In this paper, we explore how caretakers experience living with disabled companion animals. Drawing on interviews, as well as narratives on websites and other support groups, we examine ways in which caretakers describe the lives of animals they live with, and their various disabilties. The animals were mostly dogs, plus a few cats, with a range of physical disabilities; almost all had been rehomed, often from places specializing in homing disabled animals. Three themes emerged from analysis of these texts: first, (...) respondents drew heavily on the common narrative of disabled individuals as heroes, often noted in disability rights literature – while simultaneously drawing on, and challenging, ideas of disability as incapacity. The second theme was love and empathy. Several of our interviewees spoke of empathy being enhanced thro We discuss these caretakers' stories of animal disability in relation to both studies of human-animal relationships, and to disability rights, as well as to ideas about what constitutes care. What these narratives emphasize is a particular sense of sharing and reciprocity, felt through the body, especially when caretakers spoke of their own ill-health. They saw disability – the animals' or their own – not as limiting, but as enabling both to flourish within caring relationships. (shrink)

Although the notion of natural behavior occurs in many policy-making and legal documents on animal welfare, no consensus has been reached concerning its definition. This paper argues that one reason why the notion resists unanimously accepted definition is that natural behavior is not properly a biological concept, although it aspires to be one, but rather a philosophical tendency to perceive animal behavior in accordance with certain dichotomies between nature and culture, animal and human, original orders and invented (...) artifacts. The paper scrutinizes the philosophy of natural behavior as it developed in the organic movement in response to a perceived contrast between industrialized and traditional agriculture. There are two reasons for focusing on the organic movement: (i) the emphasis on “the natural” is most accentuated there and has a long history, (ii) everyday life on organic farms presupposes human/animal interplay, which conflicts with the philosophical tendency to separate nature from culture. This mismatch between theory and practice helps us see why, and how, the philosophy of natural behavior needs to be reconsidered. The paper proposes that we understand farms as local human/animal cultures, and asks what we can mean my natural behavior in such contexts. Since domestic animals adapt to agricultural environments via interaction with caretakers, such interplay is analyzed as “hub” in these animals’ natural behavior. (shrink)

The roles companion animals have played in our lives has dramatically changed over the last few decades. At the same time, the terms we use to describe both the people and animals in these human-animal relationships have also changed. One example includes the use of the terms ‘owner’ or ‘guardian’ to refer to the human caretaker. While preferences by society appear to indicate increased interest in referring to companion animal caretakers as ‘guardians’, others have cautioned against its (...) use or attempted to restrict it. Additionally, the use of animal welfare terminology has direct implications for how we conduct both welfare research and practice. Our paper examines the use of ‘owner’ and ‘guardian’ with respect to (1) the implications for changing terminology on the function, clarity and uniformity of their use, and (2) the ethical and welfare impact that coincides with each term’s use. Our goal is to propose terminological considerations that could influence future welfare research, as well as help guide our interactions with companion animals. (shrink)

Intrinsic value and animal integrity are two key concepts in the debate on the ethics of the genetic engineering of laboratory animals. These concepts have, on the one hand, a theoretical origin and are, on the other hand, based on the moral beliefs of people not directly involved in the genetic modification of animals. This ‘external’ origin raises the question whether these concepts need to be adjusted or extended when confronted with the moral experiences and opinions of people directly (...) involved in the creation or use of transgenic laboratory animals. To answer this question, 35 persons from the practice of biomedical research who are directly involved in genetic engineering (scientists, biotechnicians, animal caretakers and laboratory animal scientists) were interviewed. They were asked to give their moral opinion on different aspects of the genetic engineering of animals and to react to statements about the concepts of intrinsic value and animal integrity. Analysis of the interviews showed that, contrary to what is often assumed, the respondents embraced these concepts, even those senses that (more) specifically apply to genetic engineering. And although the respondents raised some objections that go beyond issues of animal welfare, these objections could quite well be expressed in terms of the concepts of intrinsic value and animal integrity. In short, the results of the present study strongly suggest that these concepts do not have to be adjusted or extended in the light of the moral experiences and opinions from practice. (shrink)

