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- Convenors:
-
Helen Wadham
(Manchester Metropolitan University)
Nora Schuurman (University of Turku)
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- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers that explore the theme of responsibility in relation to horses. Animal agency is embedded within diverse and uneven relations of power. What do horse–human relations teach us about how to understand and exercise responsibility in more-than-human ways?
Long Abstract:
We have long recognised the socioeconomic and cultural significance of horses. Our shared relations have transformed economies and shaped societies. However, there is a growing understanding that horses are more than living machines, mere tools at the service of humans.
We increasingly recognise horses as social actors, who shape their own and other lives. But this raises fresh challenges. In particular, acknowledging their agency risks making horses complicit in any suffering or exploitation they may experience. During training, for example, horses may be blamed for causing injury to humans or themselves.
Animal agency – like human agency – is thus embedded within diverse and uneven relations of power. These power dynamics may be visible, albeit often in subtle ways, even within harmonious interactions, where the horse displays what Despret calls secret agency. The concept of responsibility provides an opportunity to reflect on this interplay between agency and power.
This panel invites submissions from researchers who are interested in reflecting on what horse–human relations might teach us about how to understand and exercise responsibility in more-than-human ways. What does responsibility mean within horse–human relations? Who is responsible and to whom? How can we speak for horses? How can we place horses themselves at the centre of our analyses?
Papers may address, but are not limited to:
- training (of horses and/or riders)
- equestrian sports
- equine care practices
- equine death
- equine rescue
- horse-breeding
- horse-trade
- horseracing
- equine-assisted activities/therapies
- equine tourism
- working with horses
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Helen Wadham (Manchester Metropolitan University) Carrianne Wallace (Aston Business School)
Paper short abstract:
In the light of growing disaffection with consumer capitalism, how might our relations with horses help us redefine the “good life” in more-than-human ways and what questions does this raise about our responsibility towards horses themselves (and potentially other animals too)?
Paper long abstract:
The current Covid-19 pandemic has compounded an inflow of people into rural areas in the UK and elsewhere in search of the “good life” (Guardian 2020). Explicitly seeking new ways of working and living, they might be characterised as part of what philosopher Kate Soper calls the “affluent disaffected” (2020; 72). That is, according to her model of “alternative hedonism,” they are rejecting the inherently negative aspects of consumer-based affluence, foregrounding instead the pleasures of life.
While alternative hedonism is understood and experienced at the micro level, it might in turn facilitate a macro-level shift towards a more socially just and environmentally sustainable way of life. Ideas about the good life are thus tied up with broader concerns about sustainability. As such, we would go further than Soper and suggest that the good life is a more-than-human matter.
It is well-established that human flourishing depends upon the wellbeing of animals as well as people (Cuomo 1998; Haraway 2008). Domestic animals – especially horses – are part of what Henry Buller (2016; 422) calls a “broader, more inclusive moral community.” The aim of this paper, therefore, is to critically analyse how horse-human relations shape the way people imagine and experience the good life. However, these attempts to articulate and enact some kind of joint future in turn raise questions of our responsibility towards horses and other animals: Specifically, how can we speak for them? And how can we place them at the centre of our analyses?
Nora Schuurman (University of Turku)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I analyze the Facebook page of the mounted police in the city of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. I ask how equine agency, animal work and interspecies care are interpreted and performed on social media.
Paper long abstract:
Relations between humans and animals in contextual practices are shaped by understandings of animality, embedded in different power relations. In this paper, I analyze the Facebook page of the mounted police in the city of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. I approach the material as performances of animality and human–animal relations, concentrating on interpretations of the horses and their agency. I ask how equine agency, animal work and interspecies care are interpreted and performed on social media. In Finland, public confidence in the mounted police and their horses is high despite their low status in the police hierarchy. The presence of horses transforms the power relations between the police and the publics – by mounting a horse, the police seem to get closer to the citizen. On the Facebook site, the individuality and agency of police horses are acknowledged and, based on the type of their work, they are performed as different from other horses, suggesting a shared identity of ‘otherness’ with their humans. The horses are presented as ‘employees’ with fixed working hours, duties, statutory rest breaks, annual leave, and retirement. In this context, the dynamics in interspecies care practices are not limited to power relations between humans and horses, but extend to relations between humans, in a network where performances of interspecies care are contested. What is understood as care is up to debate, and controlling the debate provides access to discursive power and, potentially, to a right to define the police horse as an animal.
Robert Winstanley-Chesters (Bath Spa University)
Paper short abstract:
Writing on North Korea is generally focused on anthropogenic concerns, In contrast this paper looks below the saddle of conventional authority to the equine below and considers the roles and lives of horses in North Korea, its history and political culture.
Paper long abstract:
North Korean anthropologies, histories, geographies and other writings are generally focused on anthropogenic concerns, primarily focused on practices of leadership and autocracy, or the negative implications of the nation’s political form. In contrast this paper looks below the saddle of conventional authority to the horse below. Holding in mind the work of animal geographers and researchers of more than human relations, as well as Jane Bennett and others work on vibrant matters and new materialist approaches to global webs of life, as well as the anthropologies of Heonik Kwon and Byung-ho Chung, this paper considers the roles and lives of horses in North Korea and North Korean history. Building on previous writing by the author on non-human agency in North Korea, the paper frames horses as actors and participants in the charismatic and theatric political spaces of the nation historically and in present. From the white horse ridden by Kim Il Sung on his arrival in Pyongyang in 1947, the “hero horses” gifted by the Mongolian People’s Republic during the Korean War, to the white stallion and companions ridden up Mount Paektu by Kim Jong Un, his sister Kim Yo Jong and other senior leadership of the Korean Workers Party in 2019, equines appear frequently in the cultural, ideological and historical narratology of North Korea, echoing deeper historical cultural connections between horse and human in Korean history. The paper considers the potential lives of such horses, and their intersections and engagements with the energies and projections of Pyongyang’s politics.