Research project Reading Pain: Cultural Conceptions of Animal Suffering
The conceptualizations of animal pain govern the ways in which animals are treated. Therefore, it is pivotal to understand how it is made sense of in cultural representations found in literature, popular science, and spiritual belief.
The conceptualizations of animal pain govern the ways in which animals are treated medically, legally and in everyday relations. Animal pain cannot be directly accessed and, therefore, it is pivotal to understand how it is made sense of in cultural representations such as in popular culture. This project explores how ideas, concepts and discourses concerning animal pain have changed from the 1970s until today. The project aims to identify these imaginaries through qualitative analyses of representations of animal pain, in three different but interrelated contexts:
- fictional stories/memoirs about caring for animals;
- veterinary knowledge and practice as displayed in animal care handbooks and guides; and
- books about telepathic communication with animals, in which veterinary knowledge is contested.
The project departs from the idea that there are multiple areas of knowledge involved in assessing pain and illness in animals – scientific, practical, situated, and tacit – leading to diverse ways of conceptualizing animal minds. This project differs from previous research by comparing these fields of knowledge in a novel way, highlighting how they impact one another. We will be able to identify different ways in which animal pain and illness are discussed and overlaps between them. The project will shed light on how animal subjectivity came to matter, discern important shifts, and introduce key concepts in this process.
Project members are listed below.
International collaborators to the project include: the Pet Loss Network (UK), Prof Alex Franklin (Coventry University, UK), Dr Helen Wadham (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), and the Human–Animal Studies Hub (University of Lisbon).
National collaboration in Sweden includes Stockholm University Environmental Humanities Network, Prof Christina Fredengren (Stockholm & Uppsala University), Prof Jonna Bornemark (Södertörn University), and Dr Krystof Kasprzak (Södertörn University).
Project description
The conceptualizations of animal pain govern the ways in which animals are treated medically, legally and in everyday relations. Animal pain cannot be directly accessed and, therefore, it is pivotal to understand how it is made sense of in cultural representations such as in popular culture. This project analyzes conflicting perspectives on animal pain within human–animal relationships from the 1970s until today.
Since the 1960s, emerging voices have turned public attention to the plight of animals in industrial food production, including the book Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison (1964) and the Brambell Committee report in 1965 outlining the Five Freedoms for animal welfare. These were followed by a re-actualization of utilitarian philosophy in cross-disciplinary discussions concerning animal suffering with Peter Singer’s (1975) work. At the same time, urbanization changed the ways of relating to animals in everyday life, leading to an increasing popularity and visibility of companion animals. The 1970s also saw a shift in animal training, where a previous emphasis on dominance and the infliction of pain began to be replaced by the use of positive reinforcement (Włodarczyk 2018). These developments together furthered an interest in promoting companion animal wellbeing and good care.
This project explores how ideas, concepts and discourses – or imaginaries (Verran 1998; Jasanoff 2004) – concerning animal pain have changed from the 1970s until today. We look at popular books published in the anglophone world, where ideas about animal welfare primarily emerged. These ideas have subsequently been widely accepted and adopted, also internationally. The project aims to identify these imaginaries – important as they shape human ways of responding to animal pain and illness. This will be accomplished through qualitative analyses of representations of animal pain, in three different but interrelated contexts:
- fictional stories/memoirs about caring for animals;
- veterinary knowledge and practice as displayed in animal care handbooks and guides; and
- books about telepathic communication with animals, in which veterinary knowledge is contested. In these different genres, we will study the ways in which the minds of animals are conceptualized and how knowledge travels between the genres (Brown 2010).
Research questions:
- How has animal pain been constructed in representations of human–animal relations and interactions in the anglophone world since the 1970s?
- What kind of imaginaries about animal minds are in use when assessing animal pain in fiction, handbooks and spiritual literature, and how do they vary over time?
- How can gaps and overlaps between these three literature genres be understood, and which alternative concepts might be useful in understanding animal pain and suffering?
The project connects to three different research fields: literary studies of human–animal relationships, cultural studies of animal health care, and cultural perspectives on human–animal interaction and communication.
The welfare of animals in human care depends on the ability of humans to understand and respond to their needs and feelings. Therefore, it is important to recognize what knowledge informs this ability. The project departs from the idea that there are multiple conceptualizations of animal minds as well as areas of knowledge involved in assessing pain and illness in animals – scientific, practical, situated, and tacit – which are further contextualized in the rather separate fields of fiction writing, animal health care literature, and speculative literature on telepathic animal communication. This project differs from previous research by comparing these fields of knowledge in a novel way. The development of veterinary medicine and alternative methods of treatment as well as the history of animal representation have each been investigated separately, while this project will instead highlight the importance of how the adjacent fields impact one another. We will be able to identify different ways in which animal pain and illness are discussed and overlaps between them. The project will shed light on how animal subjectivity came to matter, discern important shifts, and introduce key concepts in this process. Thereby it will be possible to reach a better understanding of how animal subjectivity is understood. Based on these results, we will develop new conceptual tools for the use of owners, health practitioners as well as others working with animals to secure their health and wellbeing.
Project members
Project managers
Karin Dirke
Professor
Members
David Redmalm
Associate professor
Nora Schuurman
Senior research fellow