Intrinsic value and animal integrity are two key concepts in the debate on the ethics of the genetic engineering of laboratory animals. These concepts have, on the one hand, a theoretical origin and are, on the other hand, based on the moral beliefs of people not directly involved in the genetic modification of animals. This ‘external’ origin raises the question whether these concepts need to be adjusted or extended when confronted with the moral experiences and opinions of people directly (...) involved in the creation or use of transgenic laboratory animals. To answer this question, 35 persons from the practice of biomedical research who are directly involved in genetic engineering (scientists, biotechnicians, animal caretakers and laboratory animal scientists) were interviewed. They were asked to give their moral opinion on different aspects of the genetic engineering of animals and to react to statements about the concepts of intrinsic value and animal integrity. Analysis of the interviews showed that, contrary to what is often assumed, the respondents embraced these concepts, even those senses that (more) specifically apply to genetic engineering. And although the respondents raised some objections that go beyond issues of animal welfare, these objections could quite well be expressed in terms of the concepts of intrinsic value and animal integrity. In short, the results of the present study strongly suggest that these concepts do not have to be adjusted or extended in the light of the moral experiences and opinions from practice. (shrink)

There is no systematic research on the rites and rituals associated with companion animal death in modern Australian society. Three cremation service providers were interviewed and asked to consider which caretakers have their companion animals cremated. Seven people who had recently had a companion animal cremated were then asked about their views on the process. Five interrelated themes emerged from the two data sets about who uses cremation services for companion animals: “Everyone uses companion animal cremation services”; (...) “People who consider the companion animal as a family member, as a child”; “People who want memorials for their companion animals”; “Grieving people”; and “People who seek compassion and social support.” With scant recognition of the impact of companion animal death and the role of rites and rituals in facilitating the grieving process, further research in the area is needed, including into attachment as a possible mediator. (shrink)

Agricultural technologies are non-neutral and ethical challenges are posed by these technologies themselves. The technologies we use or endorse are embedded with values and norms and reflect the shape of our moral character. They can literally make us better or worse consumers and/or people. Looking back, when the world’s developed nations welcomed and steadily embraced industrialization as the dominant paradigm for agriculture a half century or so ago, they inadvertently championed a philosophy of technology that promotes an insular human-centricism, despite (...) its laudable intent to ensure food security and advance human flourishing. The dominant philosophy of technology has also seeded particular ethical consequences that plague the well-being of human beings, the planet, and farmed animals. After revisiting some fundamental questions regarding the complex ways in which technology as agent shapes our lives and choices and relegates food and farmed constituents into technological artifacts or commodities, I argue that we should accord an environmental virtue ethic of care—understood as caretaking—a central place in developing a more conscientious philosophy of technology that aims at sustainability, fairness, and humaneness in animal agriculture. While technology shapes society, it also is socially shaped and an environmental virtue ethic of care (EVEC) as an alternative design philosophy has the tools to help us take a much overdue inventory of ourselves and our relationships with the nonhuman world. It can help us to expose the ways in which technology hinders critical reflection of its capacity to alter communities and values, to come to terms with why we may be, in general, disengaged from critical ethical analysis of contemporary agriculture and to consider the moral shape and trajectory and the sustainability of our food production systems going into the future. I end by outlining particular virtues associated with the ethic of care discussed here and consider some likely implications for consumers and industry technocrats as they relate to farming animals. (shrink)

This study examines how people engage with the dynamic environment of the dog park in the face of unclear or ambiguous rules and emergent norms. Using participant observation, the analysis shows how, in the formal dog park, caretakers become “control managers” who must negotiate problems related to a variety of dog behaviors, especially mounting, aggression, and waste management. In this process, caretakers use various strategies to manage their own and others’ possible perceptions and understandings of appropriate behavior for dogs in (...) public places. (shrink)

