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What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming
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 wi...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6818525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31409658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011627 |
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author | Gorman, Richard |
author_facet | Gorman, Richard |
author_sort | Gorman, Richard |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6818525 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-68185252019-11-12 What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming Gorman, Richard Med Humanit Original Research 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. BMJ Publishing Group 2019-09 2019-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC6818525/ /pubmed/31409658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011627 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Original Research Gorman, Richard What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
title | What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
title_full | What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
title_fullStr | What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
title_full_unstemmed | What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
title_short | What’s in it for the animals? Symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
title_sort | what’s in it for the animals? symbiotically considering ‘therapeutic’ human-animal relations within spaces and practices of care farming |
topic | Original Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6818525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31409658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011627 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT gormanrichard whatsinitfortheanimalssymbioticallyconsideringtherapeutichumananimalrelationswithinspacesandpracticesofcarefarming |