Paper short abstract:

Affirming animal agency and animal voices, this research shows how animal sanctuaries make space for the possibility of learning and experimenting towards a world beyond capitalist anthropocentrism. The practices of care-giving are knowledge-producing for all those involved, human and nonhuman.

Paper long abstract:

The practices of taking care are knowledge producing for all those involved, human and nonhuman. In the context of formerly farmed animal sanctuaries, human care-givers provide a space of refuge, respite and pleasure for the nonhuman inhabitants. Such places become spaces of contestation, in which all those involved, and those on the margins, are slowly transformed through the knowledge that emerges in daily interactions. The human care-givers learn what the nonhuman animals need, individually, the animals learn to navigate a new kind of life, away from exploitation, veterinarians learn to provide a different sort of care, not precisely the same as it would have been on a farm, and the local villagers get to see nonhuman animals with new eyes, living their lives regardless of what they are ‘good for’. Using qualitative methods, specifically, semi-structured interviews with the humans involved, this research wishes to remain in conversation with other critical animal scholars. Following previous research, affirming animal agency (Blattner, Donaldson, & Wilcox, 2020) and animal voices (Meijer, 2019), it is shown how the sanctuary space provides possibilities for learning and experimenting towards a world beyond capitalist anthropocentrism.

Blattner, C. E., Donaldson, S., & Wilcox, R. (2020). Animal Agency in Community: A Political Multispecies Ethnography of VINE Sanctuary. POLITICS AND ANIMALS, 6, 22.

Meijer, E. (2019). When animals speak: toward an interspecies democracy. New York: New York University Press.