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Animal Studies Journal 2016 5 (1): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Notes On Contributors And Editorial, Melissa J. Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Cover page, table of contents, contributor biographies and editorial for Animal Studies Journal Vol. 5 No.1, 2016.

Toothsome Termites And Grilled Grasshoppers: A Cultural History Of Invertebrate Gastronomy, Deirdre P. Coleman

Animal Studies Journal

This article examines the recent turn to entomophagy (insect eating) as a new source of nutrition in a world confronted by increasing population, degraded soils, and food insecurity. Although many regard entomophagy with disgust, there is a case to be made that many insects are much more nutritious, as well as greener and cleaner¹, than many of the foods we regularly eat without thinking. Also, there is nothing new about insect eating or the belief in entomophagy as a sustainable and sensible practice. There is a long cultural history in countries such as Africa and Australia, for instance.

Mimicry And Mimesis: Matrix Insect, Madeleine Kelly

Animal Studies Journal

Paintings and insects might seem like odd companions. In this paper I describe how a series of paintings I made depicting insects creates associations between mimesis and mimicry in order to flag a sort of protective self-referentiality – one where painting resists its proverbial ‘end’ and insects are presented as vital new orders. Drawing upon art historical references, such as Surrealism and the modernist grid, I argue that playing on these references and the compositional effects of camouflage enlivens our regard for the sensuous worlds of both insects and painting. I conclude by exploring how paintings of insects are powerful …

Humans, Insects And Their Interaction: A Multi-Faceted Analysis, Raynald H. Lemelin, Rick W. Harper, Jason Dampier, Robert Bowles, Debbie Balika

Animal Studies Journal

By administering Personal Meaning of Insects Maps (PMIM) to participants from eastern Canada and northeastern United States, we examine how people’s perceptions of insects are often determined by childhood encounters, corporeal cues, and influenced by environmental preference during recreational activities, often resulting in inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and bias. While the purpose of this study was to acquire a greater understanding of these entanglements through visual maps, the goal of this paper is to disentangle these morasses by highlighting the various positive, negative, dialectic, and ambivalent aspects of how insects are perceived.

Through The Eyes Of A Bee: Seeing The World As A Whole, Adrian G. Dyer, Scarlett R. Howard, Jair E. Garcia

Animal Studies Journal

Honeybees are an important model species for understanding animal vision as free-flying individuals can be easily trained by researchers to collect nutrition from novel visual stimuli and thus learn visual tasks. A leading question in animal vision is whether it is possible to perceive all information within a scene, or if only elemental cues are perceived driven by the visual system and supporting neural mechanisms. In human vision we often process the global content of a scene, and prefer such information to local elemental features. Here we discuss recent evidence from studies on honeybees which demonstrate a preference for global …

A Sustainable Campus: The Sydney Declaration On Interspecies Sustainability, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, Sue Donaldson, George Ioannides, Tess Lea, Kate Marsh, Astrida Neimanis, Annie Potts, Nik Taylor, Richard Twine, Dinesh Wadiwel, Stuart White

Animal Studies Journal

Under the remit of an expanded definition of sustainability – one that acknowledges animal agriculture as a key carbon intensive industry, and one that includes interspecies ethics as an integral part of social justice – institutions such as Universities can and should play a role in supporting a wider agenda for sustainable food practices on campus. By drawing out clear connections between sustainability objectives on campus and the shift away from animal based products, the objective of this article is to advocate for a more consistent understanding and implementation of sustainability measures as championed by university campuses at large. We …

The Intersectional Influences Of Prince: A Human-Animal Tribute, Annie K. Potts

Animal Studies Journal

Prince Rogers Nelson (1958-2016) was best known for his joyful funk music and electrifying stage performances that transgressed normative representations of gender, sexuality, race, spirituality, identity and taste. He was also a compassionate person who held deep convictions about freedom and the right of all species to enjoy lives without fear and suffering. This essay discusses Prince’s intersectional influences – the various ways his virtuosity over the past 38 years disrupted binaries, challenged assumptions and stereotypes, advocated for social justice, and combatted speciesism in its many forms. Embedded within the essay are seven personal tributes written by fans of Prince …

