As an ethicist and professor of environmental studies, I pay close attention to Earth Day. I have read or heard an abundance of commentaries on how people mistreat our planet. One after another, they rehearse the same statistics, recite the same politics, and offer the same short-term solutions.

Breaking the repetition, however, is the wildly popular film, Avatar, which went on sale to the general public in honor of Earth Day. Since its release in 2009, Avatar has struck a cord with the general public and the environmental community. Students and colleagues alike continue to excitedly discuss its meaning and messages.

So I wonder: what might Avatar teach us about how to celebrate Earth Day next year?

Avatar tells the story of a moral awakening by a former marine, Jake Sully, who is a mercenary for an inter-stellar corporation. He is sent to the world of Pandora to protect a mining operation that threatens the way of life of an indigenous population of humanoids (the Na’vi), as well as the natural world for whom the Na’vi have profound respect.

What Jake and his companions discover is that the Na’vi do not see their environment as a set of resources for them to own and exploit. Rather they see themselves as part of a larger community of life, a moral community where other creatures and the planet Eywa (the Na’vi name for Pandora) have intrinsic value. Value, that is, that exists irrespective of whether the animals or the planet are useful for either humans or Na’vi.

The Na’vi also believe human beings are ignorant of their place in this moral community. This message comes through loud and clear when Jake is upbraided by his Na’vi teacher and eventual mate, Neytiri. Telling him that he and his people ‘should not be here’, she notes that humans are akin to irresponsible children who do no fully ‘see’ (understand). Despite their advanced technology, humans have not yet learned how to respect the natural history, cultural knowledge, and moral standing of the Na’vi themselves, Pandora’s animals, or Pandora itself.

Avatar does take aim at colonialism, racism and militarism as they metaphorically exist on Pandora, as well as literally on Earth. Commentators have praised or condemned the film for these reasons. This has been particularly evident amongst the political right, where claims of paganism, anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism abound.

What has not been discussed is Avatar’s critique of speciesism, or human prejudice against non-human beings.

Avatar is not just a metaphor for how we treat other people on this earth. Nor is it simply an allegory for wide-ranging ecological destruction here and now. It is a cautionary tale about the harm done by our instrumental worldviews of animals and nature. Avatar is pushing the boundary of moral concern, demanding that we consider the well being of creatures and communities that are not human. It offers us a vision of another people, another place, and another way of life with such a profound sense of moral connectedness, that we cannot help but compare it to the situation on our own planet, and find it wanting.

What then does Avatar offer to our understanding of Earth Day?

Earth Day has become a sedate affair, dominated by the posturing of politicians and the decorative art of school children. More distressingly, it has become a self-absorbed event, where we measure humanity’s declining prospects by the steady degradation of nature (e.g., global warming).

If Earth Day is going to fulfill its promise, we need to turn this situation around. Avatar reminds us that we must reconnect with the moral passion that animates environmentalism as one of the great social movements of our time. It teaches us that we need to use this moral commitment to build bridges between those advocating for animal protection, human rights and environmental justice.

We need a day of education and grass-roots politics in service of the Earth itself and all her creatures, not just its most powerful inhabitant. Most of all, we need to stop thinking and talking about sustainability as if it were only for human beings. The well being of the entire community of life is a better base line for sustainable ways of living.

In Avatar, Jake came to understand that the interconnectedness of life is not simply a scientific fact, but a moral value that ought to guide our behavior to others, human and non-human alike. Perhaps in Earth Days to come, we can take this lesson to heart.

Cheers

I recently had a wonderful visit at Lafayette College.

Lafayette is a highly regarded institution located in Easton, PA. It has a twin-fold emphasis on the liberal arts, as well as engineering and the applied sciences. This creative mix of the arts and sciences is sorely needed in a society like ours that risks loosing sight of larger values amongst technical details. While technology is never a ‘neutral tool’ as some would like to think, our choices to use technologies for good or ill are the more important issue. Bringing the value-relevance of the liberal arts into creative dialogue with the applied sciences seems like a great idea to me.

I was visitng as a keynote speaker for Earth Week. Unlike other speaking engagements, this was not a one-off presentation, but an extended opportunity to engage with the campus community about ethics and sustainability. So alongside my presentation, I had the pleasure of meeting with a wide variety of the college’s faculty and students.

My talk was on ‘Avatars of Sustainability’. I interpreted the movie Avatar as a cultural text, the meanings of which have something important to say about our approach to ethics and sustainability. It was fun to do, and the discussion session afterwards was quite lively. I was peppered with insightful questions about the movie itself, and its implications for the troubled relationship between people, animals and nature. These questions touched on capitalism, militarism, colonialism, patriarchy, race, anthropocentrism, speciesism, power, animal domestication, practical versus analytic ethics, ethics in environmental policy, and the ethical norms of sustainability.

The next day I met with LEAP or Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection. Organized by a core group of environmentally minded students, LEAP is particularly active in the local food movement and the introduction of sustainable practice at Lafayette. Following that I was a guest in Humans and Other Animals in Contemporary Culture, a course instructed by Carrie Rohman of the English department. Students in this class had a wide range of ethics-related thoughts on Avatar, offering many distinctive insights on the movie. Following this, I met with faculty for a wide-ranging and productive discussion about the state of environmental studies programs and curricula.

So a big thank you to all the faculty and students who made my visit such an enjoyable one.

Cheers!

(a) focus on ethical issues pertinent to actual animals (as opposed to animals as only metaphors, tropes, or philosophical concepts); i.e. work with a certain normative value;

(b) adopt a broad critical orientation to animal studies, including (but not limited to) work that investigates and challenges the complex dynamics of structural, institutional, and discursive power formations that organize life conditions, relations, and experiences of animals, humans, and the environment alike; work that explores diverse forms and sites of human/animal resistance; work that contributes to current global debates by contextualizing critical animal issues within, for instance, processes of globalization, climate change, and biotechnology; work that intervenes in the animal economy of the production, science, service, experience, and culture industries; as well as work that critically analyzes ideologies, practices and effects of the current animal welfare movement;

(c) bridge boundaries between academic/activist knowledge, between theory/practice, as well as between existing disciplines. Based on this commitment to interdisciplinarity, all work published must be in language that is as clear and accessible to as wide an audience as possible;

(d) contribute to creative, bold, innovative, and boundary shifting knowledge development in critical animal studies.

