Livestock-human Relations

Farm animals are categorised as both ‘livestock’ and ‘pets’, socially constructed categories that are often contested and blurred. Anderson (1997, p. 464) argues that domestication is a “process of drawing animals into a nexus of human concern where humans and animals become mutually accustomed to conditions and terms laid out by humans”. The political process of domestication and the classification of animals have influenced humans’ construction of their own sense of identity as superior to animals (Holloway 2001). Within these terms and conditions, farm animals are viewed either as “beloved companions or eaten for a meal” (Convery et al. 2005, p. 99). Yarwood and

Evans (2006, p. 1308) argue that there needs to be a conceptual framework that explores the intricacies of human-animal relations and farming change. They adopt Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, which (Wacquant 1998, p. 221) defines as an “unconscious schemata...acquired through lasting exposure to particular social conditions and conditionings via the internalization of external constraints and possibilities”. From this perspective, it would appear that a person’s habitus shapes their actions while also enforcing and reproducing the classification system that is in place. In Yarwood and Evans’ (2006, p.1321) account, livestock are more than just “economic assets”; but, there needs to be recognition that farming is, and always will be, an economic activity. However, by adopting a Bourdieuian approach, focus is on the actions of the farmers rather than on any consideration of the active role of animals within farming practices.

Holloway (2001, p. 293) utilises the concept of “situated morality” to consider the blurring of the categories of ‘livestock’ and ‘pet’ within the context of hobby-farming, and how farmers negotiate this “ethical ambiguity”. It was important that the farms, included in Holloway’s study, be seen as an example of ethical farming practices different from commercial farming practices, even though in reality the final result for the animals was the same (Holloway 2001, p. 304). In Holloway’s account, hobby-farm animals obtain “a status ‘in between’ that of the conventional categories of farm livestock and pets, reflecting human intentionality evident in the spatiality of the hobby- farm” (Holloway 2001, p. 304). Ideas appertaining to the ethical entanglement of animals are also explored in Wilkie’s (2005) account of commercial and hobby livestock production. Wilkie (2005, p. 213) employs the concepts of attachment and detachment to demonstrate that people who work with breeding animals are more likely to convey varying levels of “emotional attachment” compared to those involved in the livestock slaughter process, who tend to exercise varying levels of “emotional detachment”.

2.8 ‘Lifescapes’

The contradictory attitudes of farmers towards livestock animals are considered in Riley’s (2011) analysis of commercial dairy farming wherein human-animal relations are

viewed through the lens of agricultural retirement. Riley’s (2011, p. 1) study reveals how farm animals are an essential component of the lifeworlds and identities of farmers and how, through the retirement process, the relationship between the farmers and their livestock becomes disconnected, resulting in alteration to “farmers’ attachment to particular practices, places and social networks”. Drawing on the concept of ‘lifescapes’ Riley (2011, p. 2) adopts an approach which considers “the shared material and emotional spaces of human and livestock”, thereby recognising that animals play an economic, cultural and social role within farming spaces.

Riley’s work builds on the earlier work of Convery et al., (2005, p. 100), who utilise the concept of ‘lifescapes’ to “articulate the complexity of the spatial, emotional and ethical dimensions of the relationship between landscape, livestock, farming and rural communities” experienced during the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 and the subsequent destruction of farmers’ livestock. Their central argument was that “the emotional geographies of livestock farming are entangled within human constructions of nature, with human and non-human identities constructed through ideas and practices played out in different contexts at different times and places” (Convery et al. 2005, p. 101). In this context, lifescapes are heterogeneous associations of humans, animals and place. For Convery et al. (2005, p. 100), lifescapes are “thus shaped by livestock–farmer practices, which in turn shape ways of being in the world” (Convery et al., 2005, p. 10). Riley’s (2011) and Convery et al’s. (2005) work recognised that livestock animals are more than just commodities. As Riley (2011, p. 3) emphasises, animals are “essential, co- constitutive, actors in farm-animal-farm assemblages which are held together in particular localities”. Farming practices viewed as economic and cultural assemblages are filled with ethical and emotional entanglements between livestock animals and their owners (Convery et al. 2005; Holloway 2004; Riley 2011; Wilks 2008). This has assisted in the development of identity for individual farms and often the wider farming regions (Yarwood and Evans 2005). In this context, the livestock animals become intertwined within the lifeworlds and identities of the farmers thereby playing an economic, cultural and social role within farming spaces (Riley 2011).

Within these accounts of livestock-human relations the discourse of livestock animals as commodities is debated. Evidence suggests that animals are more than just a commodity; indeed, for example, farmers often become emotionally entangled in human-animal relations, moving away from thinking of livestock animals solely in terms of their economic value, or, as Brownlow (2000, p. 143) argues as “‘conscienceless’ actors in the capitalist chain of production”. Viewing farming as an economic and cultural assemblage encourages debates vis-a-vis the spatial relationships between humans and animals and how such debate has assisted in the creation of distinctive, localised identities for individual farms and farming regions.