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Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde Jan 2018

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Notes on Contributors


Animal Victims Of Domestic And Family Violence: Raising Youth Awareness, Lyla Coorey, Carl Coorey-Ewings Jan 2018

Animal Victims Of Domestic And Family Violence: Raising Youth Awareness, Lyla Coorey, Carl Coorey-Ewings

Animal Studies Journal

In the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in connections between animal abuse and intra-familial violence. Research from the United States (US) has promoted awareness around this connection, and the implications, including for household companion and other animals, when identifying, assessing risk and responding to domestic and family violence (DFV). Compared with the US, United Kingdom (UK), New Zealand (NZ) and Canada, Australia’s inclusion of animals in its DFV services’ responses is minimal. Furthermore, a preventive perspective to minimise adult abuse of both humans and their animals, that highlights animal abuse in domestic violence school awareness programs, …


Alexis Wright’S Literary Testimony To Intersecting Traumas, Meera Atkinson Jan 2018

Alexis Wright’S Literary Testimony To Intersecting Traumas, Meera Atkinson

Animal Studies Journal

This article proffers a reading of Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013), hailed as ‘the first truly planetary novel’ (Gleeson-White), arguing that Wright’s poetics of transgenerational trauma witnesses to intersected trans-species injustices and traumas. Exploring the way Wright testifies to entanglements of human-nonhuman trauma, I challenge entrenched humanist and speciesist preoccupations in trauma theory to address trauma transmissions with particular focus on trauma as a social and political force generated by patriarchal imperialism. In doing so, I show how Wright’s fiction serves as a form of advocacy for nonhuman sentient beings.


Peta, Patriarchy And Intersectionality, Nick P. Pendergrast Jan 2018

Peta, Patriarchy And Intersectionality, Nick P. Pendergrast

Animal Studies Journal

This article explores one of the key issues of debate within the contemporary animal advocacy movement: whether the movement should focus only on animal-related issues or take an intersectional approach, which includes engagement with other social justice issues. This intersectional perspective, highlighting similarities between different forms of oppression and their interlinked nature, is advocated for in Critical Animal Studies and ecofeminist literature. Scholars in these related areas have extended the concept to include nonhuman animals. This theory has an academic background but can also be useful to guide activism, including animal advocacy. The question of whether animal advocates adopt an …


The Ethics And Politics Of Drones In Animal Activism, Clare Mccausland, Susan Pyke, Siobhan O'Sullivan Jan 2018

The Ethics And Politics Of Drones In Animal Activism, Clare Mccausland, Susan Pyke, Siobhan O'Sullivan

Animal Studies Journal

This paper considers the use of drones in animal advocacy and aims to provide a moral and political justification for their use. We focus on animal protection groups who fly drones over farms to take pictures and videos of the way animals are used in agriculture and who then share these images publicly with a view to changing either consumer behaviour, the laws which regulate animal agriculture, or both. We identify unique moral issues associated with drone use and provide an argument to support their use in animal protection, in the ways spearheaded by Will Potter and other animal advocates …


Bodily Encounter, Bearing Witness And The Engaged Activism Of The Global Save Movement, Alex Lockwood Jan 2018

Bodily Encounter, Bearing Witness And The Engaged Activism Of The Global Save Movement, Alex Lockwood

Animal Studies Journal

The global Save Movement, alongside other animal rights organisations and practices, has since 2010 sought to bring the experiences of nonhuman farmed animals into the public domain from privatized, usually hidden spaces of industrial procedure and slaughter. One key mechanism used is to conduct vigils held outside slaughterhouses, where activists gather to bear witness to the passing of nonhuman animals in trucks, and to raise awareness of the suffering of animals to passers-by. Central to the practice are the roles played by emotional engagement and bodily encounter with the nonhuman animals; the movement is founded on a self-styled ‘love-based’ compassion …


Why Is It Important To Use Flagship Species In Community Education? The Koala As A Case Study, Rolf Schlagloth, Flavia Santamaria, Barry Golding, Hedley Thomson Jan 2018

Why Is It Important To Use Flagship Species In Community Education? The Koala As A Case Study, Rolf Schlagloth, Flavia Santamaria, Barry Golding, Hedley Thomson

Animal Studies Journal

Our paper investigates the conservation and planning implications of the use of an individual flagship species. The koala was chosen, as an example, in a community education intervention in a regional Australian city. Educating the community to accept changes in planning laws aimed at the protection of a single species such as the koala has never been an easy task. We examine the approach used to educate the Ballarat community in doing just that. We outline the power of this iconic Australian mammal, the koala, in promoting conservation and changes in planning regulations. We highlight the flow-on conservation and educational …


How To Help When It Hurts? Think Systemic, Corey L. Wrenn Ph.D. Jan 2018

How To Help When It Hurts? Think Systemic, Corey L. Wrenn Ph.D.