For the general public, there is an intuitive appeal to an animal's living in the wild rather than in captivity. Rarely is it an appeal informed by careful scientific or ethical analysis, however. This paper discusses how animal release projects ought to be conducted, guided by the question, "what are the duties of humans toward animals that are to be released?" It studies the ethical responsibilities of caretakers, practical elements of a responsible release, and proper selection of candidate (...) animals for release, and what marine science tells us about how best these requirements might be achieved. (shrink)

This article, drawing on selected feminist magazines of the 1980s, particularly Feminist Arts News (FAN) and GEN, offers a textual ‘braiding’ of narratives to re-present a history of Black British feminism. I attempt to chart a history of Black British feminist inheritance while proposing the politics of (other)mothering as a politics of potential, pluralistic and democratic community building, where Black thought and everyday living carry a primary and participant role. The personal—mothering our children—is the political, affording a nurturing of alterity (...) through a politics of care that is fundamentally antiracist and antisexist. I attempt to show how Black feminist thought can significantly contribute to democracy in the present and how Black British history and thought, as fundamentally antiracist and anticolonial, can generate a reinvention much needed in the present of a shared British history. I argue for feminist intervention premised upon a politics of care, addressing through activist mothering the urgency of Black absence from prestigious institutions. Such debilitating absence in Britain inhibits the development of scholarship, distorts feminist history and seriously concerns potential Black feminists. From diverse texts, I develop a genealogical narrative supplemented through memory work. This ‘gathering and re-using’ privileges Black women's theorising as a crucial component of the methodological metissage, which includes auto-theorising to develop ideas of resemblance in relation to Black British feminism and feminist kinship. The resultant ‘braiding’, I suggest after Lionnet, questions the absence of intersubjective spaces for reflection on Black British feminist praxis, indicating a direction for British feminists of all complexions. Attentive to the 1980s as historical context while invoking the maternal, I consider what is required to engage generationally, counterwrite the academy and pursue a dynamic process of transformation within a transnational feminism that challenges Black British absence from academic knowledge production, while nurturing its presence. (shrink)

Going beyond the creolisation theories of Brathwaite and Glissant, I attempt to develop ideas concerning the gendering of creolisation, and a historicising of affects within it. Addressing affects as ‘physiological things’ contextualised in the history of the Caribbean slave plantation, I seek, importantly, to delineate a trajectory and development of a specific Creole history in relation to affects. Brathwaite's proposition that ‘the most significant (and lasting) inter-cultural creolisation took place’ within the ‘intimate’ space of ‘sexual relations’ is key to my (...) argument. In the light of this, I consider how Creole cultural knowledge about affect—as the primary motivational system inclusive of fear, anger, outrage and so on — might be identified, and what constitutes such Creole knowledge within which affect might be embedded. How might Glissant's relationality and Creole literary texts add to this knowledge? I focus primarily on three texts: Clarke's The Polished Hoe, Collins’ The Colour of Forgetting and Morejón's ‘Amo a mi amo’/‘l Love My Master’. Each text on which I draw is selected for its intersectional representation of gender relations, ‘knowledge about sexual difference’ and its representation of Creole subjectivities within the context problematised here as the ‘demonic ground’. Moreover, as auto-theorising texts, they represent both narrative and meta-narrative of a creolising of affects in and against the economy of the slave plantation. Each represents also a stage or aspect of the development of subjectivities and an affective community that inform this intervention concerned with theorising against consolidated, universalising and Eurocentric conceptualisations of affect. In the process, I attempt to offer a differentiated cartography and literary archaeology of affect. (shrink)

Pedigreed breeding often leads to severe health problems for, say, those dogs who exist as a result of the practice. It is also the case that virtually all of those unhealthy animals would not exist at all if it were not for the practice of pedigreed breeding. If those animals have lives worth living, then it follows that they are not harmed by the practice—assuming that a life worth living is better than no life at all. It would seem, then, (...) that the standard account of harm cannot account for the wrongness of our intentionally creating pets with lower welfare. I argue that there is an overlooked aspect of harm that, when coupled with our responsibilities as animal caretakers, entails that we ought to cease the practice of pedigreed breeding for the sake of future pets, even if many actual pets are not made worse off by the practice. (shrink)