If we can be of any further help or assistance in discussing projects please do not hesitate to contact either of us via email. Further information and submission guidelines are found on the book series website: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/?page_id=299

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Helena Pedersen
Senior Co-Editor, Submissions and Review Process
Malmö University
helena.pedersen@mah.se

Vasile Stãnescu
Senior Co-Editor, Promotions and Outreach
Stanford University
vts@stanford.edu

ASI is one of the few policy think-tanks associated with animal studies. Amongst other activities, the institute publishes the Animals and Society journal, the Human-Animal Studies book series, offers training programs in animal related policy issues, and commissions policy white papers.

ASI also sponsors Human-Animal Studies Fellowship. This interdisciplinary program enables seven fellows to pursue research in residence at a partner college or university, supporting recipients’ individual research through mentorship, guest lectures, and scholarly exchange, as well as contributing to the intellectual life of the host institution. Creating and sustaining fellowships like this is crucial to building a network of scholarship and policy expertise that can speak to the shared well-being of people, animals and nature.

This year, the fellowship is being held at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Host faculty are Jacque (Jody) Emel, Professor of the Graduate School of Geography at Clark and Susan McHugh, Professor of English at University of New England.

I’m pleased to say that I will be participating as one of this year’s fellows, working on proposal for a practical ethics for people, animals and nature. I am both honoured and excited by this opportunity, and look forward to sharing my experience with you.

Cheers!

Isn’t it better to honor Ms. Brancheau’s death by carefully reconsidering our relationships with killer whales, rather than resuming the spectacular Believe show only two days after her drowning? Is it enough that before the show began, a slideshow tribute to Dawn played on the watery stage’s massive screens, and the trainers wearing their orca-styled wetsuits refrained, for now, from swimming with or petting the orcas as part of the killer whale show’s choreography?

SeaWorld’s website still sells Believe as a show that “accentuates the close relationship SeaWorld trainers have with the killer whales,” and a “journey in which anyone believes they can connect with these magnificent mammals.” I imagine the bubbly violence that some customers witnessed a few weeks ago did not highlight the sort of connection SeaWorld wanted to display.

I don’t mean to be flippant. And I’m not suggesting for a moment that the trainers do not have a close relationship with the orcas in their care—or that we, as humans, cannot or do not connect with dolphins and whales—I believe we can, we do, and we should! But the question is how ought we to connect with them, what kind of relationship is best for their well-being and ours, and how can we best honor dolphins and whales as the magnificent individuals we so admire?

To me, SeaWorld’s Believe show is exciting, beautiful, and wildly entertaining; it is also—like SeaWorld itself—an outmoded, arrogant, insensitive story of captivity and dominance. The music, lyrics, choreography, architecture and landscaping are lavish decorations that distract us from the facts: It is not appropriate or wise to keep dolphins and whales for our pleasure. It deprives them of their physical, psychological and social needs and desires. We have witnessed the pain, distress and tragedy that captivity produces—for them and for us.

In light of the recent catastrophe at SeaWorld, let’s more than just pause before resuming business as usual. Instead, let’s recognize this as the major event it was, and just… stop.

It is a huge, thrill-ride of a movie. As importantly, it is interlaced with threads of environmentalism, colonialism, capitalism, militarism, spiritual crisis and personal redemption.

I’ve been asked to give an Earth Week Keynote address at Lafayette College in April. I think I’ll discuss Avatar, and its implications for sustainability, ethics and environmental studies. More on this subject after the talk.

Cheers!

One of WCMA’s more beautiful and though provoking installations is Mocha Dick, a sculpture by Tristin Lowe. Here is how the museum describes it.

Over fifty feet long and ten feet high, artist Tristin Lowe’s sculpture of a white sperm whale sprawls across the museum’s largest gallery. Mocha Dick is a life-sized rendition of the infamous leviathan that once harassed ships near Mocha Island in the South Pacific Ocean.

The exhibition is open 13 March – 08 August 2010. I’ll be sharing comments on ‘Life Boat Ethics’ during an interdisciplinary gallery panel, The Whiteness of the Whale, to be held on Thursday 08 April 2010. Please come join us for this event. Admission is free.

For more information on the WCMA, visit www.wcma.org.

Cheers!

Unfortunately, the interpretive approach is frequently ignored, misunderstood, or given short shrift in traditional schools of public policy. So too, many policy courses in animal studies, environmental studies, and the like are unaware of or insufficiently acquainted with interpretive approaches. This is doubly unfortunate. Interpretive and ‘analytic’ (e.g. positivist, quantitative, institutionalist, economist) approaches need not oppose one another, and can be usefully combined. And those making policy, whether in the public, private or non-profit sectors, are denied the benefits of both approaches triangulating on our best understanding of policy problems and their solutions.

The policy arena of wolf recovery is a case in point. Long regarded as a matter for the natural science, wolf recovery is as much or more a matter of cultural norms. With this in mind, I recently published an article entitled Discourse and Wolves: Science, Society and Ethics*. It intentionally tries to clarify some of the terms and methods of interpretive policy approaches by using the concept of discourse. I’ve included the methodology section in this post, and hope you will find it of some use in your own work. You can find the entire article in the journal Society and Animals.

It is ironic as well that the article also illustrates the troubles sometimes faced by those practicing interpretive policy studies. The manuscript for this article was originally invited as a book chapter for a book on wolves and society. It fell victim, however, to the empiricist presuppositions and personal politics of some of the book’s editors. But all is well that ends well. I’m very pleased the article found a perfect home in Society and Animals.

Cheers!

P.S. If you find this approach intriguing, I recommend Dvora Yanow’s Interpretive Policy Analysis (Sage, 1999) as a wonderful and insightful introduction.

* Lynn, William S. 2010. Discourse and Wolves: Science, Society and Ethics. Society & Animals 18 (1): 75-92.

Image: Tracy Brooks, 2003, Reflection.

~

Methodological Caveat

As you read this article, you will note it does not conform to the usual conventions of the scientific literature. One might expect this, as I do not pretend to be a scientist in the usual sense of the term. But there is more to it than that. The standard conventions of scientific articles – a statement of the research question justified by a literature review of findings to date, a description of the methods and measures used to test a hypothesis, and a discussion of the results followed by their significance and possible avenues for future exploration – are entirely appropriate to research questions amenable to quantitative methods. These conventions were developed in and for the natural sciences, work well within those domains, and overall there is no reason to diminish them (Chalmers 1999; Lindberg 1992; Lynn 2004).