Animal Studies Journal

To resolve a moral dilemma created by the rescue of carnivorous species from exploitative situations who must rely on the flesh of other vulnerable species to survive, Cheryl Abbate applies the guardianship principle in proposing hunting as a case-by-case means of reducing harm to the rescued animal as well as to those animals who must die to supply food. This article counters that Abbate’s guardianship principle is insufficiently applied given its objectification of deer communities. Tom Regan, alternatively, encouraged guardians to think beyond individual dilemmas and adopt a measure of systemic reconstruction, that being the abolition of speciesist institutions (The …


Should We Eat Our Research Subjects? Advocacy And Animal Studies, Yvette M. Watt, Siobhan O'Sullivan, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey Jan 2018

Should We Eat Our Research Subjects? Advocacy And Animal Studies, Yvette M. Watt, Siobhan O'Sullivan, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Animal Studies Journal

This paper examines data from a survey of Animal Studies scholars undertaken by the authors in 2015. While the survey was broad ranging, this paper focuses on three interconnected elements; the respondents’ opinions on what role they think the field should play in regard to animal advocacy, their personal commitment to animal advocacy, and how their attitudes toward advocacy in the field differ depending on their dietary habits. While the vast majority of respondents believe that the field should demonstrate a commitment to animal wellbeing, our findings suggest that respondents’ level of commitment to animal advocacy is informed by whether …


The Good Life, The Good Death: Companion Animals And Euthanasia, Eva Meijer Jan 2018

The Good Life, The Good Death: Companion Animals And Euthanasia, Eva Meijer

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, I investigate the relevance of a relational approach to nonhuman animal euthanasia, focusing on companion animals. Recent scholarship in animal ethics, political philosophy and different fields of animal studies argues for viewing other animals as subjects, instead of as objects of study. Seeing other animals as subjects with their own views on life, with whom humans have different relations and with whom communication is possible, has ethical, practical, and epistemological implications for thinking about nonhuman animal euthanasia. In what follows I aim to shed light on some of these implications, focusing on euthanasia in the case of …


What If I Want To Put A Cow Down With A Gun? Sociological Critical Media Analysis Of Non-Companion Animals’ Representation In Rural Australian News, Angela T. Ragusa Jan 2018

What If I Want To Put A Cow Down With A Gun? Sociological Critical Media Analysis Of Non-Companion Animals’ Representation In Rural Australian News, Angela T. Ragusa

Animal Studies Journal

Although sociology of animals is a contemporary specialisation examining human-animal interactions, little research explores rural animals. Content analysis of non-companion animals’ news visibility in a rural Australian newspaper in 2016-2017 found 311 articles represented 3 categories of news-reporting. Findings evidence human lexicon, not animal news-reporting, greatly reducing animals’ substantive media presence and socially-legitimated cultural attitudes and journalism practices normalised humans’ power to treat rural animals in ways benefiting humans. Animals were depicted as dangerous, harming humans and each other, requiring killing for environmental management (legitimated by culling and food production claims), as commodities for human entertainment, products, and/or cultural rituals. …


Animals And Humans On Stage: Live Performances At Sea World On The Gold Coast, Rebecca Scollen Jan 2018

Animals And Humans On Stage: Live Performances At Sea World On The Gold Coast, Rebecca Scollen

Animal Studies Journal

The purpose of this study is to investigate animal and human relations as constructed, and as demonstrated, through the live performances at Sea World on the Gold Coast, Australia. Particular attention is placed upon the meanings generated by the intersection of the starring animals and humans in the two narrative-driven productions. The study employs participant observation at three performances of Fish Detectives and Affinity. Fish Detectives highlights the dangers of overfishing the Earth’s oceans in a play where the sea lions and pelican involved in the show perform alongside human actors. The animals do not perform their species but instead …


