Placing Livestock in Landscape Studies: Pastures New or Out to Graze?

Abstract

This paper reviews research on livestock and landscape. It argues that farm animals have started to occupy a central position in landscape studies, opening up many new pastures for research. Using the example of cattle in the UK, we consider how livestock have been understood as text, as social constructions and as beings with their own lives. In each case, we note how the position of farm animals is contested and there is a need for a diversity of theoretical approaches to understand these differences. The article calls for academics, practitioners and policy makers to pay greater attention to the myriad ways in which livestock and landscape are intertwined.

Lost and hound: The more-than-human networks of rural policing

“…Thus, Murdoch (2003: 264) suggests that the countryside is 'co-constructed by humans and non-humans, bound together in complex inter-relationships.' This approach has been applied to critique binaries of 'nature' and 'society' and provide clearer understandings of the ways in which humans and non-humans are intertwined to produce particular rural spaces and performances (Holloway et al, 2014;Sellick and Yarwood, 2013). For example, animals, people, technology, land, buildings and knowledge are drawn together to produce assemblages of farming (Whatmore, 1997).…”

“…Second, through a focus on search dogs, attention is given to the ways that non-human agencies are enrolled into policing networks. This not only broadens understanding of policing but also contributes to wider debates in rural studies about the place of animals in the countryside (Buller, 2014;Jones, 2003;Sellick and Yarwood, 2013;Urbanik, 2012).…”

‘More-than-human’ resilience(s)? Enhancing community in Finnish forest farms

“…I explore this here through a focus on 'the farm', a key element of and within rural communities, considering how this is shaped through more-than-human interrelationships. The majority of more-than-human literatures have focused on how animals impact on human ideas and communities (Johnston, 2008) and are significant in constituting both place and identity (Holloway, 2001;Sellick and Yarwood, 2013). Given its significance, I use this body of work to reflect on the more-than-human farm; however, as we will see in Section 5, livestock are not the only, or always central, actants on farms.…”

“…which produces 'the farm' as an effect of a network'. The role of non-humans in such rural networks as 'ecosystem engineers' is emphasized when the '"taken for granted" social, cultural and economic interactions between humans, livestock and landscapes' (Convery et al, 2005: 100) are disturbed by, for example, the impacts of disease (Sellick and Yarwood, 2013). The assemblages of farmers and livestock in particular places are locally and historically grounded (Holloway and Morris, 2014;Yarwood and Evans, 2006), and form interconnected and internally reinforcing farming cultures (Gray, 1996) that govern how farmers engage with the nonhuman elements of their farms and what being a 'good farmer' entails (Burton, 2012;Holloway, 2002;Silvasti, 2003a).…”

Enchanting resilience: Relations of care and people–place connections in agriculture

“…While all farmers are constantly dealing with these 'more-than-human' forces and relations, unexpected moments of wonder seemed to be particularly provoked in those working with animals: All the animal farmers spoke with real passion about their animals, mentioning characters and incidents that made them laugh or smile such as getting a lamb to suckle, or how a calf would come running when they entered the barn or the power politics within their herds (see Gray 1996, Burton, Peoples et al 2012, Sellick and Yarwood 2013. A lot of farming is about doing the same things -walking the same routes and following the same routines -because this is often the only way to balance all of the constantly changing demands.…”