[Review] Robert Cribb, Helen Gilbert And Helen Tiffen, Wild Man From Borneo: A Cultural History Of The Orangutan. Honolulu: University Of Hawai’I Press, 2014, Matthew Chrulew

Animal Studies Journal

Wild Man from Borneo is a studious and wide-ranging cultural history of the orangutan and an indispensable resource for anyone working on this species or great apes in general. Orangutan stories and encounters have always captivated, from the tales of the Dayak and Batak peoples from Borneo and Indonesia, to the first rumours of early European travellers, and later observations and dissections. The orangutan’s uncanny similarity to humans, both in form and behaviour, made it central to a nineteenth-century debate about the uniqueness of humanity, in a time when few had been seen and Europeans were unsure just what sort …

[Review] Ann C. Colley, Wild Animal Skins In Victorian Britain. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, John Simons

Animal Studies Journal

You should never judge a book by its cover but, of course, that’s exactly what the Victorians did when they looked at animals—or so Professor Ann Colley claims, and with some justification. This book is a contribution to the growing list of valuable and entertaining studies of the collection and exhibition of wild animals in Victorian Britain and beyond, and it is highly recommended to anyone researching the field. I was looking forward to reading this as although there has been a fair bit of work on zoos and menageries and, especially recently, on taxidermy, the habit of collecting skins …

[Review] David Wilson, The Welfare Of Performing Animals: A Historical Perspective. Berlin: Springer, 2015, Peta Tait

Animal Studies Journal

This book makes a valuable contribution to animal studies. It investigates the social and political processes concerned with the welfare of performing animals in Britain from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century. Although this area requires specialised inquiry, as David Wilson points out, animal performance is usually generalised about within pro-animal scholarship. Drawing on highly detailed research, this book provides a comprehensive account of the individuals and organisations that campaigned against animal performance and its cruelties and, in turn, those who campaigned for its continuation. It presents the human stories behind the movement against animal performance; descriptions of the …

Provocations From The Field : The Place Of Bees, Michael R. Griffiths

Animal Studies Journal

What would it mean to permit lack to become a productive place? What, indeed, would it mean to think place – so often feminized in the carnophallogocentric order – as active? Lack, in these terms, could be constitutive rather than a mere marker of absence. I propose that the place of bees in the symbolics of species could yield answers to these and related questions. Insects are often understood and conceived as communicators – through pheromones for instance. But in the very gesture that recognizes their communication, one finds the refusal of consciousness behind this communicative apparatus. If bees are …

Thirteen Figurings: Reflections On Termites, From Below, Perdita Phillips

Animal Studies Journal

This image essay is a creative reflection back upon The Encyclopaedia Isoptera: An encyclopaedia of the arts, sciences, literature and general information about termites, which was mostly written by the artist between 1997 and 1998, and forward to what termite art might undo today. Without access to living termites and, predating multispecies ethnographies, the Encyclopaedia Isoptera was an investigation into the limits of knowledge around termites. Looking back, it can be seen that certain strategies in the Encyclopaedia, such as looking at superseded or alternative knowledge, was a way of interrogating the boundaries of the sensible/insensible, and parallels more recent …

Do Insects Feel Pain?, Helen Tiffin

Animal Studies Journal

This paper briefly considers the broad social and scientific background to research into the possibility of insects experiencing pain sensations analogous to our own. There has been increasing use of insects in pain experiments generally, as ethical constraints on the use of other animals increased through the last century. The ways in which scientists have tackled the question of insect pain, particularly in trying to distinguish between nociception and pain are then selectively summarised. These include opioid, hormonal, evolutionary, neurophysiological and behavioural approaches, as well as experiments designed to elucidate the difficult area of insect consciousness, from the 1980s to …

