The 6th and final Workshop in this series, entitled 'The Animal Within' will take place on Tuesday 16th March at Bristol University's Veterinary School. In this final workshop, we take a wide ranging look at the ‘human animal’, drawing upon the varied inputs of psychology, media studies, social sciences as well as zoology and biology, to explore how far various animalisms in the understanding of human behaviour might ultimately go.

The speakers a the workshop will be:

Lynda Burke:  New directions in human-animal studies

Kay Peggs:  Ethical correspondences

Joanna Latimer: Posthumanities

The 5th Workshop in the series, entitled 'Knowledge and Animal Cultures' took place at the University of Reading on Tuesday 12th January.

 The aim of the workshop was to explore how our growing understanding of animal societies and social behaviours– drawing partly from primatology – invites a less dualistic and exclusive sense of what constitutes ‘society’, ‘culture’ and strictly ‘human’ behaviour, and, in doing so suggests a possibly less autonomous sense of mind, subjectivity and engagement. Focusing both on the methodological and the ontological issues associated with ‘objective’ accounts of the animal, the workshop explored the human, and non-human social context in which both animals and humans are implicated and enrolled.

The Speakers at the Workshop were:

Francoise Wemelsfeder: How animals communicate quality of life: qualitative assessment of animal behaviour

Stephen Lea: What do we now know about what animals know, and what does it matter?

Rebekah Fox:  Everyday negotiations of the animal-human divide in pet-keeping

Kate Hill:  The birth of ethnoprimatology

Richie Nimmo:  Primate Visionaries: Constituting Hybrid Knowledges

4th Workshop : Wildlife, Empathy and Environmental Behaviour

The growing proximity of the increasingly mediated ‘wild’; through the reinvention of zoos as both sanctuaries for endangered animals and educational centres as well as the explosion of wildlife programmes on the television, all impact upon human attitudes to ‘nature’. How do portrayals, representations and interactions with ‘wild’ animals impact upon environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour ? These are the themes of this particular workshop which features papers by the following: Piran White: 'Contrasting attitudes towards native and invasive species'; Angela Cassidy: 'Badgers, cows and us; shifting conflicts'; Garry Marvin: 'Challenging Animals: An exploration of the practices and performances of modern hunting'; Chris Wilbert: 'Questioning ‘wild’ animal mediations in Art, Zoos, Nature Documentaries and Leisure/Tourism practices'; Christoph Schwitzer and Simon Garrett: 'Zoos, education and the public: a perspective from Bristol Zoo'; and Stephen Moss: 'Wildlife on screen'. The workshop is being held on Tuesday 15th December 2009 at the Bristol Veterinary School, Langford.

Film "Horse Boy" is on BBC 4 21.00, 24 11 09

The Horse Boy

Today, 21:00 on BBC Four

Synopsis

Filmmaker Michel Orion Scott captures a magical journey into a little-known world, in a documentary which chronicles Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff's personal odyssey to make sense of their child's autism, and find healing for him and themselves in the unlikeliest of places.

Animals for Peace

When I presented a paper on the domestic geographies of cats at workshop 2 of the network, I made the point that in my family our cats are often used as peace brokers in tensions between human family members. In the follow up comments someone suggested that the use of animals in conflict resolution on the domestic scale could be scaled up. This seemed an intriguing idea to me. (People are often prepared to heed the plight of animals rather than other people). I guessed that others would have already had this idea. I decided to poke about on Google and found the following website. Animals for Peace. Cheers Owain

http://www.peaceforanimals.makessense.co.uk/index.html

BBC Two's Wonderland and 7 pups

A lovely UIBEN-like example of how to do a 'follow the thing' on 7 staffie bull-terrier crosses pups.. And really understand individual human behaviour..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nts91/Wonderland_Series_2_Seven_Pups_for_Seven_People/

Seven puppies are born to a first-time mother called Uggs in a cramped front room in East London. These aren't just cute and cuddly puppies - they are Staffordshire bull terrier crosses, the dogs the tabloids sometimes call 'devil dogs'. They are both one of the most sought-after breeds in the country, and perversely the most frequently abandoned. One in three of Battersea Dogs Home's total intake is a Staffie cross.

This film follows the fate of Uggs' puppies as her owner tries to find new homes for them at 300 pounds a pup. It isn't long before boon turns to burden, however, as Uggs' owner realises the puppies are costing her more in food and care than she can ever make from the sales.

Introducing Uggs' owner and the new Staffie pup owners, this film uncovers the lives of the people from a marginalised section of society, who may mistrust other humans, but have a genuine love of the Staffordshire bull terrier.

3rd Workshop : Nurturance, Husbandry and Consumption

The third workshop was held at the Universty of Reading on Tuesday 10th November. The theme of this third session was 'Nurturance, husbandry and consumption' . The aim of the workshop was to explore what that ‘taking care of’ consists of, how ‘care’ relationships are constructed and performed, how they are intertwined and negotiated with other, often contradictory behaviours and practices (such as the culling or killing of formerly nurtured animals), and how notions of ‘care’ become translated and enacted through the food chain to impact upon individual choices at the point of product transformation, selling, acquisition and, ultimately consumption. Ultimately, we ask what are the effects of care and nurturance regarding animals on individual human behaviour. Speakers at the workshop included Rhoda Wilkie, Emma Roe, James Yates, Richard Bennett and Adrian Evans.