Decolonising The Waters: Interspecies Encounters Between Sharks And Humans, Zan Hammerton, Akkadia Ford Dr Jan 2018

Decolonising The Waters: Interspecies Encounters Between Sharks And Humans, Zan Hammerton, Akkadia Ford Dr

Animal Studies Journal

Often portrayed as ‘man–eaters’, sharks are one of the most maligned apex species on earth. Media representation has fuelled public imagination, perpetuating fear and negative stereotypes of sharks and hysteria around human-shark interactions; whilst government initiatives such as beach netting and drum-lines target sharks for elimination. This interdisciplinary article, written from the points of view of environmental science and cultural studies, proposes humans as simply another species when entering the ocean, presenting a decolonising shift in paradigm that supports an interspecies ethics of engagement in understanding shark-human interactions. The shifting environmental, political, social and cultural realities of shark-human interactions are …


Animal Utopia: Liberal, Communitarian, Libertarian Or…? [Review Essay] Wayne Gabardi. The Next Social Contract: Animals, The Anthropocene, And Biopolitics, Dinesh Wadiwel Jan 2018

Animal Utopia: Liberal, Communitarian, Libertarian Or…? [Review Essay] Wayne Gabardi. The Next Social Contract: Animals, The Anthropocene, And Biopolitics, Dinesh Wadiwel

Animal Studies Journal

It would be difficult to be optimistic in the face of the political challenges that confront us. Globally, we have seen stark intensifications of economic inequalities and social stratifications, coupled with the rise of new nationalist and proto-fascist political movements. The environmental challenges are daunting: we now face a future where anthropogenic climate change will inescapably and deeply impact the earth’s systems. As I write, armed conflict continues to shape human affairs, generating continued misery and displacement; and instabilities have posed the possibility of new global conflicts, including a renewed threat of nuclear war. For non-human animals globally, the picture …


[Review] A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015 Gonzalo Villanueva, A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015, Christine Townend Jan 2018

[Review] A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015 Gonzalo Villanueva, A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015, Christine Townend

Animal Studies Journal

This is a book that every student of politics would enjoy reading, and indeed should read, together with every person who wishes to become an activist (not necessarily an animal activist). This is because the book discusses, in a very interesting and exacting analysis, different strategies used to achieve a goal; in this case, the liberation of animals from the bonds of torture, deprivation and cruelty. Gonzalo Villanueva clearly has compassion for animals, but he is careful to keep an academic distance in this thoroughly researched, scholarly book, which is nevertheless easy to read. After each chapter of the book …


[Review] Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene Barbara Creed, Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene, Siobhan O'Sullivan Jan 2018

[Review] Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene Barbara Creed, Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene, Siobhan O'Sullivan

Animal Studies Journal

Barbara Creed is well known for her contribution to the field of Film Studies, as well as feminist thought more generally. Books such as The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993, Routledge) and Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny (2005, University of Melbourne Press) established Creed as a leading international thinker. They also attest to Creed’s willingness to push boundaries and to take on challenging and controversial topics. In recent years Creed has turned her attention to the lives of nonhuman animals, and the multitude of ways in which humans engage with, oppress, and may learn from their nonhuman …


Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (2): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde Jan 2018

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (2): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Notes on Contributors


Provocations From The Field: Female Reproductive Exploitation Comes Home, Carol J. Adams Jan 2018

Provocations From The Field: Female Reproductive Exploitation Comes Home, Carol J. Adams

Animal Studies Journal

Sexual violation and reproductive exploitation happen to vulnerable bodies. After studying systems of female reproductive servitude and visiting ‘parlors’, exhibitions, and auctions where females are sold into captivity, Dr. Kathryn Gillespie of the University of Washington found relentless ‘sexually violent commodification of the female body’. Meet Carly (not her real name). Carly was torn from her mother shortly after birth, and while her umbilical cord hung from her, was auctioned off. She lived a life of physical and social isolation until her captors felt she was sexually mature. She was immobilized by chains or with a specially designed containment device, …


The Dairy Issue: ‘Practicing The Art Of War’, Melissa Boyde Jan 2018

The Dairy Issue: ‘Practicing The Art Of War’, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

