Article Text
Abstract
Human-animal relations are increasingly imbricated, encountered and experienced in the production of medicine and health. Drawing on an empirical study of care farms in the UK, this article uses the language of symbiosis to develop a framework for critically considering the relationships enrolled within interspecies therapeutic practices. Care farming is an emerging paradigm that aims to deploy farming practices as a form of therapeutic intervention, with human-animal relations framed as providing important opportunities for human health. This article moves to attend to multispecies therapeutic interventions and relationships from a more-than-human perspective, drawing attention to the often-troubling anthropocentrism in which such practices are framed and performed. Attempting to perform and realise human imaginations of ‘therapeutic’ affects, spaces and relationships can rely on processes that reduce animals’ own opportunities for flourishing. Yet, the therapeutic use of other species does not have to be forever anthropocentric or utilitarian. The article explores whether relations between humans and animals might result in a level of mutual proliferation of affective capacities, reciprocally beneficial. These human-animal entanglements highlight opportunities to think more critically about how to practice interspecies relationships and practices in ways that are less parasitic, and instead framed more by attempts at producing opportunities for mutualistic flourishing.
- human-animal relations
- care farming
- symbiosis
- animal-assisted-therapy
- parasitism
- mutualism
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Footnotes
Contributors RG is the sole author of this manuscript.
Funding This research was conducted as part of a 3-year Ph.D. scholarship, jointly funded by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship (grant reference ES/J500197/1) and a Cardiff University President’s Scholarship. The article has also benefited from further reflections and thinking undertaken during work on the ‘Animal Research Nexus’ Wellcome Trust collaborative award (205393/Z/16/Z).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval Ethical approval for this research was granted by Cardiff University School of Planning & Geography School Research Ethics Committee in December 2014.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement No data are available.