Междисциплинарные исследования животных: Академическая дисциплина.

Cross disciplinary study of animals
the academic discipline

Animal studies is a recently recognised field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross disciplinary ways. Scholars who engage in animal studies may be formally trained in a number of diverse fields, including art history, anthropology, biology, film studies, geography, history, psychology, literary studies, museology, philosophy, communication, and sociology. They engage with questions about notions of "animality," "animalization," or "becoming animal," to understand human made representations of and cultural ideas about "the animal" and what it is to be human by employing various theoretical perspectives. Using these perspectives, those who engage in animal studies seek to understand both human animal relations now and in the past as defined by our knowledge of them. Because the field is still developing, scholars and others have some freedom to define their own criteria about what issues may structure the field.

Animal studies became popular in the 1970s as an interdisciplinary subject, animal studies exists at the intersection of a number of different fields of study such as journals and books series, etc. Different fields began to turn to animals as an important topic at different times and for various reasons, and these separate disciplinary histories shape how scholars approach animal studies. Historically, the field of environmental history has encouraged attention to animals.

Throughout Western history, humankind has put itself above the "nonhuman species." In part, animal studies developed out of the animal liberation movement and was grounded in ethical questions about co existence with other species: whether it is moral to eat animals, to do scientific research on animals for human benefit, and so on. Take rats, for example, with a history of being used as “an experimental subject, feeder, and “pest.” This has led researchers to find new Non animal Approach Methodologies (NAMs) that provide more accurate human reactions. as a founding document in animal studies. Singer's work followed Jeremy Bentham's by trying to expand utilitarian questions about pleasure and pain beyond humans to other sentient creatures. Overall, progress happens slowly, but the marginal voices help introduce new concepts and ethics that can eventually transform society's relationship with other species. Some still believe that the primary purpose of animal interaction is solely for food. Theorists interested in the role of animals in literature, culture, and Continental philosophy also consider the late work of Jacques Derrida a driving force behind the rise of interest in animal studies in the humanities. Then, in the Middle Ages, animals would appear for more religious reasons. Later in the 15th century, artists began coinciding with animals as a serious subject when discoveries in foreign lands were brought back to England. During the Renaissance era, the influential artist Leonardo da Vinci took interest in animal studies. Leonardo da Vinci studied animal anatomy to create anatomically accurate drawings of various species. In the late 1800s, photographers became interested in capturing animal locomotion.

Researchers in animal studies examine the questions and issues that arise when traditional modes of humanistic and scientific inquiry begin to take animals seriously as subjects of thought and activity. Students of animal studies may examine how humanity is defined in relation to animals, or how representations of animals create understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. In fact, animals often elicit fear in humans. A well known animal phobia is ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. In order to do so, animal studies pays close attention to the ways that humans anthropomorphize animals, and asks how humans might avoid bias in observing other creatures. Anthropomorphized animals are frequently found in children's books and films. Researchers are analyzing the positive and negative effects of anthropomorphized animals on a child's view of the non human species. In addition, Donna Haraway's book, Primate Visions, examines how dioramas created for the American Museum of Natural History showed family groupings that conformed to the traditional human nuclear family, which misrepresented the animals' observed behavior in the wild. Critical approaches in animal studies have also considered representations of non human animals in popular culture, including species diversity in animated films. By highlighting these issues, animal studies strives to re examine traditional ethical, political, and epistemological categories in the context of a renewed attention to and respect for animal life. The assumption that focusing on animals might clarify human knowledge is neatly expressed in Claude Lévi Strauss's famous dictum that animals are "good to think."