Caretaking stability in the early life environment supports neurobehavioral development, while instability and neglect constitute adverse environments that can alter maturational processes. Research in humans suggests that different types of early life adversity can have differential effects on caretaker relationships and later cognitive and social development; however, identifying mechanistic underpinnings will require animal models with translational validity. Two common rodent models, maternal separation and limited bedding, influence the mother-infant relationship during a critical window of development. We hypothesized that (...) these paradigms may affect the development of communication strategies on the part of the pup. Ultrasonic vocalizations are a care-eliciting mechanism and ethologically relevant response to stressors in the rat pup. USV emission rates and acoustic parameters change throughout early development, presenting the opportunity to define developmental milestones in USVs that would reflect neurobehavioral aberrations if disrupted. This study investigated the effects of MS or LB on the dam-pup relationship by quantifying pup USVs, maternal behavior, and the relationship between the two. First, we used a generalized additive model approach to establish typical developmental trajectories of USV acoustic properties and determine windows of change in MS or LB rearing. Additionally, we quantified maternal behaviors and the predictability of maternal care sequences using an entropy rate calculation. MS and LB each shifted the developmental trajectories of USV acoustic parameters and call types in a sex-specific manner. MS more often impacted male USVs, while LB impacted female USVs. MS dams spent more time passive nursing, and LB dams spent more time on the nest. The predictability of maternal care was associated with the rate of USV emissions exclusively in females. Taken together, findings demonstrate sex- and model-specific effects of rearing environments on a novel developmental trajectory involving the mother-infant relationship, facilitating the translation of animal ELA paradigms to assess later-life consequences. (shrink)

This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Ten principal expressive aspects of music retain specific structural patterns to signify a certain affective state, which distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages. Therefore, the question of music’s origin can be answered by establishing the point in human history, at which expressive aspects might have been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and (...) used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-comparison of the typical patterns of expression of the same basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information as a result of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls adopted for ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been discovered spontaneously in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved. (shrink)

Facing up to the head -- The secreting head -- Being my head -- The head comes to -- Airhead : breathing and its variations -- Communicating with air -- Enjoying and suffering my head -- Communicating without air -- Notes on the red-cheeked animal : the geology of a blush -- The watchtower -- The sensory room -- Having and using my head -- Head traffic : eating, vomiting and smoking -- Head on head : notes on kissing (...) -- Headgear -- Caretaking my head -- In the wars -- The dwindles -- Knowing (and not knowing) my head -- Head and world -- The thinking head -- Epilogue: Heading off. (shrink)

Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agents per se, but as depictions of social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a (...) class consist of three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. With social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents – the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork in Newmarket, England, and Kentucky, this paper examines the acts of looking that take place at international thoroughbred horse auctions. Racehorse caretakers employ bloodstock agents to select the yearling thoroughbred who will make the best racehorse as a 2-year-old and, hopefully, successful stallion or broodmare after retiring from the track as a 4- or 5-year old. The paper assesses the criteria used to assess yearlings: pedigree, conformation, and "that something extra."The paper concludes that the ambiguous status of (...) the bloodstock agent derives from the liminal task the agent performs, communicating with a young, nonhuman animal to discover the animal's essential properties. Selecting yearlings depends upon a process of divination that mitigates against the characterization of western thought as "rational" and opposed to decision-making processes conventionally thought of as "non-normal" or irrational. (shrink)

