In this thesis I perform a canine-centric reading, within the theoretical frame of Critical Animal Studies, of nine ‘dog narratives’ from the last three decades – that is, novels in which dogs and human-canine relationships are central to the story. While the novels differ from each other in numerous and substantial ways, they share a common trait: a conduciveness to the examination of tensions, paradoxes and contradictions inherent to the human-canine bond as it exists in Western culture. Each chapter centres on a key motif present in various groupings of four of the selected novels: human and canine interspecies communication; the socio-cultural categorisation of dogs; and the dual role of the domesticated dog as a device in life and literature. Just as Western cultural attitudes, overt and implicit, arise in these dog narratives in turn, these dog narratives provide valuable insight into our contradictory perceptions and subsequent treatment of dogs bred to serve as companions. Dog narratives present us with an opportunity to examine and critique some of the assumptions made about dogs – assumptions that result in their paradoxical status in Western culture. While some dog narratives reinforce the belief that human language privileges the human species, others undermine this claim by privileging canine forms of language and through depicting human language as problematic or as overrated as a means of communication. Authors of dog narratives utilise conflict stemming from opposing views of dogs’ subject/object categorisation in Western culture to challenge the deleterious object status of dogs. Most, if not all, dogs depicted in dog narratives are devices to facilitate the conveyance of stories primarily concerned with human experiences; nevertheless, authors of dog narratives can and do find efficient ways to challenge and question reductive representations of dogs. By utilising techniques such as point of view, characterisation and the itinerancy trope, and by creatively and effectively imagining their way into the canine mind, many authors of dog narratives bestow a canine identity upon the dogs they depict, which challenges our ability to view and treat dogs with detached objectivity and, in doing so, they offer more positive representations of the literary canine companion.

Potential alliances between queers and animals populate queer scholarship, while dominant culture has relegated both groups to similar sites of subjugation and abjection. My work presents utopic visions crafted from these shared sites of marginalization and asks how they can enable new biopolitical communities. I ask: can we co-habitate, with non-human animals, these particular sites of marginalization in a manner that enables cross-species, affective solidarity? And can this co-habitation also encourage ruptures within heteronormative and human-centric paradigms? Rescuing the subjectivity and cultures of animals from extent subjugations can build new multispecies communities that are essential in an era of environmental devastation and climate change. Through printmaking, installation and time-based media, I explore real, psychological and metaphorical environments of cross-species encounters.

Despite growing academic interest in the human–animal relationship, little research has been directed toward the political regulation of animal treatment. Even less attention has been accorded to the emergence of the long dominant paradigm in this policy area, namely, the ideology of animal welfare. This book attempts to address this gap by chronicling the early history of animal politics in Sweden with the aim of producing a critical, deconstructive genealogy of animal cruelty and animal welfare. The study ranges from the first political debates about animal cruelty in 1844 to the institution of Sweden’s first comprehensive animal protection act in 1944. Taking a post-Marxist and psychoanalytically informed approach to discourse analysis, the study focuses on how the “problem” of animal cruelty was articulated in the parliamentary debates and government documents throughout the period: What was the problem of animal (mis)treatment represented to be? What kinds of animal (ab)use were rendered uncontroversial? What kind of affective investments and ideological fantasies underpinned these discursive constructions, and how did the problematizations change over time? The book contains six empirical chapters that deal with the most important legal revisions in the period as well as the parallel debates about animal experimentation and slaughter. Two major discursive regimes—an early “anti-cruelty regime” and a later “animal welfare regime”—are identified in the material, and the transition between them is theorized in terms of discursive antagonism and dislocation. Focusing on the conflict between competing discursive logics, the study charts a century of ideological struggles through which our modern attitudes toward animals were born. The book also offers a critical reinterpretation of the success story of animal welfare. Against the assumption that modern animal welfarism progressively grew out of the preceding anti-cruelty regime, the central claim of this book is that the “welfarist turn” that took place in the 1930s and 1940s also functioned to re-entrench society’s speciesist values and de-problematize the exploitation of animals for human purposes.