When it comes to explaining human beings and their societies, there was a time when the human sciences sought to ape the natural sciences in theory, method and publishing conventions. This was a dismal failure, and while the struggle to shift gears continues, the positivist turn is long dead. The reason is that human beings do not conform to models of a determinism and/or predictivism that are the hallmark of the physical sciences. The sentience and sapience of people – their awareness and self-awareness – makes their thoughts and actions contingent and creative, transcending the boundary conditions for which the research practices and writing conventions of the natural sciences were devised (Bernstein 1991; Rorty 1979). Yes, there are still people who defend a ‘naturalistic model’ of the human sciences. Yet honestly, it is embarrassing to see an old-school positivist scholar chopped up by their peers because they have not kept up with the history and philosophy of science literature over the last fifty years. E. O. Wilson’s and his acolytes of consilience best represent this yearning for the old ways (Westley and Miller 2003; Wilson 1998). We can do much better than this now.

What is needed in such cases is a methodology adapted to the ‘human sciences’, something capable of causal explanation (the hallmark of science) without the pretense of determinism or predictivism [1]. Various social theories and qualitative methodologies have arisen to fill this need (Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2005; Schwandt 2007). So too have new conventions for publications, specifically around the idea of interpretation and narrative (Fischer and Forester 1996; Roe 1994; Yanow 1999). So for those with an interest in methodological affairs, what follows is an interpretation of several discourses that inform how we think about and act towards wolves. Intentionally broad in scale and scope, it looks for the resonance between our ideas, behaviour and social institutions, or to put the matter in social theoretical language, the interplay of human agency and social structure. The point is not to predict or determinatively explain what people and organizations do. That is not possible with human and some other beings. Rather, the purpose is to reveal the discursive dynamic that constitute, at least in part, our individual and collective stance towards wolves in the world [2].

Discourse

I approach discourse as a hermeneuticist. Hermeneutics is the study of understanding, one of the main perspectives in social theory [3]. The basic idea is that our personal and social lives can only be fully understood when we account for the meaning embedded in our actions and social relations, such as is found in our presuppositions and worldviews. To explain the human world, we therefore have to interpret what people mean when they say or do something, and what significance their words and actions have for the rest of the world.

Engaging in this kind of interpretation might seem trivial to some, as if picking out someone at random on the street and asking them about wolves is going to tell us the truth about wolf biology or ecology. But that would be missing the point. Hermeneuticists are interested in our individual and collective interpretations of wolves. These interpretations are highly significant, if, let us suppose, politically motivated wildlife professionals foster an approach to environmental policy that emphasizes agricultural production, ranching and sport hunting at the expense of predators, ecosystem function and biodiversity. So one cannot understand (as in describe, explain, evaluate or justify) why someone or some group acts as they do without first interpreting what they think and how it informs their actions. It is for this reason that hermeneutics is a keystone tradition of scholarship with respect to the theory and methodology of the human sciences (Bruns 1992; Gadamer 1993; Mueller-Vollmer 1989; Wachterhauser 1994).

To the hermeneuticist, discourse refers to the interconnections between ways of thinking and acting. It is not only a point-of-view that helps direct our actions in the world, it is also the meaning(s) embedded in our actions and social institutions. This approach extends the idea of discourse beyond the expression of an idea or perspective, whether in speech, writing or artistic creation. It focuses on the role of language in the formation of presuppositions, worldviews and ways of life. In this extended version, discourse traces the linguistic connections between several components — thought, action and social institutions. The argument from a discursive perspective is that language interweaves these components in such a manner that they are reciprocally constituted and/or mutually informing. That is to say, there is an inextricable linkage between how individual and collective agents think, speak, act and interact.

I use the term resonance (or resonances) to refer to the linkages between the components of discourse, as well as between different discourses themselves. I say resonance because these linkages are not uniform or static, but plural and shifting. They do not constitute a system of discreet inputs and outputs amenable to modeling and prediction. Rather they are a shifting configuration of meaning and social interaction that must be apprehended for their causal influences.

This contingency between meaning and social interaction arises from the way in which discourse connects intangible and tangible phenomena [4]. There is an ecology of intangible ideas, intentions, worldviews and culture, with more tangible actions, social institutions, and their outcomes (e.g. environmental and social policy). This ecology defies reductionism, and is better understood through a process of interpretation. Discourse is a powerful conceptual tool in the process of social and moral interpretation. It helps us identify and theorize a shifting field of resonances, and thereby understand the context, content and consequences of a discourse. With this in mind, we can better understand why and how an idea, social practice or institution exists, operates and perpetuates itself (Kelly 1990) [5].

Discourse may simultaneously exist at several levels. At one level are ideas, whether expressed in terms of reasons or emotions. At another level are actions. Here, reason and emotion become the motivating factors for acting in the world. At still another level are social institutions such as government agencies, economic and politically based interest groups, or non-profit advocacy organization. These institutions are also part of our discourses, patterns of thinking and acting that, over time, take on concrete and durable form (Ball 1988; Barnes and Duncan 1992; Wolf 2003b). When Stone expressed care for the well-being of abandoned wolf pups, her expression was at the discursive level of ideas. When she took to the field to find and save the pups from starvation, her behaviour was at the action level of discourse. When she went back to work at a NGO that is part of our social system, she was involved at the institutional level of discourse.

If we think of a discourse like a text, such as an essay or a policy statement, then we can ‘read’ these texts for their meaning(s). Like a written or spoken narrative, the meaning of a discourse can be interpreted for its good or ill intentions, content, implications and consequences (Ricoeur 1977; Ricoeur 1991; Ricoeur 1996). Thus when the state of Alaska justifies the aerial gunning of wolves through policy statements of dubious scientific value, we have a discourse we can read like a text and from which we can extract its meaning. So too, when gunners take to the air to kill wolves, we have an equally meaningful action on which to base our interpretations and from which to discern the values and worldviews that inform those actions. When the Alaska Board of Game continues to authorize lethal control measures against wolves, we see a social institution whose members, policies and practices are partaking of a broader anti-wolf discourse.