Infusing Physical Activities Into The Classroom: Effects On Preschool Children's Geography Learning, Myrto F. Mavilidi, Anthony D. Okely, Paul A. Chandler, Fred Paas

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In this intervention study, we investigated the effects of physical activities that were integrated into a geography task on preschool children's learning performance and enjoyment. Eight childcare centers with 87 four-to-five-year-old children were randomly assigned across an integrated physical activity condition, an unintegrated physical activity condition, and a control condition without physical activity. Children learned the names and a typical animal from each of the six continents using a floor-mounted world map with soft toy animals. Both learning conditions with physical activities showed higher performance than the learning condition without physical activities on an immediate retention test, and on a …

Judicial Indigenous Cross-Cultural Training: What Is Available, How Good Is It And Can It Be Improved?, Vanessa I. Cavanagh, Elena Marchetti

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Australian Indigenous focused cross-cultural professional development for the judiciary is an evolving area. In other professional service sectors, such as health and education, cultural safety is becoming the benchmark. However, for the Australian justice sector cultural awareness, and to a lesser extent cultural competency, dominate discussion, and cultural safety is only an emerging discourse. Most judicial officers (indeed most Australian public servants and legal practitioners) would be familiar with the concept of Indigenous cultural awareness as part of their standard professional development training, however, the significance of cultural competency, and the application of cultural safety principles are less well recognised. …

A Brief Proposition Toward A Sonic Geo-Politics: Rajarhat New Town, Anja M. Kanngieser

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The sounds of a place can reveal what it is made up of: the infrastructures, lines of power and governance, bodies, and ideologies of a place, and how they move in relation to one another, all make audible conditions of social, political, economic and cultural production. By listening to these relations, it is possible to get a sense of the multiple terrains that comprise such places and the atmospheres they engender (Thibaud 2011); sounds can help in understanding how place is made, unmade and remade. Through careful listening it is possible to encounter sounding as a way of "knowing," as …

Cultural Relativism, Emergent Technology And Aboriginal Health Discourse, Kishan A. Kariippanon

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The incorporation of mobile phones and social media by Indigenous youth (Senior and Chenhall, 2016; Carlson, Farelli, Frazer & Brothwick, 2015; Kral, 2014) has prompted a migration of online engagement and social marketing interventions in health promotion programs according to Brusse, Gardner, MacAulley & Dowden (2014). According to Kral (2014 p. 4) “the rapid development of new information and communication technologies, an increase in affordable, small mobile technologies” including research by Taylor (2012) on the increase in Telstra’s Internet enabled ‘Next G’ connections over the vast remote regions in the Northern Territory of Australia, has created “an explosion of new …

Too Much Medicine In Older People? Deprescribing Through Shared Decision Making, Jesse Jansen, Vasi Naganathan, Stacy M. Carter, Andrew J. Mclachlan, Brooke Nickel, Les Irwig, Carissa Bonner, Jenny Doust, Jim Colvin, Aine Heaney, Robin Turner, Kirsten Mccaffery

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Too much medicine is an increasingly recognised problem, and one manifestation is inappropriate polypharmacy in older people. Polypharmacy is usually defined as taking more than five regular prescribed medicines. It can be appropriate (when potential benefits outweigh potential harms) but increases the risk of older people experiencing adverse drug reactions, impaired physical and cognitive function, and hospital admission. There is limited evidence to inform polypharmacy in older people, especially those with multimorbidity, cognitive impairment, or frailty. Systematic reviews of medication withdrawal trials (deprescribing) show that reducing specific classes of medicines may decrease adverse events and improve quality of life. Two …

All Care, But Whose Responsibility? Community Juries Reason About Expert And Patient Responsibilities In Prostate-Specific Antigen Screening For Prostate Cancer, Chris Degeling, Stacy M. Carter, Lucie Rychetnik