A Teaching Memoir That Crosses the Barriers Between Worlds A shaman is one who has learned to move between two worlds: our physical reality and the realm of spirits. For John Lockley, shamanic training also meant learning to cross the immense divide of race and culture in South Africa. As a medic drafted into the South African military in 1990, John Lockley had a powerful dream. "Even though I am a white man of Irish and English descent, I knew in (...) my bones that I had received my calling to become a sangoma, a traditional South African shaman," John writes. "I felt blessed by the ancient spirit of Africa, and I knew that I had started on a journey filled with magic and danger." His path took him from the hills of South Korea, where he trained as a student under Zen Master Su Bong, to the rural African landscape of the Eastern Cape and the world of the sangoma mystic healers, where he found his teacher in the medicine woman called MaMngwevu. In Leopard Warrior, John shares a gripping account of his experiences and the wisdom he learned over years of training. Here he invites you to discover: • Powerful insights into the spiritual tradition of the Xhosa lineage of South Africa—the tribe of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu • Ubuntu—a core concept for recognizing and embracing our deep interconnection with all living things • Ancestor medicine—how we can learn to honor the blood in our veins, the heritage of our soul, and our shared humanity • Recovering our forgotten knowledge about the wisdom of our dreams, the spirits of plants and animals, and the power of the unseen world In traditional African healing circles, the leopard represents intuition, instinct, and harmony with nature and the spirit world. As John Lockley writes, "A leopard warrior is a spiritual soldier who mirrors the natural world and directs their gaze inward to answer the call of their spirit." With Leopard Warrior, he brings us an inspiring call to action—showing how we can bridge the barriers that divide us, embrace the gifts of our ancestors, and reclaim our rightful place as compassionate caretakers of our world. (shrink)

A problem for natural scientific accounts, psychology in particular, is the existence of value. An ecological account of values is reviewed and illustrated in three domains of research: carrying differing loads; negotiating social dilemmas involving agreement and disagreement; and timing the exposure of various visual presentations. Then it is applied in greater depth to the nature of language. As described and illustrated, values are ontological relationships that are neither subjective nor objective, but which constrain and obligate all significant animate activity (...) physically, socially, and morally. As an embodied social activity, conversational dialogue is characterized in terms of values, pragmatics, and presence rather than in terms of syntactic and semantic rules. In particular the nature of dialogical arrays is explored, and the hypothesis that language is an action system, a perceptual system, and a caring system is explored. Language expands horizons and makes it possible for humans to realize their calling as culture makers and caretakers. (shrink)

