Human-animal connections: expanding and cross-worlding relational approaches to resilience

ABSTRACT

Relationships are a major theme within resilience research. Little attention, however, has been given to human-animal relationships – except in the narrow and anthropocentric sense of how they support human wellbeing and help to reduce human trauma. This interdisciplinary article takes a completely different approach. Its core aim is to demonstrate that human-animal relationships are significant for how we think about resilience – and about relationality itself. Ultimately, it underscores the importance of analysing resilience and relationships within multispecies and posthumanist frameworks that respect and reflect crucial connectivities, entanglements and mutualities between human and more-than-human worlds (cross-worlding). The article uses two original case studies to develop its core arguments. The first focuses on the ongoing war in Ukraine and human relationships with companion animals. The second centres on the work of the Mama Tembos in northern Kenya and human relations with wild animals (elephants).

KEYWORDS:

• Kenya
• more-than-human worlds
• neoliberalism
• posthumanism
• resilience
• social-ecological systems
• Ukraine

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Janine Natalya Clark

Janine Natalya Clark is Professor of Transitional Justice and International Criminal Law at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests include resilience, social-ecological systems, posthumanism/new materialism and transitional justice. She has published four research monographs and one co-edited book. Her interdisciplinary work has also appeared in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals, including the British Journal of Sociology, Cultural Sociology, the International Journal of Transitional Justice and Qualitative Research. She recently completed a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council.