The interpretations of discourse are never perfect or unequivocal. There is always more to be learned, and multiple meanings are the norm. Nor are the intentions or consequences behind a statement or act always obvious or explicit. They can be concealed, poorly understood or unexpected (Hirsch 1967; Hirschman 1987). Because of this and other contingencies, hermeneuticists are humble about the power of any one interpretation and encourage dialogue to generate a broadly shared horizon of understanding. Moreover, they believe that reason and evidence, along with good will and a skeptical eye, can distinguish better from worse interpretations. In this way, we make progress in finding the truth. Finally, truth is not relative or absolute. In alignment with the best understanding of science, truth is always proximate. While veracity is the goal, verisimilitude is the reality. For hermeneuticists, understanding is always partial and fallible, and it is through dialogue with others that we reach a deeper and better understanding of the presuppositions and worldviews of ourselves and others [6].

Notes

1. The terms human science and natural science are commonly used in social theory, qualitative inquiry and the philosophy of science. The former refers to what others call the behavioural and social sciences, while the later refers to the physical, biological and life sciences. In addition to serving as a way to categorize different forms of scientific knowledge, it also implies a more historically and philosophically reflective posture over the theory, methods and role of science itself (see Ricoeur 1981).

2. Astute readers may recognize that a similar shift is occurring in the field of cognitive ethology. There is a recognition that many kinds of non-human animals think, feel, plan, play, act altruistically and selfishly, have a sense of guilt and wild justice, and transmit cultural traditions. The growth of this theoretical perspective has methodological implications, and represents a turning away from positivist models that frequently misunderstand animals. While using a different language, cognitive ethology is developing its own interpretive theory and qualitative methods. In this sense it is kin to hermeneutic traditions in the human sciences (for examples of such work, see Allen and Bekoff 2007; Bekoff et al. 2002; Bekoff 2005).

3. Hermeneutics is named after Hermes, the Greek god who handled communication between Olympus and the Ecumene — the habitable world of humanity, which for the Greeks was centred on the Mediterranean. Like the coyote, however, Hermes is a trickster, taking pleasure in parsing meaning that leads to misunderstanding. The background idea here is that language is not something we simply use to subjectively describe our feelings or objectively describe the world. Rather language is constitutive of how we experience and conceptualize the world around us.

4. For more on the ‘qualities’ and ‘phenomena’ that distinguish the human and natural sciences, as well as the implications this has for causal explanation, qualitative inquiry and moral reasoning, see (Lynn 2004).

5. When I speak of discourse, I often shift between the singular and plural. This is to denote the scale and specificity of my comments. Thus I may speak of discourse in general, discourses in particular, or a particular discourse in the singular.

6. There are other theories about discourse that emphasize the ideological nature of ‘totalizing’ discourse (e.g. structuralism), the partiality of all discourse (e.g. poststructuralism) and the distorting tendencies of all discourse (e.g. critical theory). The structuralists and poststructuralists tend to see people as subjects of discourse, as in subservient to the discourse(s) that constitute their worldview. Hermeneuticists and critical theorists think otherwise, believing people have agency, that is, they can be self-determining, and are not the pawns of larger social forces. Exercising this agency may not be easy (or possible) for everyone, but it is in the nature of human beings to be agents and interpreters of their own individual and collective lives (for examples of this literature, see Darier 1999; Gare 1995; Habermas 1993; Habermas 1998; Wolf 2003a).

References

Allen, Colin, and Marc Bekoff. 2007. Animal Minds, Cognitive Ethology and Ethics. The Journal of Ethics 11: 299-317.

Ball, Terence. 1988. Transforming Political Discourse: Political Theory and Critical Conceptual History. New York: Basil Blackwell.

Barnes, Trevor J, and James S Duncan, eds. 1992. Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. New York: Routledge.

Bekoff, Marc. 2005. Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Reflections on Redecorating Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Bekoff, Mark, Colin Allen, and Gordon Burghardt, eds. 2002. The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Bernstein, Richard J. 1991. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bruns, Gerald L. 1992. Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Chalmers, Alan. 1999. What is This Thing Called Science? An Assessment of the Nature and Status of Science and its Methods. Third ed. London: Open University Press.

Darier, Eric. 1999. Discourses of the Environment. New York: Blackwell.

Denzin, Norman K, and Yvonna S Lincoln, eds. 2000. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Second ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

Fischer, Frank, and John Forester. 1996. The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1993. Truth and Method. Second, Revised ed. New York: Continuum.

Gare, Arran E. 1995. Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis. New York: Routledge.

Habermas, Jurgen. 1993. Justification and Application: Remarks On Discourse Ethics. Edited by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: MIT Press.

———. 1998. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy, and Patricia Leavy. 2005. The Practice of Qualitative Research: A Primer. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Hirsch, Edward D. 1967. Validity In Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hirschman, Albert O. 1987. The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding. In Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, eds. P. Rabinow, and William M Sullivan, 177-194. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kelly, Michael, ed. 1990. Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Lindberg, David C. 1992. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lynn, William S. 2004. The Quality of Ethics: Moral Causation in the Interdisciplinary Science of Geography. In Geographies and Moralities: International Perspectives on Justice, Development and Place, eds. Roger Lee, and David M Smith, 231-244. London: Routledge.

Mueller-Vollmer, K. 1989. The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present. New York: Continuum.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text. In Understanding Social Inquiry, eds. F. Dallmayr, and T A McCarthy, 316-344. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

———. 1981. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 1991. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.
———. 1996. The Hermeneutics of Action. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Roe, Emory. 1994. Narrative Policy Analysis: Theory and Practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Schwandt, Thomas A. 2007. Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry. Third ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Wachterhauser, Brice R, ed. 1994. Hermeneutics and Truth. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Westley, Frances, and Philip Miller, eds. 2003. Experiments in Consilience: Integrating Social and Scientific Responses to Save Endangered Species. Washington D.C.: Island Press.

Wilson, Edward O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wolf, Cary. 2003a. Animal Rites: American Culture, The Discourse of Species, and Posthuman Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wolf, Cary, ed. 2003b. Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Yanow, Dvora. 1999. Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Recently I read about a disturbing account of a young woman being attacked and killed by coyotes. Taylor Mitchell, a 19 years old Canadian folksinger, was reportedly killed in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia.

