{"title":"Emotional Natives: The Role of Prey-Animal Ontologies in Equine-Assisted Personal Development","authors":"Maisie Tomlinson","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10191","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In the psychological literature on the efficacy of equine-assisted therapies, it is common to read that horses are suitable for such work because of their evolutionary inheritance as “prey-animals,” making them highly attuned to the emotional states of others. Yet this assertion is rarely questioned. This article explores prey-animal ontologies within an ethnographic study of an Equine-Assisted Personal Development (EAPD) center in England, and how they helped facilitate client interpretations of individual horse behaviors. I argue that in this EAPD, prey-animal ontologies constructed horses as highly skilled “emotional natives” with significant, almost deistic powers. In some ways this was progressively relational. However, in other ways, it inscribed a problematic anthropocentrism, with the horse conceived as almost permanently in response to human agency. Moreover, it was sometimes empirically difficult to sustain. Prey-animality, then, in EAPD, both challenges and reinforces human power relations with horses in complex ways.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"138 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140754529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Kroløkke, Anne Nørkjær-Bang, U. Ovaska, M. Honkatukia
{"title":"A Flock of One’s Own: Nordic Human-Mountain Cattle Kinship-Making Practices","authors":"C. Kroløkke, Anne Nørkjær-Bang, U. Ovaska, M. Honkatukia","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10188","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article employs critical cultural and anthropological perspectives to investigate the ways in which Nordic mountain cattle are kinned and become positioned as kin. It does so by empirically foregrounding photographic material, elicited from the 3MC Traditional Transboundary Cattle Breeds’ photo competition, along with photo elicited interviews with 13 of the participating photographers. Nordic mountain cattle become “kinned” as “mothers,” “family members,” “friends,” “colleagues,” and “pets” through a range of kinship-making practices such as naming, gendering, and anthropomorphizing cattle with distinct human-like personalities. The article concludes by turning to the affective values and cultural logics that situate mountain cattle as forms of Nordic cultural heritage. In these entanglements, mountain cattle resurrect Nordic cultural heritage and temporality facilitating new Nordic naturecultures in which humans are simultaneously (re)connected to nature and cultivated as future (new) citizens.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"88 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140418223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sarah M. Germain, Karlene D. Wilkie, Virginia M. K. Milbourne, J. Theule
{"title":"Animal-Assisted Psychotherapy: A Meta-Analytic Review","authors":"Sarah M. Germain, Karlene D. Wilkie, Virginia M. K. Milbourne, J. Theule","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10186","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this meta-analysis, we examine the efficacy of animal-assisted psychotherapy (AAP) on mental disorders. Twenty-eight studies quantitatively assessed the treatment effects of AAP. We used a random effects model to aggregate each study into an overall effect size. We found a large effect for pre- versus post-intervention comparisons and a moderate effect for the treatment versus control comparison for all disorders. Most of the moderator analyses were non-significant. We used the Grade measure (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation) to assess the quality of the studies included in this paper. The results of the Grade analyses indicated a score of very low quality on the assessment. Therefore, only tentative conclusions about the efficacy of AAP can be drawn. The results suggest that AAP is a potentially efficacious treatment for mental disorders; however, significant limitations temper this conclusion.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"298 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140454348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Animals’ Mobilities in Popular Fiction: Time, Duration, and Desire in Sheila Burnford’s The Incredible Journey","authors":"Philip Howell","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10177","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In Sheila Burnford’s 1961 novel The Incredible Journey, three domestic animals undertake an arduous trek through the forests of northern Ontario to be reunited with their owners and family. As an example of “homing instinct” stories, The Incredible Journey has been influential, notably as a result of the 1963 Disney film. The genre is easily dismissed as sentimentally anthropomorphic, but this paper treats Burnford’s novel as a sophisticated treatment of animals’ mobilities in terms of literary animal studies. Drawing on the philosophy of Henri Bergson, The Incredible Journey is presented as an adventure in time rather than in space, contrasting the human perspective of maps and miles with the Bergsonian concept of duration, the real experience of the passage of time, and with related themes of free will, instinct, and desire. This paper concludes that Burnford offers a less anthropocentric perspective on animals’ mobility.