: This paper offers several stories in response to philosopher Vinciane Despret and sociologist Jocelyne Porcher’s considerations on ‘dairy’ cows and work. These include stories from the cows in the herd that I have lived alongside for 30 years, a kind of auto-ethnographic approach; and stories and a few facts about the dairy industry in Australia. These accounts are informed by another story, told by the feminist philosopher and writer Hélène Cixous. Three works by artist Yvette Watt tell more stories about the lives and deaths of cows. One of my underlying interests is in the possibilities of narrative to …


Bloodlines – Mammalian Motherhood, Biotechnologies And Other Entanglements, Lynn Mowson Jan 2018

Bloodlines – Mammalian Motherhood, Biotechnologies And Other Entanglements, Lynn Mowson

Animal Studies Journal

This paper outlines my current sculptural research project bloodlines focusing on the ways in which dairy cows are entangled with multiple biotechnologies and the wider environment. bloodlines brings extant works such as fleshlumps, boobscape and slink, together with new works, to represent the dairy industry, the environmental impacts of animal agriculture and the biotech innovations of in-vitro meat and bio-fabricated leather. These works are linked together by a web of interconnected fluids: excreta, milk and blood. In this new work, I hope to make the links between the dairy industry and these extended concerns both visceral and visible.


Demystifying Dairy, Deidre Wicks Jan 2018

Demystifying Dairy, Deidre Wicks

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, I examine the dairy cow, her body and disposition, with a specific focus on the way we humans have designed her for our purposes, through the use of selective breeding and reproductive technology. I will also examine the consequences of this design for the health and welfare of the dairy cow and her calf. I will conduct this examination through the concept of ‘naturalistic mystification’, which I will use to challenge the dominant, hegemonic message, which presents the cow as natural, and milk as a nonharm product. Rather, I will demonstrate that the cow and her milk …


‘Machine Milking Is More Manly Than Hand Milking’: Multispecies Agencies And Gendered Practices In Finnish Cattle Tending From The 1950s To The 1970s, Taija Kaarlenkaski Jan 2018

‘Machine Milking Is More Manly Than Hand Milking’: Multispecies Agencies And Gendered Practices In Finnish Cattle Tending From The 1950s To The 1970s, Taija Kaarlenkaski

Animal Studies Journal

During the last hundred years, mechanization has significantly changed the working circumstances of both humans and animals in cattle husbandry. In Finland, cattle tending was regarded as women’s work up until the mid-20th century. According to a common view, the proliferation of milking machines, starting from the 1950s, caused men to start working in the cowsheds. In this paper, I will examine how the agencies of cattle tenders, cows, and milking machines were constructed during the mechanization process from the 1950s to the 1970s. Special attention will be paid to gendered representations, and changes in the gendered division of work. …


‘White Power Milk’: Milk, Dietary Racism, And The ‘Alt-Right’, Vasile Stănescu Jan 2018

‘White Power Milk’: Milk, Dietary Racism, And The ‘Alt-Right’, Vasile Stănescu

Animal Studies Journal

This article analyzes why milk has been chosen as a symbol of racial purity by the ‘alt-right’. Specifically, this article argues the alt-right's current use of claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity can be connected to similar arguments originally made during the19th century against colonialized populations and immigration groups. In the 19th century, colonizing populations classified colonized populations as ‘effeminate corn and rice eaters’ because of their supposed lack of consumption of meat and dairy. This article argues that a similar practice continues today. It also argues that there is a relationship between the dietary racism ideas popularized …


From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné Jan 2018

From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné

Animal Studies Journal

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a …


[Review] Devries, Scott M. Creature Discomfort: Fauna-Criticism, Ethics And The Representation Of Animals In Spanish American Fiction And Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Critical Animal Studies, 4. 328pp., Wendy Woodward Jan 2018

[Review] Devries, Scott M. Creature Discomfort: Fauna-Criticism, Ethics And The Representation Of Animals In Spanish American Fiction And Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Critical Animal Studies, 4. 328pp., Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

Scott M. DeVries’ exhaustive overview of Spanish American Literature serves as a substantial introduction to Spanish American literature in relation to Critical Animal Studies and what DeVries terms Traditional Animal Studies. Motivated by the lack of Spanish American literature featuring in animal studies, his survey convinces of the richness of this literature. The neologism ‘fauna-criticism’ is underpinned by TAS and CAS for their ‘ethical advocacy in defense of nonhumans’ and for their theorising about animals which generates a ‘proper understanding’ of animals (25). The term is intended to avoid the ‘slippages of meaning’ (32) and the ‘baggage’ that has accrued …


