This paper uses bibliometric analysis and critical discourse analysis to explore the rise in research involving nonhumans in public health, and the potential contribution of posthumanist social theory to this growing body of public health scholarship. There has been a sudden and rather marked increase in research and writing on animals, zoonoses and/or the 'One-health' paradigm within public health journals since 2006. Indeed 'One-health' rather than 'posthumanism' holds together research involving nonhumans of various kinds -from viruses to animals -within the discipline. Advocates of the 'One-health' paradigm argue that human and animal health must be integrated through joining the research, training and care practices of human and animal medicine. By mapping the terrain of public health research involving nonhuman species, we consider how and where posthumanist theory could be productively drawn upon to contribute to both critical and applied research involving nonhumans within public health. We specifically ask how the posthumanist insight to 'follow the nonhumans' would raise new questions and analytics for this research area.
It is becoming increasingly common to hear life scientists say that high quality life science research relies upon high quality laboratory animal care. However, the idea that animal care is a crucial part of scientific knowledge production is at odds with previous social science and historical scholarship regarding laboratory animals. How are we to understand this discrepancy? To begin to address this question, this paper seeks to disentangle the values of scientists in identifying animal care as important to the production of high quality scientific research. To do this, we conducted a survey of scientists working in the United Kingdom who use animals in their research. The survey found that being British is associated with thinking that animal care is a crucial part of conducting high quality science. To understand this finding, we draw upon the concept of ‘civic epistemologies’ (Jasanoff 2005; Prainsack 2006) and argue that ‘animals’ and ‘care’ in Britain may converge in taken‐for‐granted assumptions about what constitutes good scientific knowledge. These ideas travel through things like state regulations or the editorial policies of science journals, but do not necessarily carry the embodied civic epistemology of ‘animals’ and ‘science’ from which such modes of regulating laboratory animal welfare comes.
Communication between scientists and animal technicians is considered important for creating a 'culture of care' in facilities that use animals in scientific research. For example, the Brown report, which investigated alleged failures of animal care at Imperial College London, noted the physical and social separation between animal technicians and scientists as a problem that delimited a culture of care. This paper seeks to better understand the communicative relationships between scientists and animal technicians in this context. We conducted a survey of scientists working in the UK who use animals in their research (n = 230), asking who they spoke with about various aspects related to using animals in research. We found that scientists communicated with technicians about operational issues, while they spoke with other scientists about experimental design as well as moral questions and concerns. We probe the meaning of these communicative relationships using narrative analysis of semi-structured, qualitative interviews conducted with consenting survey respondents (n = 14). Analytically, this paper seeks to bridge social network analysis with geographies of care through a shared concern with relations of power.Patrones comunicativos y redes sociales entre científicos y técnicos en una cultura del cuidado: discutiendo la moralidad a través de una jerarquía de espacios ocupacionales RESUMEN La comunicación entre científicos y técnicos en animales se considera importante para crear una 'cultura del cuidado' en las instalaciones que utilizan animales en la investigación científica. Por ejemplo, el informe Brown, que investigó supuestos fallos en el cuidado de los animales en el Imperial College de Londres, señaló la separación física y social entre técnicos animales y científicos como un problema que delimitaba una cultura del cuidado. Este artículo busca comprender mejor las relaciones comunicativas entre científicos y técnicos en animales en este contexto. Realizamos ARTICLE HISTORY
This special issue commemorates the upcoming sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Russell and Burch's Principles of Humane Experimental Technique (1959), where the concept of the 3Rs--replace, reduce and refine animals from life science research--was first introduced. As this special issue makes clear, the evolving impact of this book has not been at all straightforward. There have been clear breaks and ruptures between the commissioning of the book by the Universities
This paper uses bibliometric analysis and critical discourse analysis to explore the rise in research involving nonhumans in public health, and the potential contribution of posthumanist social theory to this growing body of public health scholarship. There has been a sudden and rather marked increase in research and writing on animals, zoonoses and/or the 'One-health' paradigm within public health journals since 2006. Indeed 'One-health' rather than 'posthumanism' holds together research involving nonhumans of various kinds-from viruses to animals-within the discipline. Advocates of the 'One-health' paradigm argue that human and animal health must be integrated through joining the research, training and care practices of human and animal medicine. By mapping the terrain of public health research involving nonhuman species, we consider how and where posthumanist theory could be productively drawn upon to contribute to both critical and applied research involving nonhumans within public health. We specifically ask how the posthumanist insight to 'follow the nonhumans' would raise new questions and analytics for this research area.
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