Whether or not coyotes did kill this woman, her death is a tragedy, and my condolences go out to her family, friends and fans.

At the same time, I’ve heard a great deal of hysterical talk about the dangers of coyotes since this incident. I simply want to urge people to take a deep breath, wait until we find out what happened, and treat coyotes with the respect and distance they deserve.

Cheers

So it is especially pleasing that Duke University is sponsoring postdocs focused on the interdisciplinary connections between feminist studies and animal studies. For details, see below.

Cheers, Bill

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The Duke University Program in Women’s Studies invites applications for two postdoctoral fellows in Interdisciplinary Feminist Studies with a research focus in Human Animal Studies and the Question of Species. We seek candidates with interdisciplinary experience in Women’s Studies. We welcome empirical, textual, and theoretical specialization from a diverse array of academic fields, political and cultural contexts, and historical periods. Postdoctoral fellows will participate in a faculty-graduate seminar on these themes and are expected to be in residence for the academic year. Fellows will teach one course related to their scholarship. The fellowship includes a stipend, health insurance, and office space. Applicants should have the PhD in hand by May 2010.

Applications (including all letters of recommendations) must be received by November 17, 2009. Send C.V., 5-page project proposal, writing sample (25 pages), 1-page course proposal (undergraduate), and 3 letters of recommendation to:

Ranjana Khanna, Director, Women’s Studies, Box 90760, 210 East Duke Building, Durham NC, 27708. Our program information is available at www.duke.edu/womstud. Duke University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

When Angelo realized he was about to become homeless, he was determined not to let his cat Simon suffer the same fate. Angelo was heartbroken to imagine being separated from his best friend, but in an unexpected turn of events, and with the help of the Boston-based organization Phinney’s Friends, Angelo has worked out an unusual arrangement — one that enables him to focus on his own needs, while ensuring the very best care for his cat.

To find out more about Phinney’s Friends, or to make a donation, email Carmine Dicenso at: cdicenso@mspca.org

For additional episodes and more information, visit the Animal Inventory TV website.

Click on the links below to watch the first two episodes.

Episode 1: May & Nebraska

In 2006, May woke up one morning to find that her dog Nebraska couldn’t move his back legs. Two years later, Nebraska is still paralyzed from the waist down, and May has turned her life upside down to accommodate her best friend’s special needs.

Episode 2: Christine & Kelsey and Zoe

In 1992, Christine was struck by two above-ground trains while walking her dog Kelsey in Boston. At the last possible moment, Kelsey pulled Christine out of the direct path of the oncoming trains. Christine was badly injured, but Kelsey’s heroic action likely saved her life. During her lengthy recovery process, Christine decided to devote her life to the welfare of dogs, and co-founded the organization Grey2k. Now, with the help of her greyhound Zoe, Christine is campaigning to end greyhound racing in the state of Massachusetts

Check back in mid-December for episode 3, Angelo & Simon: When Angelo realized he was about to become homeless, he was determined not to let his cat Simon suffer the same fate. With the help of the Boston-based organization Phinney’s Friends, Angelo is able to focus on his own needs, while knowing that Simon is in good hands…

Episodes are available on Animal Inventory TV’s Youtube channel and the show’s website. For more information about the show and upcoming episodes, visit Animal Inventory TV.

cheers, Bill

~

Lori Marino is a senior lecturer in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University and a faculty affiliate of the Living Links Center for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution in Atlanta.

Lori received her doctorate degree in biopsychology from The State University of New York at Albany in 1995, where she began her work on comparative brain size evolution in cetaceans and primates. Her research expertise includes the evolution of brain size and intelligence in other species, cognitive ethology, and self-awareness, as well as human-nonhuman relationships and welfare issues.

Lori is the author of over eighty scientific papers, book chapters, and popular articles. In 2001 she and Diana Reiss published the first definitive evidence for mirror self-recognition in a non-primate species – the bottlenose dolphin. She also publishes and speaks extensively on ending exploitation of dolphins and whales around the world in the dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) and marine park industries. She has developed and teaches courses in animal welfare and non-invasive approaches to neuroscience, including Brain Imaging, and is interested in not only training students to be critical thinkers and scientists but also in providing an academic context for the study of non-invasive models of science, animal welfare, advocacy, and ethics.

Lori is the co-founder of the Atlanta Animal Studies Group (http://atlantaanimalstudiesgroup.blogspot.com/), which is focused on exploring the cultural and ethical relationship between humans and non-humans, and is also a staff member at The Kerulos Center (http://www.kerulos.org/) dedicated to the prevention and treatment of human-caused suffering of other animals.

You can contact her at:

Lori Marino, PhD
Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program
Emory University
1462 Clifton Road Suite 304
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
(404) 727-7582lmarino@emory.edu

Selected Publications

Marino L, Lilienfeld S (2007) Dolphin assisted therapy: More flawed data, more flawed conclusions. Anthrozoos. 20: 239 – 249.

Marino L (2007) Animal consciousness. In The Encyclopedia of human-animal relationships, M Bekoff, ed. Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 1297-1301.

Marino L (2007) Dolphin mythology. In The Encyclopedia of human-animal relationships, M Bekoff, ed. Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 491-495

Marino L (2007) Scala natura. In The Encyclopedia of human-animal relationships. M Bekoff, ed. Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 220-224.

Bradshaw G and Marino L (2007) Minds of their own: The exciting new field of trans-species psychology. Best Friends Magazine, November/December: 24-26.

Marino L, Connor RC, Fordyce, RE, Herman LM, Hof PR, Lefebvre L, Lusseau, McCowan B, Nimchinsky EA, Pack AA, Rendell L, Reidenberg JS, Reiss D, Uhen MD ,Van der Gucht E, Whitehead H. (2007) Cetaceans have complex brains for complex cognition. Public Library of Science (PLOS) Biology, 5(5): e139.

Reiss D, Marino L (2001) Self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin: A case of cognitive convergence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98 (10): 5937-5942.

Marino L, Lilienfeld S (1998) Dolphin-assisted therapy: flawed data, flawed conclusions. Anthrozoos, 11(4): 194-199.

cheers, Bill

~

Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2000 he was awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society for major long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior.

