“…Rather, participants are effectively developing what Bergmann (2019, p. 5564) identifies as an interspecies variation, which prioritises what ‘truly matters to the animals concerned’. In their attempts to do so, our participants inadvertently heed the calls of academic authors (e.g., Hodges, 1999; Kopnina et al., 2018; Policarpo et al., 2018; Tsing, 2017) who suggest we should place animals at the heart of our collective attempts to imagine and deliver alternative visions of the future.…”
Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Our thinking about the good life tends to exclude animals because we do not acknowledge them as social beings with rich inner lives (Meijer, 2019). Likewise, within dominant conceptualisations of both rurality and sustainability, we recognise animals primarily with regard to the instrumental benefits they provide to humans, not their intrinsic status as active co‐habitants of the earth (Kopnina et al., 2018; Policarpo et al., 2018). Hodges (1999) laments an apparent ‘divorce’ between prevailing Western values of growth and animal‐ and ‘nature‐’ centred holistic meanings of wholeness and sustainability in living a good life: [Unlike our ancestors,] we have lost touch with the lessons of living with animals; namely, that quality of life is not a solitary experience but flows into and from interdependence and community.…”
Section: Literature Reviewmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Specifically, our findings confirm earlier work on how animals live alongside us (e.g., Calvert 2018; Holloway and Bear 2017) and existing scholarship on animals' configurational role in shaping rural sociality (e.g., Dalke 2019;Fijn 2011;Swart 2010). However, we add to this by illuminating how animals also impact our thinking about sustainability (Kopnina et al 2018;Policarpo et al 2018;Wadham 2020a).…”
Section: Embedding the Interspecies Good Lifementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Of particular interest to us here is work that focuses on horses and the role they play in shaping societies, places and the human and nonhuman relationships within and between them (e.g., see Dalke, 2019; Fijn, 2011; Swart, 2010). However, this ‘animal turn’ has had little impact on broader thinking about sustainability (Kopnina et al., 2018; Policarpo et al., 2018; Wadham, 2020a). By taking greater account of animals in the way we understand the relationship between sustainability and the good life, this article hopes to expand our understanding of both.…”
Notions of the good life are often strongly linked to rurality. Existing conceptualisations tend towards an anthropocentric and individualised approach centred on personal wealth, status and happiness. In contrast, this article reframes the good life as an interspecies endeavur, which embeds people and animals alike by recognising their interdependent relational configurations within the wider natural-social environment. Specifically, we bring insights from the concept of buen vivir to bear on research among people who live alongside their horses in rural areas of the UK. We find that horses enhance, enable and mediate people's understanding and experience of the rural good life. In contrast to popular and scholarly conceptions that emphasise privilege and leisure, the interspecies iteration that emerges is characterised by hard work, collaboration and purposeful active learning. This has profound implications in turn for our understanding and experience of sustainability, as these interspecies relations lead participants intoThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
“…Rather, participants are effectively developing what Bergmann (2019, p. 5564) identifies as an interspecies variation, which prioritises what ‘truly matters to the animals concerned’. In their attempts to do so, our participants inadvertently heed the calls of academic authors (e.g., Hodges, 1999; Kopnina et al., 2018; Policarpo et al., 2018; Tsing, 2017) who suggest we should place animals at the heart of our collective attempts to imagine and deliver alternative visions of the future.…”
Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Our thinking about the good life tends to exclude animals because we do not acknowledge them as social beings with rich inner lives (Meijer, 2019). Likewise, within dominant conceptualisations of both rurality and sustainability, we recognise animals primarily with regard to the instrumental benefits they provide to humans, not their intrinsic status as active co‐habitants of the earth (Kopnina et al., 2018; Policarpo et al., 2018). Hodges (1999) laments an apparent ‘divorce’ between prevailing Western values of growth and animal‐ and ‘nature‐’ centred holistic meanings of wholeness and sustainability in living a good life: [Unlike our ancestors,] we have lost touch with the lessons of living with animals; namely, that quality of life is not a solitary experience but flows into and from interdependence and community.…”
Section: Literature Reviewmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Specifically, our findings confirm earlier work on how animals live alongside us (e.g., Calvert 2018; Holloway and Bear 2017) and existing scholarship on animals' configurational role in shaping rural sociality (e.g., Dalke 2019;Fijn 2011;Swart 2010). However, we add to this by illuminating how animals also impact our thinking about sustainability (Kopnina et al 2018;Policarpo et al 2018;Wadham 2020a).…”
