[Reader-list] Old Dog, New Tricks?: Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context

[aditi saraf]

Hello all,

This is our first posting, spelling out some ideas we have started out
with. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Santana Issar and Aditi Saraf




Old Dog, New Tricks?

Rethinking Animal Activism in an Urban Context


With the achievement of the urban-scape as perhaps the zenith of human
civilization - conceptualised as the passage from 'nature' to
'culture'- the same processes that have caused the ascendancy of the
city have rendered animals virtually invisible in urban spaces. This,
despite their overwhelming presence in the same. The curious thing
about animals in the city is the perception that they are not really
meant to be there…

Human-animal relationships have been historically constituted in
complex and intimate ways along the economic, the affective, the
cultural and ritual, and the metaphoric. As these relationships become
increasingly tenuous, it has been suggested that animals have been
reconfigured in the urban imagination; as household pets – owned
commodities supported by an ever-burgeoning industry - as objects of
wonder and display in zoos and circuses, and, to put it rather
crudely, as salami sandwich or Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Our concerns are primarily twofold.

Firstly, does this driving of a wedge between human lives and those of
animals inform dominant notions of 'animal welfare'? To what extent
does this divide affect the functioning of organizations and
institutions that emerge around animal activism? For this purpose, the
main unit of our study will be the animal welfare organization (AWO)
in the city, whether state-supported, non-government or religious. The
structure and function of these organizations, the demographic profile
that they target and derive support from, the informal networks and
mobilization strategies they adopt, and the normative space that they
occupy within the spectrum of urban ideologies will be the main
empirical focus of our study. The intention is to delineate a
relationship between the theories of human-animal interaction in a
post-industrial urban context and the practices of animal rescue and
welfare, in the context our own urban jungle – Delhi.

Our second concern arises from the ambivalence with which 'animal
welfare' is commonly regarded - even by those who do not necessarily
dislike animals – as a romanticized indulgence of the urban elite.
Moreover, activities undertaken by animal welfare activists are often
perceived to be inconsistent with human rights. Is animal welfare the
pursuit of a privileged segment of urban society that can afford to
gloss over human miseries? Or can the parameters of animal activism
transcend the dichotomies of kindness/cruelty,
vegetarians/meat-eaters, in order to encompass a more nuanced
understanding of human-animal relationships?

In the quest for the answer to the latter question, we will study
forms of inter-species interaction in the urban environment that lie
outside the dominant paradigms of ownership, care-taking and the
spectacle of the zoo or the circus. Some of these forms may be
manifest, for instance, in relationships between stray animals and
homeless children, performing monkeys and their owners,
livestock/labouring animals and their keepers, or in the
ritual/cultural realm - for example, temple elephants and their
mahouts, ghodis and their keepers, pigeon flyers and their birds. How
should we perceive these relationships? What roles do such animals
play – are they possessions, companions, cohabitants? What are the
dynamics of co-dependency in such cases? How do they undercut the
dominant notions of 'wild animals', 'pet animals', and animals-as-food
that predominate in urban human-animal interactions? Do such forms
articulate the notion of 'animal welfare' differently?

The above constitutes a (rather loose) theoretical framework around
which we hope to undertake research. However, only extensive fieldwork
can provide this project focus and direction, as well as the
confidence to make claims. Our research methodology and documentation
will involve both the textual and visual, conducted through
participant observation, interviews and questionnaires, photographic
and video recording.

Must the interests of animals be antithetical to those of humans? This
is the question that has provided the moral impetus for this proposal.
In our search for the answer, we have found little that addresses this
particular problem, in this particular context. We hope to study and
eventually derive innovative strategies of 'welfare' that will address
the apparent incompatibilities between animal needs and human
interests.

We hope that our project will not only add to understanding urban
ecology, but also enlarge and enrich the scope of animal activism in
Delhi.