Welfare science has built its foundations on veterinary medicine and thus measures of health. Since bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) tend to mask symptoms of poor health, management in captivity would benefit from advanced understanding on the links between health and behavioural parameters, and few studies exist on the topic. In this study, four representative behavioural and health measures were chosen: health status (as qualified by veterinarians), percentage of daily food eaten, occurrences of new rake marks (proxy measure of social activity), (...) and willingness to participate (WtP) in Positive Reinforcement Training sessions as qualitatively measured by their caretakers. These data were collected multiple times a day, every day over the course of a year from a multi-facility, large sample size (ndolphins= 51), allowing powerful analyses of the relationships between measures. First, it was found that dolphins with a higher WtP score also had a significantly better health status, ate a higher percentage of their daily food, and a lower occurrence of new rake marks. In addition, the WtP score was significantly lower up to 3 days before the weekly veterinary diagnosis of a decrease in health state; the percentage of daily food eaten and new rake mark measures did not show any significant change before such a diagnosis. These results suggest that WtP in training sessions is a potential behavioural measure of dolphin welfare, and an indicator of early changes in the dolphins’ health state. We therefore suggest measurement of WtP as a more practical and non-invasive tool to support veterinary care and general management. More work needs to be conducted to elucidate the influence of social behaviour on health, and to identify other potential welfare indicators, but this long-term study has shown that qualitative measures can be both practical and valid when assessing dolphin welfare. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dominion over Wildlife? An Environmental Theology of Human–Wildlife Relations by Stephen M. VantasselColeman FanninDominion over Wildlife? An Environmental Theology of Human–Wildlife Relations Stephen M. Vantassel Eugene, OR: Resource, 2009. 232pp. $26.00In Dominion over Wildlife?, Stephen Vantassel, a scholar with professional experience in animal damage control, provides a substantive examination of the neglected subject of human–wildlife relations. For this, he is to be commended. Although ultimately disappointing, his (...) argument indicates that much work remains to be done in this area.Vantassel’s subtitle is somewhat misleading since he devotes the bulk of the book to a polemic against a small group he terms “Christian Animal Rights (CAR) activists”—especially Anglican theologian Andrew Linzey and his followers—who question the idea that God grants humans dominion over creation (“Dominionism”), including the moral right to manage, kill, and eat animals. “The critical question... is whether CAR activists are correct in their belief that Scripture exhorts us to adopt a vegetarian and non-violent stance toward animals” (14). Vantassel’s response is more exegetical than theological, and in the mode of conservative evangelical apologetics, he devotes chapters to refuting CAR activists’ appeals to the Old Testament (specifically the covenant of Creation, the narratives of the Fall and Noah, the sacrificial system, and passages that support humane treatment of animals); the New Testament (Christ’s concern for animals, a Christus Victor view of the atonement, and an Edenic eschatology); ethics (compassion, restraint, and stewardship); and science (a case study of whether trapping is unnecessarily cruel and environmentally irresponsible). Only in the final chapter does he propose his model of “Shepherdism,” which “avoids the negative stereotypes held against Dominionism, while upholding God’s decree that humans maintain their superintendence over animals” (160). Shepherdism centers on the principles that creation is “God’s property,” that humans are charged with being its caretakers, and that Christ is a model for behavior toward it. Vantassel insists that humans should treat wildlife humanely and not exterminate species.For Vantassel, theology is a matter of individuals—largely apart from church or tradition—reading an inerrant Bible to discern God’s commands. Likewise, ethics is a matter of individuals using reason to construct arguments that “stand on their own merits” and “may still be sufficient to persuade, if not compel, Christian behavior even if Scripture does not mandate the behavior” (99). This [End Page 193] is not the forum for criticizing these approaches, but they not only distance Vantassel’s argument from scholarship in the field—which he does not engage—but also make it unlikely that it will persuade those who do not read the Bible or view God in the same way. To note two examples, on the basis of Amos 4, he contends that “some environmental problems are caused not through our direct abuse of the land but through our disobedience, which God then punishes through sending environmental catastrophes” (165n13), and on the basis of Christ’s acceptance of fishing with nets (Luke 5:4), he contends that “Christians are permitted to not only eat animals, they may employ means to capture them that will cause pain and injury” (171). Indeed, as a lifelong hunter who shares Vantassel’s basic position, I found myself more sympathetic to the CAR activists’ arguments toward which he is frequently uncharitable; he associates them with Darwinism and feminist and liberation theologies, labels their hermeneutics “modernistic” for stressing narrative, and variously calls their ideas “absurd,” “incredulous,” and “strange.”Vantassel discusses a number of helpful statistics and studies, and he rightly points out the problems posed by factory farming, the disproportionate effects of environmental degradation on the poor, and the practical difficulties of vegetarianism. However, his preoccupation with exegesis means that he underemphasizes these issues and overlooks others, including hunting becoming a trophy-obsessed, technology-dominated “sport.” Hopefully he and other scholars will produce more on this subject in the near future.Coleman FanninBaylor UniversityCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

After a brief overview of the scientific data on cloning, the article examines the ethical issues put forth by this particular form of reproduction. A distinction is made between the application of cloning to the animal and vegetable realms and to the human species. The cloning of plants and animals is ethically permissible if it guarantees the preservation of species and of genetic diversity within the species. Humankind is not entitled to an absolute and irresponsible dominion -ius utendi et (...) abutendi - over the world. As the Yahwist has taught us, the human person has been placed in the middle of the garden as its guardian and caretaker . On the other hand, the prudent use of vegetable and animal cloning can render a great service to humankind both in agriculture and in medicine. When it comes to the application of cloning to the human species, the article introduces a distinction between the «procreation» of human beings through these techniques and the reproduction of human cells for therapeutic uses. The author concludes that the production of human persons through the application of cloning techniques is morally unacceptable. The ethical objections are presented under three major headings: 1) the respect due to the human embryo; 2) the dignity of the human person ; and 3) the authentic meaning of human procreation as a fully human activity. The values at stake in the cloning of human beings are among the most basic values for th. (shrink)