Section: Embedding the Interspecies Good Lifementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Of particular interest to us here is work that focuses on horses and the role they play in shaping societies, places and the human and nonhuman relationships within and between them (e.g., see Dalke, 2019; Fijn, 2011; Swart, 2010). However, this ‘animal turn’ has had little impact on broader thinking about sustainability (Kopnina et al., 2018; Policarpo et al., 2018; Wadham, 2020a). By taking greater account of animals in the way we understand the relationship between sustainability and the good life, this article hopes to expand our understanding of both.…”
Notions of the good life are often strongly linked to rurality. Existing conceptualisations tend towards an anthropocentric and individualised approach centred on personal wealth, status and happiness. In contrast, this article reframes the good life as an interspecies endeavur, which embeds people and animals alike by recognising their interdependent relational configurations within the wider natural-social environment. Specifically, we bring insights from the concept of buen vivir to bear on research among people who live alongside their horses in rural areas of the UK. We find that horses enhance, enable and mediate people's understanding and experience of the rural good life. In contrast to popular and scholarly conceptions that emphasise privilege and leisure, the interspecies iteration that emerges is characterised by hard work, collaboration and purposeful active learning. This has profound implications in turn for our understanding and experience of sustainability, as these interspecies relations lead participants intoThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Sociology increasingly recognises that ‘the social’ extends beyond ‘the human’. The ongoing theoretical integration of animals has extended our understanding of notions like alienation, violence and technology. This article considers in turn the highly contested concept of sustainability. Focusing on our entangled relationships with domestic animals, particularly horses, extends our critical understanding of sustainability in three ways. First, by recognising horses as social actors, we can challenge the anthropocentrism of sustainability and integrate animals into our analysis of how social systems create and /or resist sustainability claims. Second, in adding species to traditional categories of race, class and gender, we can extend critiques of sustainability by considering how it intersects with relations of power. Third, by exploring how alternative visions of the future emerge from within everyday as well as epic settings and encounters, the article broadens our understanding of what should be sustained and for whom.
The present work is focused on the presentation of some results of a project developed about the social representations of children on animal welfare and animal rights (e.g., cultural demonstrations with animals, exhibition of animals in captivity, production and consumption of products of animal origin, treatment of pets and farm animals). They are preliminary results within the scope of a broader project "ANIMALIS-Animal welfare in pre-service kindergarten and primary school teachers' education. Using the Sociology of Childhood, Childhood Pedagogy, Environmental Education and Human-animal Studies, the present work aims to analyse children´s discourses associated with factors which can limit animal welfare and their rights and also to identify possibilities of educational intervention compatible with the inclusion of animals and their rights in pedagogical practices. These discourses started from the analysis and discussion of situations involving different animal uses present in the book of Patrick George "Animal Rescue" published by 2015. The methodological approach is based on a qualitative matrix with the adoption of data collection and analysis methodologies congruent with the object under study and with the epistemological assumptions of the sociological research with children: ethnographic observation, image collection, analysis of drawings, documentary analysis and focused discussion groups (book as an inducer of the discussion). The selection obeyed the criteria of identification of specificity, interest and feasibility of the research. The participants were four groups of children, between 2 and 5 years old, from three Kindergarten rooms (25 children each room) and one nursery room (12 children) of a private socio-educational organization in the city of Lisbon. The situations designed around animals, promoted by four educators with extensive professional experience, allowed to identify certain practices developed with animals (i) as problematic for children (e.g. abandonment and neglect of animals, sale of animals in stores, use of animal fur to make clothing and footwear) and (ii) as necessary (e.g., the need to invest more in promoting animal and nature rights, to reflect on the role of pets in their lives, and to develop projects to learn more about particular animals or situations involving them). The conflict between individual and group visions is a theme to be highlighted from the analysis of data as well as the fact that children in the nursery room reveal more blurred boundaries between the human and non-human worlds.
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