Royal Geographical Society International Conference 2018 : Interspecies relatings and the emergence of new forms of human-animal engagement
Harriet Smith reports on a panel session organised by the project team
From 28th to 31st August 2018, Cardiff was positively buzzing with geographers! The reason for this was that it was the annual International Royal Geographic Society Conference, which this year, took place at Cardiff University. There were over 1,700 delegates from over 50 countries who took part in over 370 sessions during the three days! The weather was warm and sunny and there was a fabulous atmosphere in the sessions, cafes, and the corridors.
As usual the conference covered a vast range of topics. We took part by organising a panel entitled ‘Interspecies relatings: the emergence of new forms of human-animal engagement’. It was the first conference that we have been involved in as a research team, so we were very excited. Gail Davies (University of Exeter, UK) agreed to be our discussant and our session included five papers. The session aimed to explore the emergence of new understandings of human-animal engagements, and discussed how such understandings both inform, and are informed by, animal training practices. These changes are associated with wider cultural shifts involving a de-centering of the human and an exploration of the ways in which non-human animals actively shape their encounters with humans.
Nickie Charles kicked off the session with our paper entitled ‘The workings of power: shaping human-animal relations through training’ which was based on our review of dog training manuals from the mid-1800s to the present day. The presentation highlighted some of the decisive factors in the formalisation of dog training over the past 150 years, and the subsequent changing attitudes and practices associated with training in the UK. We explored how changing practices relate to understandings of animal learning, and the power dynamics shaping human-animal relationships.
Lynda Birke (who is an expert on both dogs and horses), followed with her paper: ‘What is best for the horse? Contested frameworks of training and human-horse relationships.’ She argued that horse-training practices have come under increasing scrutiny, with calls to prioritise positive reinforcement and more empathetic ways of being with horses. The horse-training world is a spectrum of regimes often headed by celebrity trainers marketing a particular training philosophy. Lynda argued that despite talk of what is 'good for' horses, horses themselves are often portrayed as mere recipients of human practices during training, rather than training being understood as a relational process between human and horse.
Lynda drew attention to complex anthropocentric and ethical divisions in the horse training world which are also apparent in other types of animal training. Though closely attending to horse and dog training practices the many crossovers become apparent, for whilst dogs are not horses and do not carry out the same labour for humans as horses, both species share the experiences of being trained by, or training with humans. From Nickie’s paper it became apparent how cultural beliefs shape training norms - for example the use of corporal punishment as a nineteenth century norm for training of both humans and other animals has shifted now towards a notion of punishment as pointless and cruel.
Rebekah Fox then presented a paper on companion animals entitled
‘Love and responsibility: changing understandings of the human companion animal relationship.’ She reviewed how pet-keeping practices have become increasingly central to everyday social and economic life and showed how pet keeping is subject to both formal and informal forms of regulation and scrutiny. Rebekah argued that over time new forms of human-companion animal relations have developed which have consequences for human and animal health, behaviour, and relationships.
Rebekah’s paper helped to situate the former discussion of dog and horse training through providing a closer look at the shifting expectations humans place upon their relationships with animals. Furthermore, Rebekah provided insight into the related expectations placed upon humans who choose to share their lives with animals, manifested through increased formal regulation as well as informal expectations of how animals should behave in public spaces for example. This paper therefore went some way to explaining the increased requirements that animals (especially dogs) are trained, and thus shaped in ways that enable them to become ‘civilised’ participants in everyday public spaces.
Paul O'Hare’s paper ‘Making space for ‘bad’ dogs? A tale of co-negotiated and circumscribed spatial and temporal walking practices’ drew upon an auto-ethnographic case study to illustrate the difficulties of being in public spaces with his dog. Paul’s case study provided an opportunity to consider a troubling and often stressful dimension of pet ownership: namely the experience of caring for and managing a dog displaying unwanted aggression to people and other dogs. Paul described managing his dog’s need to run free by exercising him in ‘safe’ spaces in his local area. This paper both introduced a novel case study of problems with living with dogs in urban areas and also highlighted how dog training programmes can be critical to facilitating the mediation of co-habited public space.
Lastly Fenella Eason provided a different example of an everyday human-dog dyad in the form of an analysis of dogs who have received highly specialised training in order to support people with Type 1 diabetes. Fenella’s paper, ‘The power of symbiosis in care-work: education boosts canine-human biomedical collaboration, stretching the boundaries of chronic illness’, addressed the daily performing of complex life skills by an inter-species partnership. She argued that assistance dogs may be considered as biomedical resources, as well as sentient instruments of care, willing assistants or as full members of multi-species families. This last case study provided a useful micro-illustration of how dog training has become highly specialised, particularly in medicine, both in care work and diagnostics, as well as other sectors such as forensics and other new forms of police work.
The conference was a great way to introduce the team’s research, and to begin a conversation exploring how dog training can be understood as a set of technologies that are embedded in many forms of assemblage such as for example, the domestic settings that were explored by some of our panel papers.
Overall the five papers attended to specific aspects of animal performatvities, with each paper questioning where and how the agency of dogs (and horses) is encouraged, shaped, and mediated through differing forms of practice (training) and relational affordances. Lynda’s reminder to always bring the animals into the heart of the research is a requirement of good animal studies scholarship and a foundation of the tenets of multispecies research that we are aiming to develop through our own multi-methodological approach- but more of that in a later post…..watch this space.
Harriet Smith is a Research Associate on the project ‘Shaping inter-species connectedness’ and is based in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University.