An Auto-Ethnography Of Anti-Dairy Vegan Activism In New Zealand, Lynley K. Tulloch Jan 2018

An Auto-Ethnography Of Anti-Dairy Vegan Activism In New Zealand, Lynley K. Tulloch

Animal Studies Journal

This paper examines my experiences of anti-dairy activism in New Zealand. Using autoethnographic methodology, I discuss the emotional work and core strategies and tactics of Starfish Bobby Calf Project (hereafter called Starfish). Starfish is a grassroots vegan activist group that I founded in 2013. Its genesis began in my childhood, when I became aware of the plight of bobby calves while living in rural New Zealand. It combines both autobiography and ethnography to analyse the emotional process of becoming an activist and campaigning against dairying. In doing so I uncover the narratives that underpin the dairy industry and the larger …


[Review] Malcolm Caulfield. Animals In Australia: Use And Abuse. Vivid, 2018. 336pp., Elizabeth Ellis Jan 2018

[Review] Malcolm Caulfield. Animals In Australia: Use And Abuse. Vivid, 2018. 336pp., Elizabeth Ellis

Animal Studies Journal

Reflecting on the last decade, Malcolm Caulfield argues that revelations of extreme cruelty in the live export and greyhound racing industries have ‘altered forever the animal welfare landscape in Australia’ (viii); at the same time, substantial progress in animal welfare has been lacking. Critical to his analysis is another recent development: the backlash by industry interests, supported by their political and media chums, to the articulated concerns of unprecedented numbers of Australians. This disjunction, between public disquiet about animal welfare and the absence of a ‘meaningful political response’ (35), underpins Caulfield’s important account of the use and abuse of animals …


[Review] Anna Barcz. Animal Narratives And Culture: Vulnerable Realism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Xii,185pp., Sally Borrell Jan 2018

[Review] Anna Barcz. Animal Narratives And Culture: Vulnerable Realism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Xii,185pp., Sally Borrell

Animal Studies Journal

Anna Barcz’s Animal Narratives and Culture: Vulnerable Realism sets out to answer two related questions: what do animals add when they are realistically included in cultural texts, and what is the role of fiction in particular? As part of the examination of these questions, the book identifies what Barcz terms ‘zoonarratives’ and develops the concept of zoocriticism itself. Barcz explains that a twentieth-century acceptance of what is likely (and not only what is definite) within understandings of realism has allowed increased scope to explore animal perspectives in fiction. The book’s focus on animal vulnerability in particular in one sense seems …


[Review] Strange Mirrors: Review Of Tessa Laird, Bat, Reaktion, 2018. 224pp., Jacqueline Dalziell Jan 2018

[Review] Strange Mirrors: Review Of Tessa Laird, Bat, Reaktion, 2018. 224pp., Jacqueline Dalziell

Animal Studies Journal

In the latest text in Reaktion Books’ Animal Series, art critic and theorist Tessa Laird’s Bat provides a cultural history of the species, including a sociological critique of the place of bats in human history. Seeking to correct what she perceives to be inaccurate, yet unrelentingly persistent representations of these animals, Laird covers everything from bat biology, to the bat trope in popular culture, to echolocation and the figure of the bat in European art and literature. Whilst Laird does discuss the perhaps more obvious references, such as Batman and Dracula at length, she also delves into our collective unconscious …


[Review] Creatural Fictions David Herman, Editor. Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships In Twentieth- And Twenty-First-Century Literature, Wendy Woodward Jan 2018

[Review] Creatural Fictions David Herman, Editor. Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships In Twentieth- And Twenty-First-Century Literature, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

David Herman has put together a landmark collection of essays in the Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature series. Drawing from the Animal Studies theories of Donna Haraway, John Berger, Jacques Derrida and Cary Wolfe, for instance, the collection has a lot to offer students new to Literary Animal Studies. Rigorous essays which further debates mean that the collection also has appeal for established scholars in the field. Creatural Fictions takes its title, Herman explains, partly from the creaturely theories Anat Pick turns to in Simone Weil, but the term ‘creatural’ is preferred in order to emphasise continuities between human …