groupings that conformed to the traditional human nuclear family
, which misrepresented the animals' observed behavior in the wild. Conversely, people often mistakenly identify with animals, believing that they understand the thought processes of other species. This is the theme of Werner Herzog
's documentary film
Grizzly Man
, in which bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell
believed that he was part of the bear community and 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."
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 Institute for Critical Animal Studies has sought since 2003 to develop a Critical Animal Studies that:
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.
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, film studies
Film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, literary studies, museology
Museology
Museology is the diachronic study of museums and how they have established and developed in their role as an educational mechanism under social and political pressures.-Overview:...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
; and from various theoretical perspectives, including: feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, marxist theory, and queer theory
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
, 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 liberation movement
Animal liberation movement
The animal-liberation movement, sometimes called the animal-rights movement, animal personhood, or animal-advocacy movement, is a social movement which seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and...
and was grounded in ethical
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
questions about co-existence with other species: whether it is moral to eat animals, to do scientific research on animals for humans benefit, and so on. Works in this vein include the Australian philosopher Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
's seminal work, Animal Liberation
Animal Liberation (book)
Animal Liberation is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, published in 1975.The book is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas...
, and J. M. Coetzee's novel, The Lives of Animals.
Cultural historians take a different approach, studying how representations of animals create understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. To what extent do we anthropomorphize
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
animals? How can humans avoid bias in observing animals? For instance, Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
's book, Primate Visions, examines how diorama
Diorama
The word diorama can either refer to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum...
s created for the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
showed family groupings that conformed to the traditional human nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
, which misrepresented the animals' observed behavior in the wild. Conversely, people often mistakenly identify with animals, believing that they understand the thought processes of other species. This is the theme of Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
's documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
Grizzly Man
Grizzly Man
Grizzly Man is a 2005 American documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. It chronicles the life and death of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell. The film consists of Treadwell's own footage of his interactions with grizzly bears before he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by a bear...
, in which bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell
Timothy Treadwell
Timothy Treadwell was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, amateur naturalist, eco-warrior and documentary film maker. He lived among the coastal grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska, USA, for approximately 13 summers...
believed that he was part of the bear community and 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
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
's famous dictum puts it, "animals are good to think."
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 livestock 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 Society & Animals and Anthrozoos, as well as on public listservs for the field such as H-Net's H-Animal and 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 Institute for Critical Animal Studies has sought since 2003 to develop a Critical Animal Studies that:
- Pursues interdisciplinary collaborative writing and research in a rich and comprehensive manner that includes perspectives typically ignored by animal studies such as political economy.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.