Domesticity and Beyond: Living and Working with Animals – Symposium in Ontario
Posted on September 14th, 2012
The introduction to the event “DOMESTICITY AND BEYOND: Living and Working with Animals” is beautiful as it is evocative: “What do we owe the animals we live and work alongside…?” It is beautiful because just asking the question seems to open up the possibility of continuing, or creating anew, an ongoing relationship of living and working alongside animals, and of giving back and making up. But still, the answer is by far not clear whether we can or should, nor what nuances of possibilities there might be.
The first paragraph of the announcement in full:
“What do we owe the animals we live and work alongside, and those who are beyond our reach but inevitably affected by human decision-making? How can we move beyond the problem of harm to cultivate animal-human relationships in morally informed and politically effective ways? Human relationships with animals are pervasive and inevitable, and yet it is only recently that the animal ethics literature has begun to seriously address such questions. Moreover, past political efforts to address and rectify the exploitation of animals have been sorely ineffectual.”