Marc is also regional coordinator for Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots program, in which he works with students of all ages, senior citizens and prisoners, and also is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. He and Jane co-founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Citizens for Responsible Animal Behavior Studies in 2000. Marc is on the Board of Directors of The Fauna Sanctuary and The Cougar Fund and on the advisory board for Animal Defenders, the Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group, and the conservation organization WildEarth Guardians (also see SINAPU). He has been part of the international program, Science and the Spiritual Quest II and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) program on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Marc is also an honorary member of Animalisti Italiani and Fundacion Altarriba, and on the Scientific Review Board of the Great Ape Trust. In 2006 Marc was named a Fellow of the Dancing Star Foundation, an honorary board member of Captive Animals’ Protection Society. In 2005 Marc was presented with The Bank One Faculty Community Service Award for the work he has done with children, senior citizens, and prisoners.

Marc’s main areas of research include animal behavior, cognitive ethology (the study of animal minds), and behavioral ecology, and he has also published extensively on animal issues. He has published more than 200 papers and 18 books, including Species of mind: The philosophy and biology of cognitive ethology (with Colin Allen, MIT Press, 1997); Nature’s purposes: Analyses of function and design in biology (edited with Colin Allen and George Lauder, MIT Press, 1998), Animal play: Evolutionary, comparative, and ecological perspectives (edited with John Byers, Cambridge University Press, 1998), Encyclopedia of animal rights and animal welfare (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998), and a book on the lighter side, Nature’s life lessons: Everyday truths from nature (with Jim Carrier, Fulcrum, 1996). His children’s book, Strolling with our kin was published in Fall 2000 (AAVS/Lantern Books) as was The smile of a dolphin: Remarkable accounts of animal emotions (Random House/Discovery Books). The cognitive animal: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition (edited by Marc, Colin Allen, and Gordon Burghardt) appeared in 2002 (MIT Press), as did Minding animals: Awareness, emotions, and heart (Oxford University Press) and Jane Goodall and Marc’s The Ten Trusts: What we must do to care for the animals we love (HarperCollins). Marc has edited a three volume Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), and a collection of his essays titled Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Reflections on Redecorating Nature was published by Temple University Press (2006).

A summary of Marc’s research on animal emotions titled The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy and Why They Matter was published in March 2007 by New World Library and he is currently completing a book on the evolution of moral behavior with Jessica Pierce titled Wild Justice: Reflections on Empathy, Fair Play, and Morality in Animals for the University of Chicago Press. Marc has also edited a four-volume Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships: A Global Exploration of our Connections with Animals for Greenwood Publishing Group (2007) and he and Cara Blessley Lowe have edited a book of readings on cougars titled Listening to Cougar (University Press of Colorado, 2007). Marc’s book Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect was also published in 2007 (Shambhala Publications) and Temple University Press will publish Marc’s children’s book, Animals at Play: Rules of the Game in 2008. He is currently working on a new book titled The Animals’ Manifesto: Ten Reasons Why Animals Are Asking Us To Treat Them Better Or Leave Them Alone (for New World Library) and revising his 1998 Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare (for Greenwood Press, 2009).

Marc’s work has been featured on 48 Hours, in Time Magazine, Life Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, Orion, Scientific American, Ranger Rick, National Geographic Kids, on NPR, BBC, Fox, Natur GEO, in a National Geographic Society television special (‘Play: The Nature of the Game’), in Discovery TV’s ‘Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry’, and in Animal Planet’s ‘The Power of Play’ and National Geographic Society’s ‘Hunting in America’. Marc has also appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, and 20/20.

In 1986 Marc became the first American to win his age-class at the Tour du Var bicycle race (also called the Master’s/age-graded Tour de France). Among Marc’s hobbies are cycling, skiing, hiking, and reading spy novels.

Compassion is the key for bettering animal and human lives. People all over the globe are talking about ways to lighten our carbon footprint and accrue carbon credits. But what about our compassion footprint and compassion credits?

A good way to make the world a more compassionate and peaceful place for all animals, to increase our compassionate footprint, is to “mind” them. “Minding” animals means that we must “mind” them by recognizing that they have active minds and feelings. We must also “mind” them as their caretakers in a human dominated world in which their interests are continually trumped in deference to ours.

To mind animals it’s essential for people with varied expertise and interests to talk to one another, to share what we know about animals and use this knowledge for bettering their and our lives. There are many ways of knowing and figuring out how science and the humanities, including those interested in animal protection, conservation, and environmentalism (with concerns ranging from individuals to populations, species, and ecosystems), can learn from one another is essential.

You can read the entire essay at www.dailycamera.com.

cheers, Bill

You can read more about the decision at Reuters.

cheers, Bill

I thought this issue addressed an interesting nexus between ethics, science, culture, and public policy, so I wanted to share it with you. I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Best -

Jared Milrad

Our Common Concern.com

—–

Sometimes it seems that blood drives are everywhere — at school, work, you name it. If seems that way, it’s because the need for them couldn’t be greater: of the 37% of adults eligible to give blood in this country, only 5-10% actually do. In fact, 2007 was reportedly one of worst years on record for blood availability. Most hospitals only have half a day’s supply of blood on hand, when experts say they should have at least a 3-5 day reserve.

Not only does this shortage mean extended waits for patients with non-life threatening diagnoses, but it may mean a potentially dangerous situation for those in need of immediate care.

Ready to help? If you’re eligible, go for it. If you’re gay, well, think again.

That’s because since 1983, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has had a blanket policy banning all potential gay male donors who have had sex with another man after 1977 (when HIV was first identified in the U.S. population).

The FDA cites significantly higher rates of HIV and Hepatitis B and C in the gay male population as its justification, saying blood reserves should not be unnecessarily compromised. Fair enough. But some experts and lay persons call the policy — which is replicated in Canada and some European countries — blatantly discriminatory.

For example, blood tests can now identify HIV-positive blood in as little as 10 days, making the process of screening blood much more efficient and accurate than it was in 1983. Others argue that gay men in committed, monogamous, and long-term relationships should be not excluded from donating blood simply simply because of their sexual orientation. And major blood banks such as America’s Blood Centers have revised their policy on the issue in light of new tests.

In California, activists have boycotted some blood drives and/or started their own. Most recently, the FDA rejected a request to amend the policy by allowing gay men who have not had sexual contact within the past twelve months to donate.

