Attuning to laboratory animals and telling stories: Learning animal geography research skills from animal technologists

Abstract

Posthumanism has challenged the social sciences and humanities to rethink anthopocentricism within the cultures and societies they study and to take account of more-than-human agencies and perspectives. This poses key methodological challenges, including a tendency for animal geographies to focus very much on the human side of human-animal relations and to fail to acknowledge animals as embodied, lively, articulate political subjects. In this paper, we draw on recent ethnographic work, observing and participating in the care of research animals and interviewing the animal technologists, to contribute to the understandings of life within the animal house. In so doing, the paper makes three key arguments. Firstly, that studying how animal technologists perform everyday care and make sense of their relationships with animals offers useful insights into the specific skills, expertise and relationships required in order to study human-animal relations. Secondly, that animal technologists are keenly aware of the contested moralities which emerge in animal research environments and can offer an important position from which to understand this. Thirdly, that storytelling (exemplified by the stories told by animal technologists) is a useful resource for animal geographers to engage with complexity in human-animal relations.

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

“…In his ANT‐inspired ethnographic study of Baku‐Tbilisi‐Ceyhan oil pipeline, Barry (2013: 1‐2) asserts that the force of this argument means that ‘no longer can we think of material artefacts and physical systems … as passive and stable foundations on which politics of states takes place … the unpredictable and lively behaviour of such objects and environments should be understood as integral to the conduct of politics’. While the built environment has become an important factor in assemblage ethnographies (Abourahme, 2015; Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Miller, 2014), other ethnographers using assemblage‐inspired methods have focused on the agency of animals (Barau, 2014; Greenhough & Roe, 2019), mail (Davies, 2012) or campaign leaflets and posters (Page, 2019a; Page & Dittmer, 2015). For Pooya, these materials included food, passports, mobile phones, laptops, furniture, and so on.…”

Animal geographies I: Hearing the cry and extending beyond

“…Magrane and Johnson, 2017), work with veterinary and laboratory practitioners (e.g. Davies et al, 2018; Greenhough and Roe, 2018, 2019), and with biological scientists (e.g. Crowley et al, 2017, 2018; Pooley et al, 2017).…”

Animal research nexus: a new approach to the connections between science, health and animal welfare

“…4. Beth Greenhough and Emma Roe (2019) , ‘Exploring the Role of Animal Technologists in Implementing the 3Rs: An Ethnographic Investigation of the UK University Sector’, Science, Technology, & Human Values 43, no. 4 (2018): 694–722.…”

“…36. Beth Greenhough and Emma Roe (2019) , ‘Exploring the Role of Animal Technologists in Implementing the 3Rs’; Linda Birke, Arnold Arluke, and Mike Michael (2007) , The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People ; Tone Druglitrø (2018) , ‘“Skilled Care” and the Making of Good Science’, Science, Technology, & Human Values 43, no. 3 (2018): 649–70; Eva Giraud and Gregory Hollin (2016) , ‘Care, Laboratory Beagles and Affective Utopia’, Theory, Culture & Society 33, no.…”

“…Beth Greenhough and Emma Roe (2018) , ‘Exploring the Role of Animal Technologists in Implementing the 3Rs’; Beth Greenhough and Emma Roe (2011) , ‘Ethics, Space, and Somatic Sensibilities: Comparing Relationships between Scientific Researchers and Their Human and Animal Experimental Subjects’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 1 (2011): 47–66; Beth Greenhough and Emma Roe (2019) , ‘Attuning to Laboratory Animals and Telling Stories: Learning Animal Geography Research Skills from Animal Technologists’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37, no. 2 (2019): 367–84.…”