Animal slaughter has recently become highly visible in popular food media. This thesis interrogates the myths, assumptions and ideologies underlying this so-called New Carnivore movement, through critical analysis of a range of popular gastronomic texts. Socially-constructed ideas about ‘reality’, ‘sentimentality’, ‘sacrifice’, and ‘redemption’ are intimately implicated in the process of animal slaughter, as are the notions of ‘good taste’ and social distinction. The domination of animals, demonstrated through the slaughter, butchery, and consumption of nonhuman bodies, is held to be an integral component in the performance of gender, as well as a means of reconnecting, via a kind of secular epiphany, with ‘Nature’ at its most authentic. As a hostile backlash against the social progress made by the animal advocacy and vegetarian movements, New Carnivorism denigrates vegetarianism and veganism as outdated, unfashionable, unnatural, puritanical and rude. Although these texts’ potential to inspire farmed animal welfare reform should not be ignored, New Carnivorism ultimately serves to naturalize, justify and promote the continued consumption of meat, and the continued exploitation of nonhuman animals, in Western societies.

This thesis extrapolates upon theoretical examinations of meat consumption as linked to masculinity in order to consider how meat consumption may also be connected to dominant themes in Canada’s national foundation as marked by whiteness, multiculturalism, and post-coloniality. I investigate two sets of advertisements – Maple Leaf Canada’s “Feeding the Country” commercial, and Alberta Beef Producer’s Raised Right online campaign – through employing multimodal critical discourse analysis and tenets of Stuart Hall’s theories of representations. In doing so, I argue that meat consumption is depicted in advertising as an ideologically and symbolically loaded practice that seizes upon and re-articulates greater themes of Canadian national identity in a way that denotes the nation as having overcome its racial tensions and colonial history.

Animals as Laboratory Objects: Analysis of the Power Discourse PhDr. Tereza Vandrovcová Abstract This dissertation thesis encompasses a critical discourse analysis of the power correlates of expert knowledge and other factors that can hinder the open and unbiased discussion concerning the ethical aspects of the use of nonhuman animals in biomedical experiments. A brief history of "the animal" is first provided before the issue is positioned within the theoretical framework of Animal Studies. The fourth chapter is composed of an overview of the most frequent arguments both for and against the use of animals in biomedicine. The author draws upon her research as she analyzes scientific texts to reveal how laboratory animals are socially constructed as scientific objects and subsequently describes the effects this has on the perception of their moral value. A series of semi-structured interviews with critics and advocates of animal experimentation, such as animal rights activists and laboratory workers who conduct experiments on animals, is the pivotal section of the paper. It is established that lab workers in the sample are convinced of the necessity and legitimacy of current practices, that lab workers have a tendency to suppress animals' individuality when describing their work, that lab workers deem their...