And so the debate rages on, albeit quietly (and gay blood-free, of course).

Our Common Concern
:: a socially conscious blog ::

For example, should we kill sea lions to save salmon, coyotes to protect sheep, wolves to safeguard cattle, or cats to preserve song-birds? These are the kinds of questions we addressed.

Hosted by Emily Harris and David Miller, ‘Playing God?’ was an episode of Think Out Loud, a fascinating programme of Oregon Public Broadcasting.

You can visit the ‘Playing God?‘ webpage to listen to the show, as well as add your comments to the interactive blog.

cheers, Bill

Jared was born in New York City and raised both in New York and central New Jersey. Vegan since the age of 14, Jared has been intensely interested in animal welfare for most of his life, rescuing everything from finches to feral cats as a teenager. While a freshman at North Carolina State University in 2002, Jared became the first student in the school’s history to publicly challenge its policy on animal dissections, leading to a national outcry of support for his beliefs and a significant revision of the school’s Student Choice policy.

Jared later graduated from N.C. State with a B.S. in Fisheries & Wildlife Sciences and, most recently, from Tufts University with a M.S. in Animals and Public Policy. His thesis at Tufts, entitled A Fundamental Nexus: Animals and Genocide From An International Policy Perspective, advocated for revised genocide prevention and response policies that account for the many complex roles of animals during such crises.

Beyond human-animal studies, Jared has long been interested in finding common ground among people. Having visited four continents and advocated for a variety of groups, Jared is a strong believer in the intersections between social causes. He is the Founder and Editor of a socially conscious blog, Our Common Concern (http://ourcommonconcern.com), which highlights pressing social issues — from human rights to environmental justice to animal protection — in hopes of inspiring a dialogue for change.

Jared is also a long-time organizer for the Obama Campaign, and part of the team organizing New Hampshire for the presidential election in 2008.

You can contact Jared at ourcommonconcern@gmail.com.

In “The dumbing down of voters” (Op-ed, June 15) Rick Shenkman attributes Americans’ political ignorance to television and the collapse of labor unions. I think there is a deeper problem: The United States tends to raise employees, not citizens.

Our culture emphasizes so-called practical skills, while we thumb our noses at theory, as if theory had no practical effect. Education is being reduced to job training. The humanities suggest pleasant ways to spend our “free time,” as if literature, art, philosophy, and religion had nothing to teach us about how we ought to live.

Work is supposed to be hard, or it’s not work. To commit your life to service means taking a vow of poverty, as if one cannot do good and do well. In short, we are encouraged to act without deep reflection, to toil away without questioning. And, sadly, I suspect that’s how politicians like it.

Karin Lauria

Source: www.boston.com

For instance, over the last several days the New York Times printed a number of stories where animals are a central conccern. The international section reported Korean protests (and broader Asian concerns) over the safety of US beef, and the associated politics of industrial agriculture and animal welfare. Ironically, there is also a dining column with advice on how to cut back one’s use of meat, and cook a more vegetable based (and healthier) diet. If we turn to the Science section, we find that Horseshoe crabs are in decline, and Fisher’s are reinhabiting American suburbs. This does not even begin to touch the steady flow of news articles on global warming and its impact on endangered species, migrating birds, etc. Finally, the editorial page features an essay about the recently adopted national bird of Israel. The Hoopoe, as it turns out, is a creature long associated with cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue. If there was ever a time to thinking about the political and cultural symbolism of animals, this would be one of them.

To be sure, these and other stories focus on human concerns — agricultural, economic, gastronomic, environmental, political, etc. And the focus on animals is sometimes inadvertent (they are props in the story) and frequently speciesist — the only moral beings who count are human. Even so, the presence of wild and domestic animals in our everyday life and discourse is ever present.

Watch for it!

cheers, Bill

Last week she posted a blog reflecting on animal ethics and social change, as well as her intentions to foster interdisciplinary work on human-animal relations.

We recently received permission from Ms Lochner to publish the whole essay here. (Thank you!) You can read Ms Lochner’s essay below, or view it on the CUP Blog.

For a list of related titles from CUP, visit the Animal Studies series. It is a wonderful, diverse and growing body of scholarship, and well represents the emerging discourse of animal studies in the academy.

cheers, Bill

~

June 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 am

Why Animal Studies Now?:
A Short Personal Note from the Editor

The following post is by Wendy Lochner, senior executive editor for Religion, Philosophy, and Animal Studies

Why animal studies now? Like many people who are interested in the fate of animals and of the Earth, I came to this issue from an activist animal-rights perspective. My background is in philosophy, and I eagerly read and absorbed the arguments of Peter Singer and Tom Regan. As I read further I became hungry for approaches that moved even further toward commonality, and I embraced the absolutist views of scholars such as Gary Francione.

But still I was troubled by the indifference of most people to the conditions of animal life. They can know about deplorable factory-farm conditions, for example, and yet not incorporate that knowledge into their behavior or ethical views. A winning argument, I felt, was not rooted in rational discourse alone; it needed to change hearts and minds by appealing to humans’ emotional connections to, love for, and kinship with animals.

I began to read work by Cora Diamond, Cary Wolfe, John Coetzee, Alice Crary, and others, who convinced me of the power of literature to advance the animal issue. Soon I discovered that many ethologists, religion scholars, and sociologists were also committed to showing the scientific, social-scientific, and humanities bases for a loving involvement with animals as part of a worldview in which the “question of the animal” becomes a fundamental concern of critical inquiry, one in which the terms, concepts, and forms of evidence that we use can themselves be questioned in terms of the presuppositions they make about animals and human—and nonhuman—animal relationships. What is required is no less than a radical rethinking of the nature of humanity itself as inextricably cojoined with our nonhuman kin and in common cause with them.

It is this point of view that I (and many others) call animal studies, and it is my intention as an editor to foster interdisciplinary work from all fields that considers these and many other interrelated questions.

You can view more of Henry’s work at Muse (the Practical Ethics gallery).

