Covalence in Cow-veillance: Sensing Technologies and Human-Animal Affinities in Dairying

Abstract

This article considers how the widespread use of camera surveillance systems in dairy farming affects engagements between farmers and cows. While literatures on visual surveillance often cast monitoring technologies as cold and mechanical tools for enabling and reinforcing hegemonic power relationships, our research leads us to question this reductive formulation. Drawing on ethnographic research with dairy farmers, as well as archival materials from agricultural presses in the United Kingdom and France, we argue that applying camera surveillance on dairy farms extends emotional investments and affinities between farmers and cows. Challenging dominant critiques of visual surveillance, we consider cows as subjects and not just objects of the camera gaze and bring attention to the sensorial experiences of farmers relying on cameras as vital tools. We explore how experiencing visual images of cows, particularly real-time images displayed on computers and smartphones, engenders new sensations among farmers; and we speculate about how cows’ own material realities and sensory experiences of being farmed may change with the advent of remote-sensing cameras. Our study offers an innovative way of looking at human-animal relationships in agriculture, one focused on the evocative and sensorial experiences of remote visual monitoring, from human and non-human animal perspectives.