
Animal studies is a recently recognised field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross-disciplinary ways. Scholars who engage in animal studies may be formally trained in a number of diverse fields, including
art history
Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history.
Tradit ...
,
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
,
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...
,
film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various film theory, theoretical, history of film, historical, and film criticism, critical approaches to film, cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media stud ...
,
geography
Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...
,
history
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...
,
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
,
literary studies
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...
,
museology
Museology (also called museum studies or museum science) is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and ed ...
,
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
, communication, and
sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
. They engage with questions about notions of "animality," "animalization," or "becoming animal," to understand human-made representations of and cultural ideas about "the animal" and what it is to be human by employing various theoretical perspectives. Using these perspectives, those who engage in animal studies seek to understand both human-animal relations now and in the past as defined by our knowledge of them. Because the field is still developing, scholars and others have some freedom to define their own criteria about what issues may structure the field.
History
Animal studies became popular in the 1970s as an interdisciplinary subject, animal studies exists at the intersection of a number of different fields of study such as journals and books series, etc.
Different fields began to turn to animals as an important topic at different times and for various reasons, and these separate disciplinary histories shape how scholars approach animal studies. Historically, the field of environmental history has encouraged attention to animals.
Ethics
Throughout Western history, humankind has put itself above the "nonhuman species." In part, animal studies developed out of the
animal liberation movement and was grounded in
ethical
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...
questions about co-existence with other species: whether it is moral to eat animals, to do scientific research on animals for human benefit, and so on. Take rats, for example, with a history of being used as “an experimental subject, feeder, and “pest.”
However, fewer than 10% of research studies on animals result in new medical findings for human patients.
This has led researchers to find new Non-animal Approach Methodologies (NAMs) that provide more accurate human reactions.
Animal studies scholars who explore the field from an ethical perspective frequently cite
Australian philosopher
Peter Singer's 1975 work, ''
Animal Liberation'',
as a founding document in animal studies. Singer's work followed
's by trying to expand
utilitarian
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...
questions about pleasure and pain beyond humans to other
sentient creatures. Overall, progress happens slowly, but the marginal voices help introduce new concepts and ethics that can eventually transform society's relationship with other species.
Some still believe that the primary purpose of animal interaction is solely for food.
However, animal domestication created a new intimate bond between human and non-human, and changed the way that humans live their lives. Theorists interested in the role of animals in literature, culture, and
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...
also consider the late work of
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...
a driving force behind the rise of interest in animal studies in the humanities.
Derrida's final lecture series, ''The Animal That Therefore I Am'', examined how interactions with animal life affect human attempts to define humanity and the self through language. Taking up Derrida's deconstruction and extending it to other cultural territory,
Cary Wolfe published ''Animal Rites'' in 2003 and critiqued earlier animal rights philosophers such as
Peter Singer and
Tom Regan. Wolfe's study points out an insidious humanism at play in their philosophies and others. Recently also the Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...
published a book on the question of the animal: ''The Open. Man and Animal''.
Art
Animals also played an essential role in the art community. One of the earliest forms of art was on the walls of caves from the early man, where they usually drew what they hunted. The country of Namibia has a large collection of ancient rock art from the Stone Age. The skillfully engraved depiction of animal tracks provides important information about the animals of that time. Then, in the Middle Ages, animals would appear for more religious reasons. Later in the 15th century, artists began coinciding with animals as a serious subject when discoveries in foreign lands were brought back to England. During the Renaissance era, the influential artist Leonardo da Vinci took interest in animal studies.
Leonardo da Vinci studied animal anatomy to create anatomically accurate drawings of various species.
Years later, animal representation took the form of woodworking, lithography, and photographs. In the late 1800s, photographers became interested in capturing animal locomotion.
Research topics and methodologies
Researchers in animal studies examine the questions and issues that arise when traditional modes of
humanistic
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...
and
scientific
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
inquiry begin to take animals seriously as subjects of thought and activity. Students of animal studies may examine how humanity is defined in relation to animals, or how representations of animals create understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. In fact, animals often elicit fear in humans.
A well-known animal phobia is ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes.
People with animal phobias tend to negatively generalize animals, even species that are harmless.
In most movies, predatory animals such as sharks and wolves are usually the antagonists, but this only causes significant damage to their reputation and makes people fear what they think their true nature is. In order to do so, animal studies pays close attention to the ways that humans
anthropomorphize animals, and asks how humans might avoid bias in observing other creatures. Anthropomorphized animals are frequently found in children's books and films. Researchers are analyzing the positive and negative effects of anthropomorphized animals on a child's view of the non-human species.
In addition,
Donna Haraway's book, ''Primate Visions'', examines how
dioramas created for the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...
showed family groupings that conformed to the traditional human
nuclear family
A nuclear family (also known as an elementary family, atomic family, or conjugal family) is a term for a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single ...
, which misrepresented the animals' observed behavior in the wild. Critical approaches in animal studies have also considered representations of non-human animals in popular culture, including species diversity in animated films. By highlighting these issues, animal studies strives to re-examine traditional
ethical
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...
,
political
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
, and
epistemological
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...
categories in the context of a renewed attention to and respect for animal life. The assumption that focusing on animals might clarify human knowledge is neatly expressed in
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...
's famous dictum that animals are "good to think."
[Lévi-Strauss, Claude. ''Totemism''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963, p. 89.]
See also
*
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factor ...
*
Anthrozoology (human–animal studies)
*
Animality studies
*
Critical animal studies
*
Ecocriticism
*
Ecosophy
References
Bibliography
* Bjorkdahl, Kristian, and Alex Parrish (2017) ''Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion''. Lantham: Lexington Press. ISBM 9781498558457.
*Boehrer, Bruce, editor, A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, Berg, 2009, .
*
*De Ornellas, Kevin (2014). The Horse in Early Modern English Culture, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, .
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*
*Kalof, Linda (2017). ''The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
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* {{cite book, last1=Wolfe, first1=Cary, authorlink=Cary Wolfe, title=Zoontologies: the question of the animal, date=2003, publisher=University of Minnesota Press, location=Minneapolis, isbn=0816641064
External links
Animal Studies JournalAnimal Rights History*
ttp://www.animalstudies.msu.edu/bibliography.php/ Animal Studies Online BibliographyAnimals and the LawAustralian Animal Studies GroupItalian Animal Studies ReviewAnimal Studies at Michigan State University
Animal rights
Animal testing
Art criticism
Art history
Behavioural sciences
Social sciences