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"24 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139523320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Animals and Amour-Propre in Rousseau’s Second Discourse","authors":"Robert Grimwade","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10167","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article explores the role of human-animal relations in the emergence of amour-propre, as presented in Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men (also known as the Second Discourse). Rousseau’s natural vegetarianism thesis is used to elucidate and interrogate fundamental pivots in his conjectural history of human development. The implications of the connection between amour-propre and human-animal relations are explored in relation to anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism, and the disavowal of nonhuman suffering in Western culture.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"73 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139526623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pigs and Pathogens: “Swine Flu” as a Boundary Object for Animal Rights and Farming Discourses","authors":"Abigail A. Couture","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10176","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper considers the ways in which discourse around the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak reflects differences in framing and symbolic boundary negotiation amongst animal rights organizations, small scale farming advocates and meat industry representatives. Frame analysis shows how “Swine Flu” is treated as a “boundary object” to negotiate its significance and meaning for human and non-animal health writ large. The ambiguity of the virus’ origins, who was responsible, and who should care allowed Swine Flu to emerge as a boundary object for stakeholders to negotiate within public health discourse. Thematic analysis identified six separate frames, revealing patterns of meaning-making by animal rights organizations (AROs), farm-to-table groups, and meat industry networks. Frame use illustrates how Swine Flu was situated by competing stakeholders to reinforce a network of boundaries. Future directions consider the applicability of frames to understand boundary processes during COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139532650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Javier López-Cepero Borrego, Lidia Catalina Navarro, Joaquín Ruiz Estrada
{"title":"Attitudes and Intentions Regarding Animal-Assisted Interventions: Associated Variables Among Southern Spanish Psychologists","authors":"Javier López-Cepero Borrego, Lidia Catalina Navarro, Joaquín Ruiz Estrada","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10161","url":null,"abstract":"This study examined acceptance of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) among Spanish psychologists (N = 332; mostly women). Participants reported attachment to animals, empathy, anthropomorphism, attitudes toward AAI, AAI knowledge, and intention to use AAI. Although less than 20% had AAI training, over 85% of participants were interested in using AAIs. Considering companion animals as human social equivalents and having specific AAI training were associated with more positive expectations of AAI, while personal distress was negatively associated. The variables influencing interest in developing AAI were positive attitudes, anthropomorphism, being female, and training, explaining 59% of the variance. Results showed that AAIs have high acceptance among psychology professionals, but interest in implementation was stronger when participants had positive attitudes toward AAI, showed high levels of anthropomorphism, and were female, rather than as a result of AAI training. Representing and publicizing AAIs as evidence-based treatments is important to enhance professional growth in the field.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"7 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139173171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advancing Veganism in a “Post-Vegan Society”: A Review of Veganism: Politics, Practice, and Theory","authors":"C. Wrenn","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10160","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"325 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139203537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dogs in Dutch Media: Exploring Public Opinion As A Step Toward Solving Dog Welfare Problems","authors":"S. Ophorst, N. Aarts, B. Bovenkerk, Hans Hopster","doi":"10.1163/15685306-bja10154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10154","url":null,"abstract":"Dogs are considered humans’ best friend, but this relationship is not all puppies and sunshine. Zoonoses, biting incidents, hereditary problems, and other welfare issues can threaten the relationship, especially when humans are not aware of them. Public opinion on dogs in the densely populated Netherlands was therefore examined. Dutch newspapers and Facebook were analyzed with frame analysis. A positive view of dogs seems predominant, followed by one that sees dogs as normal, while problems with dogs are less common. That dogs are considered close to humans is exemplified by the found norms that the needs of dogs must be met, that severe penalties must be applied when humans do not respect the welfare of dogs, and that dog keepers and conditions are responsible for problems with dogs. The image of the dog as ordinary may hinder public awareness, despite the norms that emphasize the importance of dog welfare.","PeriodicalId":506309,"journal":{"name":"Society & Animals","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}