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

General practitioners have implicitly been given responsibility for guiding men's decisions about prostate-specific antigen-based screening for prostate cancer, but patients' expectations of the bounds of this responsibility remain unclear. We sought to explore how well-informed members of the public allocate responsibilities in prostate-specific antigen screening decision-making. In 2014, we convened two Community juries in Sydney, Australia, to address questions related to the content and timing of information provision and respective roles of patients and general practitioners in screening decisions. Participants in the first jury were of mixed gender and of all ages (n = 15); the participants in the second …

Cjcheck Stage 1: Development And Testing Of A Checklist For Reporting Community Juries - Delphi Process And Analysis Of Studies Published In 1996-2015, Rae Thomas, Rebecca Sims, Christopher J. Degeling, Jackie M. Street, Stacy M. Carter, Lucie Rychetnik, Jenny Whitty, Andrew Wilson, Paul Ward, Paul Glasziou

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background Opportunities for community members to actively participate in policy development are increasing. Community/citizen's juries (CJs) are a deliberative democratic process aimed to illicit informed community perspectives on difficult topics. But how comprehensive these processes are reported in peer‐reviewed literature is unknown. Adequate reporting of methodology enables others to judge process quality, compare outcomes, facilitate critical reflection and potentially repeat a process. We aimed to identify important elements for reporting CJs, to develop an initial checklist and to review published health and health policy CJs to examine reporting standards. Design Using the literature and expertise from CJ researchers and policy …

A Definition And Ethical Evaluation Of Overdiagnosis, Stacy M. Carter, Christopher J. Degeling, Jenny Doust, Alexandra Barratt

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Overdiagnosis is an emerging problem in health policy and practice: we address its definition and ethical implications. We argue that the definition of overdiagnosis should be expressed at the level of populations. Consider a condition prevalent in a population, customarily labelled with diagnosis A. We propose that overdiagnosis is occurring in respect of that condition in that population when (1) the condition is being identified and labelled with diagnosis A in that population (consequent interventions may also be offered); (2) this identification and labelling would be accepted as correct in a relevant professional community; but (3) the resulting label and/or …

Interactional Research In Pbl: Another Piece Of The 'Silence In Pbl' Puzzle: Students' Explanations Of Dominance And Quietness As Complementary Group Roles, Vicki Skinner, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, Tracey J. Winning

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

A problem-based learning (PBL) assumption is that silence is incompatible with collaborative learning. Although sociocultural studies have reinterpreted silence as collaborative, we must understand how silence occurs in PBL groups. This essay presents students’ explanations of dominance, leadership, and silence as PBL group roles. An ethnographic investigation of PBL groups, informed by social constructionism, was conducted at two dental schools (in Australia and Ireland). The methods used were observation, interviews, and focus groups. The participants were volunteer first-year undergraduates. Students attributed dominance, silence, and members’ group roles to personal attributes. Consequently, they assumed that groups divided naturally into dominant leaders …

Targeting Population Nutrition Through Municipal Health And Food Policy: Implications Of New York City's Experiences In Regulatory Obesity Prevention, Jana Sisnowski, Jackie M. Street, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Obesity remains a major public health challenge across OECD countries and policy-makers globally require successful policy precedents. This paper analyzes New York City’s innovative experiences in regulatory approaches to nutrition. We combined a systematic documentary review and key informant interviews (n = 9) with individuals directly involved in nutrition policy development and decision-making. Thematic analysis was guided by Kingdon’s three-streams-model and the International Obesity Task Force’s evidence-based decision-making framework. Our findings indicate that decisive mayoral leadership spearheaded initial agenda-change and built executive capacity to support evidence-driven policy. Policy-makers in the executive branch recognized the dearth of evidence for concrete …

Systematic Review To Inform Prevention And Management Of Chronic Disease For Indigenous Australians: Overview And Priorities, Judith Streak Gomersall, Karla Canuto, Edoardo Aromataris, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, Alex Brown

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objective: To describe the main characteristics of systematic reviews addressing questions of chronic disease and related risk factors for Indigenous Australians.

Methods: We searched databases for systematic reviews meeting inclusion criteria. Two reviewers assessed quality and extracted characteristics using pre‐defined tools.

