Our Children and Other Animals

Discriminating spirits: cultural source theory and the human-nonhuman boundary

“…Ghost stories, in other words, need not be ideologically aligned with oppression and can instead be liberatory. Indeed, vegan scholars have identified the importance of species-inclusive media for increasing compassion for other animals (Cole and Stewart, 2014;Freeman, 2009). In addition to the mainstream mediums analyzed by these scholars, I suggest that spinning ghost stories about Nonhuman Animals who are traditionally erased from the cultural narrative could be useful in challenging speciesist ideologies as well.…”

“…Indeed, studies in media bias, childhood socialization, the stigmatization of antispeciesist activism, and other efforts to normalize speciesism have documented the intentional efforts of the state, industries, and elite interests to control cultural common sense about 3 nonhuman subordination and human entitlement (Cole and Stewart, 2014;Freeman, 2009;Simon, 2013;Sorenson, 2016). This ideological conditioning is necessary to sanction the extreme violence inherent to speciesism, but it also serves to buttress human supremacy as a systemic matter.…”

“…Indeed, evidence for the cultural source of ghosts is also found in the disproportionate representation of dogs, cats, and horses in ghost stories. These species have greater proximity to human society and are thus more culturally "visible" (Cole and Stewart, 2014;Wilkie, 2010). It is highly unlikely that dogs and pigs are biologically distinct in their hypotheticalin their experience of the afterlife.…”

“…Vegan social scientists (Cole and Stewart, 2014;Cudworth, 2011;Freeman, 2009;Nibert, 2003;Simon, 2013;Sorenson, 2016;Taylor, 2012) have observed the cultural erasure of nonhuman death and dying in education, politics, media, marketing, and other social institutions.…”

“…This may also relate to the higher prevalence of nonhuman ghosts in children's stories, presuming that these stories are intended to entertain and socialize. On one hand, the concept of nonhuman subjectivity is thought to be rather irrational and perhaps more appropriate for the triviality of children's literature, while, on the other, Nonhuman Animals are commonly employed metaphorical tools used to teach children cultural ideas about human exceptionalism (Cole and Stewart, 2014).…”