Call for papers for the RGS-IBG International Conference, Cardiff, 28-31 August 2018

Session Title:  The workings of power: shaping human-animal relations through training

Session organisers: Nickie Charles, Rebekah Fox, Mara Miele, Harriet Smith

This session explores the emergence of new understandings of human-animal engagements, how these understandings inform training practices, and the possibilities this presents for the emergence of different and less exploitative forms of inter-species relating.

We locate this discussion in the expanding landscape of less human-centred relations to nonhuman animals and a shift away from anthropocentric strategies of domination and exploitation in many practices involving animals. These changes have been associated with the emergence of a post-human sensibility, a de-centering of the human and a recognition that non-human animals actively shape their encounters with humans (Cudworth, 2011; Pearson, 2015;  Skoglund & Redmalm, 2016). 

Some argue that the increase in pet keeping in western societies is indicative of these changes as is the fact that companion animals are regarded by many as important family members (Franklin, 1999; 2007; Charles, 2014). These practices of inter-species cohabitation call into question the modernist separation between the human and the non-human and are becoming a focus of academic attention across the disciplines. Animal sentience, welfare and rights are increasingly a topic of public concern that is apparent in a number of human-animal intersections such as health and food production (Miele, 2016, Miele and Evans, 2010; Evans and Miele, 2012). Furthermore, there is evidence that inter-species co-habitation contributes to human well-being and that this may relate to the emotional attachment between humans and companion animals (Vitztiak and Urbanik, 2016; Despret, 2004; Walsh, 2009). 

All of this has brought about something of a revolution in both the need for animal training and the way it is carried out. An increasing dog population in many western societies has gone along with a massive increase in the availability of training and the need to ‘regulate’ dogs’ behaviour (Instone and Sweeney, 2014, Fox and Gee, 2016, Fox and Gee, 2017). In the training world there has been a shift from ‘traditional’ methods associated with correction to positive training methods associated with behaviourism and, latterly, developments in cognitive ethology (Orlowska, 2016:56; Pregowski, 2015). This can be understood in Foucauldian terms as involving a shift from disciplinary to social power (Wlodarcyk, forthcoming) or as exemplifying a move away from the human will to dominate (Tuan, 1984). It can, however, be argued that the workings of power have shifted so that there is now a process of ‘becoming with’ (Haraway, 2007) based on: the empathetic, respectful and inter-agentic relationship between human and animal; the way ‘training’ changes both human and animal participants; and the active participation and enjoyment of both animal and human in joint activities (Pregowski, 2015). 


These shifts are evident not only in training practices involving companion animals but also those involving working animals, performing animals, zoo animals and lab animals. These different training practices are likely to have varying effects on human and animal welfare as well as assuming and facilitating different forms of human-animal connectedness. This is significant not only for those who participate in them but also for scholars attempting to understand the practices in which newly-emerging human-animal relations are embedded; how these practices challenge anthropocentric assumptions about human-animal relations; and the forms of power on which they are based.


We are interested in papers that examine:

•	Animal training practices and frameworks; 
•	Companion inter-species relationships;
•	Caretaker-animal relations in zoos and wildlife parks;
•	Lab animals as active participants;
•	Animal participation in entertainment;
•	Human animal connectedness in animal farming; 
•	Inter-species power relations.

Please send an abstract of 250/300 words to: 
Nickie Charles ([log in to unmask]), Rebekah Fox ([log in to unmask]) Mara Miele ([log in to unmask]) or Harriet Smith ([log in to unmask]) by February 10th.

Bibliography

Charles, N (2014) ‘“Animals just love you the way you are”: experiencing kinship across the species barrier’, Sociology, 48 (4): 715-730

Cudworth, E (2011) Social lives with other animals, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Despret, V (2004) Our emotional makeup, ethnopsychology and selfhood, New York: Other Press

Evans, A. and Miele, M. (2012) ‘Between food and flesh: how animals are made to matter (and not to matter) within food consumption practices’ Environment and Planning D- Society and Space, 30(2), pp.298-314  

Fox, R & Gee, N (2017) ‘Great expectations: changing social, spatial and emotional understandings of the companion animal–human relationship’, Social and Cultural Geography. Published online June 2017.

Fox, R & Gee, N (2016) ‘Changing Conceptions of Care: the Humanization of the Companion Animal Relationship’ Society and Animals, 24(2): 107 – 128

Franklin, A (2007) ‘Human-nonhuman animal relationships in Australia: an overview of the results from the first national survey and follow-up case studies 2000-2004’, Society and Animals, 15: 7-27

Franklin, A (1999) Animals and post-modern cultures, London: Sage Publications

Haraway, D (2007) The companion species manifesto, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Instone, L., & Sweeney, J. (2014). The trouble with dogs: ‘Animaling’ public space in the Australian city. Continuum, 28, 774–786.

Miele, M. (2016) The Making of the Brave Sheep or … the Laboratory as the Unlikely Space of Attunement to Animal Emotions, GeoHumanities, 2 (1) 58-75.

Miele, M. and Evans, A. (2010) ‘When Foods become Animals, Ruminations on Ethics and Responsibility in care-full spaces of consumption’, Ethics, Policy and Environment, Vol.13, n.2 pp 171-190. 

Orlowska, A (2016) ‘Toward mutual understanding, respect, and trust: on past and present dog training in Poland’ in M P Pregowski and J Wlodarczyk (eds) Free-market dogs: the human-canine bond in post-communist Poland, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press 

Pearson, C (2015). Beyond ‘resistance’: rethinking nonhuman agency for a ‘more-than-human’ world. European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 22(5), 709-725. 

Pregowski, M P (2015) ‘Your dog is your teacher: contemporary dog training beyond radical behaviorism’, Society and Animals, 23: 525-543

Skoglund, A & Redmalm, D (2016). 'Doggy-biopolitics': Governing via the First Dog. Organization. 24.  10.1177/1350508416666938.

Tuan, Y F (1984) Dominance and Affection: the making of pets, New Haven: Yale University Press

Vitztiak, C and Urbanik, J (2016) ‘Assessing the dog: A theoretical analysis of the companion animal’s reactions in human-animal interactions’, Society and Animals, 24 (2): 172-185

Walsh, F (2009) ‘Human-animal bonds II: the role of pets in family systems and family therapy’, Family Process, 48 (4): 481-499

Wlodarczyk, J (forthcoming) Genealogy of obedience: Reading North American dog training literature, 1850s-2000s, Brill