One person I have yet to introduce is David Lavigne, a long-time advisor to Practical Ethics, and now a columnist on Ethos. His remarkably impressive biography is below. Please join me in welcoming David to Ethos!

cheers, Bill

~

David Lavigne, PhD
Senior Science Advisor
International Fund for Animal Welfare
1474 Gordon Street
Guelph, Ontario
Canada N1L 1C8
519.767.1948
dlavigne@ifaw.org
http://www.ifaw.org/

David Lavigne is science advisor to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). From 1973-1996, he was a professor in the Department of Zoology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. After receiving his BSc in Zoology from the University of Western Ontario in 1968, he taught high school for one year before entering graduate school at the University of Guelph, completing an MSc in 1972 and a PhD in 1974, both for work on vision in seals. Remaining at Guelph as a faculty member, his research interests shifted to problems of censusing harp seals to estimate annual pup production and population size. By 1975, the focus of his research was pinniped bioenergetics. For the latter work he earned a Dr philos degree from the University of Oslo in 1988. In 1990, he became executive director of the International Marine Mammal Association (IMMA), a not-for-profit organization concerned with the global conservation of marine mammals. Currently, his major interests are in the areas of conservation biology, wildlife management, and natural resources policy.

During his years at the University of Guelph, David taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses including mammalogy, ecology and marine biology, wildlife conservation and management, and natural resources policy. The author of more than 100 papers and technical reports on various aspects of marine mammal biology, wildlife management, and conservation, he is also, co-editor (with J. Beddington and R.J.H. Beverton) of Marine Mammals and Fisheries (George Allen & Unwin, 1985), and co-author (with W.M. Johnston) of The Mediterranean Monk Seal: Conservation Guidelines (IMMA, 1998) and Monk Seals in Antiquity (The Netherlands Commission for International Nature Protection, 1999). From 1988-1992, he served on the editorial advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Zoology.

In addition to his published papers on various aspects of the biology and conservation of harp (and other) seals, he is also the co-author of Harps & Hoods: Ice-breeding Seals of the Northwest Atlantic (University of Waterloo Press, 1988). In the mid-1980s, his laboratory at the University of Guelph submitted a number of briefs to Canada’s Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing and he appeared before the Commission as an expert witness on two occasions. He has also testified as an expert witness before Canada’s Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans (SCOFO), in 1999 and again in 2006. He has made a number of submissions to the Canadian government’s Regulatory Review Process regarding changes to Canada’s Marine Mammal Regulations, and to the Eminent Panel on Seal Management, appointed by the Canadian Government to review Canada’s commercial seal hunt, which reported in 2001. In 1999, 2000, and 2006, he was an invited participant in meetings of the Canadian government’s National Marine Mammal Review Committee.

Over the years, David has been a member of a number of international scientific committees, including: the Seal Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN); the Pinniped-Fishery Interaction Task Force on the Sea Lion/Steelhead Conflict at the Ballard Locks, Seattle; the International Scientific Advisory Committee to the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Mediterranean Monk Seal (HSSPMS, now MOm), the Scientific Advisory Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Marine Mammals Action Plan; and the European Commission/IUCN Steering Committee for the ‘Spanish Monk Seal Project’. He has also appeared before European parliamentary committees on a number of occasions and, in 2005, he testified in the Council of Europe and in the Belgian parliament when both bodies were conducting hearings into animal welfare and other aspects of Canada’s commercial seal hunt. In 2007, he served as a member of the European Food Safety Authority’s Working Group on the Animal Welfare Aspects of Sealing.

In 2001, he presented the invited keynote address – Marine mammals and fisheries: The role of science in the culling debate – at the Southern Hemisphere Marine Mammal Conference 2001, Philip Island, Victoria, Australia. He also was an invited speaker in the University of Guelph’s 2001 The Kenneth Hammond Lectures on Environment, Energy and Resources, entitled “Sustainable Development: Mandate or Mantra.” His lecture, “Ecological footprints, doublespeak, and the evolution of the Machiavellian mind” was broadcast on CBC Radio’s Ideas in May 2002. In January 2003, he spent a week at the University of Alberta, Edmonton as a “Distinguished Visitor” in the Environmental Research and Studies Centre. He was an invited participant in a consultation on future directions of marine mammal research, organized by the United States Marine Mammal Commission, in collaboration with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which was held in Portland, Oregon, in August 2003. Later that year, he delivered the invited closing lecture to the World Wolf Congress 2003, held in Banff, Alberta. In 2004, he presented invited lectures at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle (on the role of science in the formulation of public policy), and at the annual meeting of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council (NABC) in Guelph (on reducing the agricultural eco-footprint). On behalf of IFAW, he organized an international forum entitled “Wildlife Conservation: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability” at the University of Limerick, Ireland, in June 2004. He also edited the book arising from that conference: Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability (IFAW and the University of Limerick, 2006).

Random? Baffling, maybe. I have never heard of dolphins colliding with one another under any circumstances-much less mid-air. To say such a thing is “random” is to imply that it could happen anytime; that it is part of some probability distribution-one of many events in which all outcomes are equally likely. But Sharky was in the process of performing a presumably human-crafted aerial maneuver in a concrete pool for the pleasure of human onlookers.I suppose under these circumstances crashing into your acrobatic colleague isn’t something to be too shocked about, but I can’t help but think about the tremendous athleticism, awareness, grace, intelligence, and agility of free-ranging dolphins in the open sea.I just can’t imagine something like this ever happening there.

Unfortunate? Are they kidding? Unfortunate is locking your keys in your car. Unfortunate is mistakenly hitting the send button before you actually finished typing that email. Or perhaps I’m being to loose with the word. Unfortunate is waking up with a big pimple on your wedding day. Anyway, you get my point. The violent death of a sentient, sapient creature who was kept by humans, for the pleasure of humans, and perished whiled performing tricks for those who were charged with providing his care and safety is nothing less than a tragedy.

Maybe I’m writing this too soon. Like an email dashed off in the heat of disgust, perhaps I’m pushing the send button too soon on this. But I got the news and thought it important that I share it. If I’m not as articulate as I might have been after a cooling off period, that is unfortunate. But Sharky’s death is so much more than that.

Am I making too much of words? I don’t think so. Words are powerful things. "Random and unfortunate" is what you call a paper cut or a big zit. It happens. It’s too bad. It is not this. In my view, SeaWorld screams a callouse disrespect for Sharky, the other animals under its care, and all dolphins with its words as well as its behavior.

Sharky’s death was, at the least, baffling and tragic.

For the CNN story, go to http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/28/dolphin.death/index.html