Paper short abstract:

How does living and working with horses open up new - or long-forgotten - ways of thinking about and shaping the homes and habitats we share?

Paper long abstract:

Domestic animals have lived and evolved alongside us for centuries, rendering them key actors in shaping our understanding and experience of home and work. Yet they remain largely absent from our theoretical conceptualisations of both (Coulter 2016; Fudge 2008).

Anthropology has played a key role in defining the home. Douglas (1991; 289) conceptualised the home as “space under control,” in which time and resources are allocated and organised. Recent research focuses on relational and utopian aspects, namely how the home brings together the physical and the affective, the local and the global (O’Connor 2017). At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic – and the accompanying rise of homeworking – has unsettled and problematised the relationship between home and work (Chung et al. 2020).

Animals challenge these and other “human” categories (Fudge 2008). Horse-human relations offer a particularly useful vantage point as riding affords a unique level of physicality, intimacy and intensity (Dashper 2016). Our paper therefore centres on an ethnographic study of the UK horse-logging community. Specifically, we draw on the theoretical ideas of Gibson-Graham (2006) to explore how people and horses “prefigure” different approaches to living and working together in remote and threatened forests in northern England. Within our findings, horses emerge as co-habitants, co-workers and epistemological partners, shaping people’s understanding and experience of home and work, and embedding them within the wider natural-social environment. We conclude that interspecies relations can thereby contribute to creating a more liveable world in the here and now for people, horses and others.

Paper short abstract:

I examine experiences of the adoption of homeless dogs in transnational animal rescue practices. The study is based on interviews with volunteers participating in the activities of dog rescue NGOs in Finland. I approach the adoption practices as everyday domestication and interspecies care.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational animal rescue practices have become more widespread in Finland in the 2000s, with an increasing demand for dogs to be adopted. In this presentation, I examine experiences of the adoption of homeless dogs, drawing on interviews with volunteers participating in the activities of dog rescue NGOs in Finland. I explore the adoption of rescue dogs as everyday domestication and interspecies care, including the special challenges brought by the adoption process itself and the adaptation of the dogs in their new home. I further focus on situations where interaction with the dog is not successful, resulting in problems and returns. I ask, how can a homeless animal become a pet and how can interspecies companionship emerge when the animal is perceived as different and their agency difficult to understand. Theoretically, the presentation is based on recent work on human–animal relationships and their possible difficulties. According to the study, the adoption of homeless dogs is a multi-layered and systematic process in which the dog is seen as a subject and an agent with their own feelings and experiences. Within pet culture, animal rescue practices shift the attention to the ethics and responsibilities of pet keeping.

Paper short abstract:

This paper asks how the animated TV show 'Animals' offers new ways of thinking about the intermeshed life-worlds of humans and non-humans in New York City, while simultaneously illuminating queer, counter-hegemonic ways of being within the violent, urbanized infrastructures of the Anthropocene.

Paper long abstract:

In the HBO series Animals, a ruthless mega-corporation genetically engineers a virus and releases it into the heart of New York City. In the days before the pandemic, a caged monkey sleeps in the corporation’s animal testing facility in Manhattan. On the surface of the animal’s skin, two queer fleas meander through forests of hair, play basketball, and ponder the meaning of life. Erik, the shorter flea, wonders if the monkey knows they exist. “Probably not,” he concludes. “But then, does God even know we exist? And if he did know we existed, why would he even care about us?” In the end, the fleas find solace in the ephemeral nature of existence. “I am big,” Erik shouts. “I mean, I’m the second-tallest flea on this monkey’s ass. That’s got to stand for something, right?”

In this paper, I argue that the show Animals offers new ways of thinking about the intermeshed, ephemeral life-worlds of humans and non-humans in urban space. Following Jack Halberstam’s embrace of low theory, I examine how Animals combines low-brow humor and low-budget animation to illuminate queer, counterhegemonic ways of being within the violent, urbanized infrastructures of the Anthropocene. I analyze how the show’s unconventional use of language, narrative form, and animation foregrounds the agency and personhood of non-humans without reifying the notion of a bounded, fully autonomous self. Ultimately, I argue that Animals forces viewers to move away from the naturalized categories of pest/pet, wild/domestic and human/animal towards a “humbling recognition that animal lives, even as they are coconstituted alongside human lives, exceed their imbrication in the latter” (Govindrajan 2018). By giving an anthropomorphized glimpse into the desires, fears, and conflicts of cats, rats, roaches, microbes and more, the series simultaneously highlights the interconnected nature of human and animal worlds while articulating an urban otherwild that defies human mastery.

Paper short abstract:

This paper about dove-keeping in Zanzibar treats doves as agentive beings who contribute to human 'homes,' traditional healing and cooking as well as to poetic and literary practices. Transforming the atmosphere, doves permit active meditation on love, peace, mobility, freedom and limitation.

Paper long abstract:

On the Indian Ocean islands of Zanzibar, as they do elsewhere, human beings continually struggle for political, domestic, and interior peace. Since the mid-twentieth century, a persistent political impasse, old and new colonialisms, human rights abuse, and poverty constrain ordinary Zanzibaris from every side. In both urban and rural Zanzibar, in walled-in enclaves and village homesteads, the keeping of doves fosters serenity, cultivates hope, and creates personal havens in an agitated world. Doves are entangled in human discourses and practices of both peace- and place-making, as well as in traditional healing and in cooking. Their ability to vanish from sight and reliably return, which humans cannot always do - provokes active meditation on mobility, freedom and the meaning of 'home.' As they do in many traditions, doves also recur in classical and contemporary Swahili love songs as well as in intimate social exchanges. In anticipation of 8 weeks of ethnographic research to be conducted in summer 2023, and based on over 25 years' ethnographic engagement with rural communities in Zanzibar, this paper explores doves as meaningful agents in the creation of Zanzibari senses and experiences of 'home.' Viewing doves as material, agentive beings who contribute to human environments, ‘co-becoming’ with their carers, as well as to poetic and literary practices, I aim to bring a transdisciplinary, transspecies perspective to scholarship on Swahili communities while also contributing African material – often sorely lacking – to animal studies in general and avian studies in particular.