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Paper short abstract

This talk draws on fieldwork at an Equine Assisted Personal Development site in the UK to explore the epistemological, relational, and ethical consequences of interpreting horse behaviour through a “prey-animal” evolutionary lens, designed to scientifically legitimate their therapeutic use.

Paper long abstract

“The question of just whose response counts for both of us”, Valerie Plumwood wrote, “has important political implications” (1993:178). Plumwood saw colonialist pitfalls in a kind of ecological thinking which sees human consciousness, desires, and interests shared and responded to by a concerned and compassionate Earth. This view arguably carries particular currency in equine-assisted therapeutic work. In Equine Assisted Personal Development, the “affective palette” (Lorimer et al, 2017) of horses’ ontological status as prey animals is also what is thought to give horses an unrivalled emotional attunement to others, a ‘mindful’ sensory attention to the environment, and a cathartic fullness and immediacy to their response, allowing horses to become “mirrors” for human emotions. This talk draws on ethnographic fieldwork at an EAPD site in England to explore the epistemological and ethical consequences of interpreting horse behaviour through a mutually-reflecting “prey-animal” lens.