Learning to Question Animal Ownership in Child-Animal Relations? An Ethnography of Child-Horse Encounters

• In Event: 61.044 - Big Little Lies: Contradictions, Distortions, and Fictions in Human-Animal Education

Abstract

This paper highlights a child–animal relation in which owning of the animal is of little interest to the child. The discussed case between a 10-year old girl and a horse is an anomaly in the wide empirical study this paper is based on. The purpose of the paper is to use insights from the ethnography with the child and the horse to address a polarised philosophical question in human–animal relations: should we keep or abolish owning and using of non-human animals. As the particular child–animal relation will show, the idea of respect is more central to the child than owning or not owning.
The polar ends of the discussion maintain at one end that there is nothing wrong per se about animals who are owned, i.e. dependent on humans (e.g., Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2010), and at the other end that all animal use, including working relations and pet keeping, should be abolished (e.g., Francione & Charlton, 2015). Scholars from law (Tannenbaum, 1995) and political theory (Cochrane, 2012) point out that the issues of what (kind of) rights non-human animals have in the first place warrant more discussions.
The materials this paper is based on are produced within a 6-month long multispecies ethnography. Main participants were a 10-year old girl with an intense interest in horses, but with no animal related hobbies or animals in her family; me as a researcher and my horse, a 12-year old mare. The three of us met up regularly at the stables over chores and tending and riding the horse; we exchanged messages, the girl kept a diary for the entire time, and I read two of her favourite novels on horses. Weaving the lives of the three of us together in ways available to us, we have produced a deeper understanding of what else can matter in child–animal relations than owning, which seems to characterise most accounts by children.
The one thing more important to the girl than owning an animal, seemed to be respect (also Regan, 2004). The idea of respect, as it mattered to the child, and the routes and practices through which she actively kept seeking for and expressing respect show that we are talking about a process rather than a set or chosen attitude. Of particular interest to her, throughout the study, was the mind of the other animal.

Author

• Pauliina Rautio, University of Oulu