Knowing CowsThis ‘emotionography’ of the slaughterhouse elucidates how the identities of both human and non-human individuals are constructed by line and lairage workers. Hegemonic masculine ideals that underpin slaughterhouse work mean that the emotions of workers as well as the emotional experience of cattle are either denied, diminished or repressed. Based on fieldwork in an Irish slaughterhouse, I articulate how the industrial slaughter of animals entangles human and non-human life in metamorphic processes that seek to diminish the emotionality of individuals, maintaining the boundary between human/non-human animals. These transformations simultaneously pacify the emotional toll of killing non-human individuals and reinforce perceptions of cows as sellable, killable and edible in the commodification of bovine bodies. Amidst the relative absence of emotions in slaughterhouse ethnographies, this article reveals how emotions emerge, erupt and confound the act of slaughtering cattle for slaughterhouse workers unsettling categorizations of masculinity and ‘animals as food’. Mc Loughlin, E. (2019) Knowing Cows: Transformative Mobilisations of Human and Nonhuman Bodies in an Emotionography of the Slaughterhouse. Gender, Work and Organisation.p.1-21 |
On FinishingThis visual memoir probes the tensions and contradictions that inflect the commodity-based relationship between a farmer and his cattle on an Irish farm. A methodological exploration of how to attend to the politics of care that animate multispecies relationships on the farm, this article examines relations of intimacy, care, and contradiction materialized in the structural manipulation of bodies for economic purposes. The attentive focus on the everyday encounters between John and his cattle unearths how affective and conflicting multispecies entanglements mediate the farming of animals for food through rhythms of care, the spirit of the gift, and the logic of sacrifice. Mc Loughlin, E. & Casey, J. (2022) On 'Finishing': A Visual Memoir of Care and Death on an Irish Cattle Farm. Visual Anthropology Review 38 (1), pp. 34-59. |
Care and its DiscontentsThrough ethnographic attunement to the emotionally complex relationships between zookeepers and nonhuman animals, commodification in the political economy of Copenhagen Zoo produces a form of care characterized by coercive cooperation. Amidst the coercive constraints of captivity, keepers depict relationships as ranging from those of explicit coercion, where the animals are made to work, to those of cooperation, where the animals are perceived as working with. Within this context, zoo animals can be better understood as “cooperative commodities”, lively commodities that are perceived as cooperating in their commodification. The belief in cooperation also reframes potential moments of resistance as opportunities to respond and thereby lessen the emotional toll on zookeepers when maladaptive behaviors highlight the failings of their captive environment.
Mc Loughlin, E. (2023). Care and its discontents: Commodification, coercive cooperation, and resistance in Copenhagen Zoo. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(3), 1923-1939. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221125227 |
Dissecting the EthicsChoreographed encounters with death in Copenhagen Zoo, such as school and public dissections, emphasize the importance of touch and are underpinned by the moral imperative to understand the nature of life and death. Such encounters are framed by zoo educators as contributing to a deeper environmental awareness. Taking the role of dead animals in the educational activities of Copenhagen Zoo as the focus, this article examines the underpinning ideology of choreographed encounters with animal death through participant observation of school and public dissections and carcass feeding, in addition to semi-structured open interviews with educational staff. Advancing literature on the pedagogy of death and the role of animals in education, this analysis illustrates how anthropocentric conceptualizations of nature as a resource to be exploited, protected, and saved infuse the pedagogy of dissection. Taking the stickiness of these encounters seriously, a posthuman lens reveals the problematic attachments and violent detachments that touching animal flesh in out-of-school contexts produces.
Mc Loughlin, E. (2023). Dissecting the ethics of choreographed encounters with animal death in the zoo: A posthumanist lens on dark pedagogy. Environmental Education Research, 1-15. |
#SaveBenjy: Sexuality, Queer Animals, and Ireland |
The Invisible Suffering of Farm Animals in Traffic Accidents |
This paper explores the #SaveBenjy Crowdfunder campaign to save a Charolais bull in the Republic of Ireland who expressed sexual interest only in weanling bulls and not the heifers he was expected to impregnate. The prominence and popularity of #SaveBenjy is anything but coincidental. In May 2015, the referendum on gay marriage sought to legalize same-sex marriage. Consequently, #SaveBenjy provides a timely lens through which to view Irish attitudes towards sexuality, while also raising important questions around nonhuman subjectivity and personhood. #SaveBenjy blurs the boundaries between nature and culture and thus, demands a new paradigm within which the nonhuman animal can be appreciated as being inherently and simultaneously natural and cultural.
Mc Loughlin, E. (2015) #SaveBenjy: Sexuality, Queer Animals, and Ireland. Humanimalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies. 7 (1), p.109-122 |
As Sentient Beings They Are Low Ranked in Life as Well as in Death
Farm animals killed in traffic accidents during transport are seldom described as individuals. Often the focus is on the traffic problems caused by accidents, rather than on the animals themselves. Further still, central to the way that these accidents are reported is that very few if any emotions or details are conveyed in the language used in relation to the condition of the farm animals. In this contribution, we discuss why facts dominate and suffering is sidelined when accidents are reported by the media, We suggest that this is in line with how humans reflect an inner scale placing farm animals lower than companion animals and in line with a long history of distancing ourselves from animal death. Anneberg, I., & Mc Loughlin, E. (2022). The Invisible Suffering of Farm Animals in Traffic Accidents: As Sentient Beings They Are Low Ranked in Life as Well as in Death. Frontiers in Animal Science, 3, 902119. |