Incorporating Animal Perspectives Into Research
In my last post I discussed research addressing the links between human violence and animal abuse. I highlighted a paper by Clifton P. Flynn, which stressed the need to study this issue and others from a perspective that takes seriously the perspective of animals. The fields of Human-Animal Studies (HAS) and Critical Animal Studies (CAS) do just that. This is a small but growing academic field that allows researchers to understand physical, social and theoretical issues from an important and new perspective. Below I highlight a few studies coming out of this field and how the HAS and CAS perspective can shed new light on old problems.
In the abovementioned paper, Flynn addressed the fact that the links between human violence and animal abuse could not fully be understood in part because most studies neglect the issue of normalized or legal animal abuse. Flynn is one of only a handful of scholars who has looked at these connections. In a study based on surveys of college students, he analyzed whether hunting was tied to committing property damage or injuring people. He finds that while men who hunted in childhood were no more likely to have fought with other people than were non-hunters, they were more than twice as likely to have damaged property. This study sheds light on the damage that objectifying and killing animals can have on individuals; though the physiological cause for this link is not explicit, this study suggests that perhaps the normalization of killing animals, who hunters treat as objects, encourages the destruction of other objects (public and private property).
Amy Fitzgerald, Linda Kalof, and Thomas Dietz have also looked at the implications of legal animal abuse on human violence. In an impressive study, the authors examined the effects of slaughterhouses on arrest rates. Utilizing various statistical models, they were able to control for factors that typically affect arrest rates and to account for factors that are often used to explain increased crime rates in towns with slaughterhouses, such as poverty and large immigrant populations. They compared the slaughterhouse industry to other major industries and found that — in comparison to other industries and independent of all other factors typically associated with increased crime and violence — slaughterhouse employment increases total arrests and arrests for rape, other sex offenses and violent crimes. In a culture where mass-produced meat is normal part of peoples’ daily diets, and the government subsidizes the meat industry, it requires a critical perspective to understand that all violence against animals can have important implications for those animals and for society generally, which is why HAS and CAS are so important.
In academia it is often the case that the intellectual pursuit is the most important aspect of a research project, while with HAS and CAS, the relevance of the research question for those working to improve conditions for animals is important as well. Scholars working in these fields are interested in bringing scholarly expertise to animal advocacy by asking research questions with implications for animals.
A perfect example of this is work by Joshua M. Frank & Pamela Carlisle-Frank, who have completed a number of studies that examine what interventions are necessary to effectively reduce shelter killings. In one study, they worked with Maddie’s Fund to examine the validity of the argument that community funded low cost spay-neuter programs do not increase total spay-neuter rates, but rather only shift spay and neuter from private vets to the low-cost community program. Frank and Carlisle-Frank used data from a number of shelters and analyzed it using various statistical models to test this claim. They found that a growth in discount spay-neuter programs accompanies an overall growth in regular spay-neuter procedures: “the two types of procedures complement each other rather than crowding each other out.”
In an individually-authored study, Joshua Frank used a theoretical generalized population flow model to address what would effectively reduce euthanasia in canine populations—spay-neuter, adoption or both. He found that a 48.6% reduction in dog owners who do not spay neuter can bring the euthanasia rate to zero and that increasing adoption reduces euthanasia as well. The latter can happen through convincing people to adopt animals (not purchase them) or getting people who otherwise wouldn’t have sought out an animal to adopt. These studies are important as they have direct implications for the type of programs shelters and communities fund and implement. However, such real-world applications are often not the driving force behind academic inquiry.
HAS and CAS are important not only for helping animals, but also for influencing the way that individuals view animals and academia values social problems as an impetus for scholarly activity. This field of study makes valid the animal as not only a point of inquiry, but also as an individual whose perspective is important for shaping research questions and methodologies. In other words, it is important to ask questions that matter to animals, and not to utilize methodologies that disrespect, disrupt or otherwise injure animals. In addition, HAS and CAS change what are acceptable research questions, helping to forward the idea that it is acceptable and perhaps necessary to ask research questions that directly and immediately impact society and individuals, particularly marginalized individuals such as nonhuman animals, whose perspectives are often not considered in the academy.