I have argued, then, that is simplistic and potentially dangerous to suppose that a contractarian model can adequately account for all of the moral relations in agriculture or serve singularly as a basis for policy. Conversely, I do not naively argue that we ought simply to replace a contractarian based agricultural ethic with an ethic of care such as the one I have outlined. A single farmer may be a spouse, parent, son or daughter, caretaker of land, keep of (...) animals, business operator and partner, employer, processor, and consumer. Agriculture itself encompasses all of these relations. Both our ethical systems and social and economic policies must reflect and build on this diversity of contexts and associated practices. (shrink)

The animal that therefore I am (more to follow) -- But as for me, who am I (following)? -- And say the animal responded -- I don't know why we are doing this.

This article examines the gender politics of Euro 2012, an international men’s football tournament that took place in Poland and Ukraine, through two cases of female protest. Informed by Cynthia Enloe’s question ‘Where are the women?’, the case studies focus on Polish football fan and model Natalia Siwiec and Ukrainian women’s organisation FEMEN in order to render visible the heteromasculine nation–sport nexus underpinning Euro 2012. The analysis demonstrates how Siwiec emerges as the ‘caretaker’ of the Polish nation-state during the (...) event by exposing how female bodies can be used to recuperate a polluted and emasculated national image. In contrast, FEMEN’s stunts are highly critical of the heteromasculine nation–sport nexus and reveal their position as ‘rebels’; however, a closer analysis of FEMEN’s actions beyond Euro 2012 shows how they can simultaneously operate as ‘enforcers’ of the nation-state. The role of ‘enforcers’ is especially pertinent in relation to the western nation-state’s contemporary ‘othering’ of Islam in the post-9/11 context. Both case studies demonstrate international politics in the making and call for closer scrutiny of the gender politics constitutive of seemingly apolitical and ‘inclusive’ sporting events. (shrink)

In debates about animal sentience, the precautionary principle is often invoked. The idea is that when the evidence of sentience is inconclusive, we should “give the animal the benefit of the doubt” or “err on the side of caution” in formulating animal protection legislation. Yet there remains confusion as to whether it is appropriate to apply the precautionary principle in this context, and, if so, what “applying the precautionary principle” means in practice regarding the burden of proof (...) for animal sentience. Here I construct a version of the precautionary principle tailored to the question of animal sentience together with a practical framework for implementing it. I explain and defend the key features of this framework, argue that it is well-aligned with current practice in animal welfare science, and consider and reject a number of influential counterarguments to the use of precautionary reasoning in this area. (shrink)

Traditionally animal ethics has criticised the anthropocentric worldview according to which humans differ categorically from the rest of the nature in some morally relevant way. It has claimed that even though there are differences, there are also crucial similarities between humans and animals that make it impossible to draw a categorical distinction between humans who are morally valuable and animals which are not. This argument, according to which animals and humans share common characteristics that lead to moral value, is (...) at the heart of animal ethics. Lately the emphasis on similarity has been under attack. It has been claimed that the search for similarity is itself part of anthropocentric morality, since only those like us are valuable. It also has been claimed that true respect for animals comes from recognising their difference and 'otherness', not from seeing similarities. This paper analyses the new 'other animal ethics' by critically examining its basis and consequences. The conclusion is that despite the fact that other animal ethics is right in demanding respect also for difference, it remains both vague and contradictory in its theoretical basis, and leads to undesirable consequences from the perspective of animal welfare. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can be compatible with recognizing (...) the inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

Do animals have moral rights? In contrast to the philosophical gurus of the animal rights movement, whose opinion has held moral sway in recent years, Peter Carruthers here claims that they do not. He explores a variety of moral theories, arguing that animals lack direct moral significance. This provocative but judiciously argued book will appeal to all those interested in animal rights, whatever their initial standpoint. It will also serve as a lively introduction to ethics, demonstrating why theoretical (...) issues in ethics actually matter. (shrink)