Results: We identified 14 systematic reviews. Seven synthesised evidence about health intervention effectiveness; four addressed chronic disease or risk factor prevalence; and six conducted critical appraisal as per current best practice. Only three reported steps to align the review with standards for ethical research with Indigenous Australians and/or capture Indigenous‐specific knowledge. Most called for more high‐quality research.

Conclusion: Systematic …

Why Is Pain Still Under-Treated In The Emergency Department? Two New Hypotheses, Drew Carter, Paul Sendzuik, Jaklin Eliott, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Across the world, pain is under‐treated in emergency departments (EDs). We canvass the literature testifying to this problem, the reasons why this problem is so important, and then some of the main hypotheses that have been advanced in explanation of the problem. We then argue for the plausibility of two new hypotheses: pain's under‐treatment in the ED is due partly to (1) an epistemic preference for signs over symptoms on the part of some practitioners, and (2) some ED practices that themselves worsen pain by increasing patients' anxiety and fear. Our argument includes the following logic. Some ED practitioners depart …

The Cat's Cradle Of Responsibility: Assigning And Taking Responsibility For Companion Animals In Natural Disasters, Cheryl Travers, Christopher J. Degeling, Melanie Rock

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Responsibility is often regarded as a unified concept. However in everyday language, the term refers to a cat's cradle of related ideas and perceptions. Although there might be consensus that individuals should be ultimately responsible for their own animals during crises, individuals and groups may disagree about the norms and obligations we ought to adopt and what we owe to animals that are dependent on our care. A coherent account of responsibility for companion animals, or pets, in disasters is yet to be articulated. At the same time, there is good evidence showing that individuals and communities cope better during …

Habitus And Responsible Dog-Ownership: Reconsidering The Health Promotion Implications Of 'Dog-Shaped' Holes In People's Lives, Christopher J. Degeling, Melanie Rock, Wendy Rogers, Therese Riley

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Responsible dog ownership has been identified as a point of intervention to promote physical activity, based upon an expectation of dog walking in public space. Nevertheless, quantitative research has found variability among owners in their dog walking. In this study, we explore the implications for health promotion of such variability. We do so by drawing on the concepts of habitus and social capital to analyse qualitative interviews. Participants were recruited from a social network in a cosmopolitan city with a policy framework intended to ensure equitable access to public space for dog walkers. The analysis confirms dog ownership can promote …

Perspectives On A 'Sit Less, Move More' Intervention In Australian Emergency Call Centres, Josephine Chau, Lina Engelen, Sarah Burks-Young, Michelle Daley, Jen-Kui Maxwell, Karen Milton, Adrian E. Bauman

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background: Prolonged sitting is associated with increased risk of chronic diseases. Workplace programs that aim to reduce sitting time (sit less) and increase physical activity (move more) have targeted desk-based workers in corporate and university settings with promising results. However, little is known about 'move more, sit less' programs for workers in other types of jobs and industries, such as shift workers. This formative research examines the perceptions of a 'sit less, move more' program in an Australian Emergency Call Centre that operates 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Methods: Participants were employees (N = 39, 72% female, …

Creating Culturally Relevant Approaches To Social Work Across Oceania, Jioji Ravulo

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

As guest editor, I've been greatly encouraged by the shared vision to support the evolving professionalism of social work, alongside the need to promote inclusive discourses characterised by cultural differences across Oceania.

Pacific Islands Field Education - Promoting Pacific Social Work Education & Practice Across Oceania, Jioji Ravulo

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The Pacific Islands Field Education (PIFE) initiative started in 2012 and has developed into an innovative project combining various stakeholders. Over the last 4 years, it has seen 20 Western Sydney University (WSU) students successfully complete a 3-month field education placement in either Fiji, Samoa or Tonga; in an array of agencies working with women, children, families and adult offenders. Apart from mobilising students to undertake international learning opportunities, the initiative strives to support the development of social work education, teaching and learning outcomes with the University of the South Pacific (USP); who has an active MOU arrangement with Western …