This diploma thesis is inquired into the problematic of anthropocentrism and it' s relationship with the living nature. It is obvious that the anthropocentrism contributed to the current ecological crisis. The author is trying to delimit the definition framework of anthropocentrism and to find it's social, scientific even religious roots and to find the possible ways out of the crisis. The author also presents the key-concepts and theories that are non-anthropocentrically based and that are presenting the possible alternative attitude to the environment connected with the transformation of human values. Concretely it engages James Lovelocks Gaia Theory, Arne Naesses deep ecology and ecosophy or the Fritjof Capras new paradigm. Farther away it also follows the possibility of practical change of our life-concepts and as it's example describes the new concept of voluntary simplicity and New Age.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur djurrättstankar skildras i de två välkända barnböckerna Black Beauty och Charlotte’s Web. Uppsatsen utgår ifrån frågeställningar som fokuserar på hur relationen mellan djur och människa ser ut,hur djurrättstankar kommuniceras i böckerna och vilka likheter/skillnader det finns i behandlingen av djuren i de båda böckerna. Tidigare forskning på djurrättsfrågor i barn- och ungdomslitteratur har haft ett brett perspektiv och fokuserat på hur olika djurrättsfrågor tagits upp i olika skönlitterära exempel. Tidigare forskning av Black Beauty har fokuserat på relationen mellan människa och djur. Den fokuserar på hur den påverkas av speciesism och av att människan dominerar. Tidigare analys av Charlotte’s Web har fokuserat på grisens subjektivitet och hur det är människornas påminnelse av denna som räddar Wilburs liv.I uppsatsen görs en kvalitativ analys där mening försöker hittas i texterna för att få en förståelse av hur djurrätt framställs i böckerna- Uppsatsen gör även en analys av relationen mellan text och bild i Charlotte’s web, samt en komparativ analys mellan de båda verken. Uppsatsen utgår ifrån ett ekokritiskt perspektiv där bland annat begreppet antropomorfisering är relevant. Critical Animal Studies är också en relevant teori för uppsatsen och framförallt begreppet speciesism. Analysen visar på hur djurrättstankarna förmedlas genom hur djuren i böckerna uttrycker sina känslor och att slakt och djurmisshandel problematiseras. Budskapen i verken är att djur vill leva och må bra och att det lönar sig att vara vänlig mot djuren då djuren i böckerna belönar vänlighet med vänskap. Båda böckerna förmedlar också djurens subjektivitet och att djuren har ett eget värde och inte bara ett värde i vad de kan göra för människan.

Animals and social work is an emerging field, and there is a troubling lack of research that has been conducted that attempts to document or explore the experiences of the animals involved in these practices. This dissertation explores the experiences of dogs working alongside social workers, using a mixed methods approach focussing on qualitative data. Data was gathered using critical ethnographic methodology involving interviews with social workers, dog owners and service users. Extensive observational field notes were taken during the use of an emerging research-creation digital method with the dogs and sensor data technologies. This research addresses three questions: (1), How can the experiences of dogs in social work be documented? (2), Why is it important to document these experiences? (3), How are dogs experiencing their involvement in social work practice? (4), What knowledge do the social workers who work with dogs have about involving these animals in social work? The data in this study isanalyzed through a critical post-humanist lens informed by decolonial Indigenous knowledges. Important themes that emerged were interspecies relationships, dog personalities and behaviourswhile working, workplaces and responsibilities, needs and benefits, training, and use of technology in research with OTH animals. Based on the innovative findings of this study, it can be determined that partial experiences of OTH animals involved in social work practice can and should be documented and explored to understand the high levels of responsibility, professionalism, and expectations that working dogs in the field are subject to. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation uses a mixed-methods approach to explore the experiences of dogs involved in social work practice. The research addresses four questions: (1), How can the experiences of dogs in social work be documented? (2), Why is it important to document these experiences? (3), How are dogs experiencing their involvement in social work practice? (4), What knowledge do the social workers who work with dogs have about involving these animals in social work? Based on the findings, it can be determined that partial experiences of dogs involved in social work practice can and should be documented and explored to understandthe responsibility, professionalism, and expectations that working dogs are subject to.

Through non-human animals, humans have come to understand ways of living in this world and simultaneously animals have provided the resources for humans to claim this living. But through this progression and time humans have become detached from the origin of the resources. By this separation it becomes possible for humans to turn a blind eye to cruelty and the environmental impact that the claim to non-human animals convey. With the aim is to evoke reflection on the human ruling of the non-human animals, this project aims to design objects and furniture that are uncanny, familiar and ordinary but at the same time off-putting and maybe strange. By examining phycology and consumer culture theory, seek to find habits in the Swedish everyday life which are intimate and recognizable such as fredagsmys, a placeholder for consumption and hierarchies. Then through the analyse of critical animal studies, design objects and furniture that challenge these habits and positions of consumption and hierarchy.