Figure 9.1 Animal facilities in Adelaide, SA, past and present
Courtesy of City of Adelaide, used with permission
Even just 100 years ago cities such as our hometown of Adelaide, Australia were filled with not only cars and people as they are now, but also horses and the vehicles they powered, and other animals such as cattle and sheep (Sumerling 2011). The pivotal role that animals played in international human politics at that time is reflected in the estimated 1.2 million horses and mules used by the British forces alone in World War I where close to half a million of these animals died on the battlefield (BVA 2011). Other animals ‘served’ as well, including dogs, pigeons, donkeys and camels (Cook and Iarocci 2013; IWM 2017). ‘Served’ being a questionable word to use as the animals transported to war had no choice as to their involvement, and no recognition as worthy citizens of the countries for which they were being forced to suffer high rates of death, disease and trauma (Johnston 2012). World War I is sometimes recognised as a pivotal point in time for the transition from cavalry or horse-based military might, to military strength based in machinery and technology (Carver 1998). By the end of World War I, tanks and machine guns had revealed the vulnerability of horses in military attacks, even if horses were still needed to pull men and supplies through places where newly invented trucks were incapacitated (Schafer 1996).
Though a sombre introduction to the focus of this chapter, it is timely given that the centenary of World War I is occurring as we write, locating us neatly in time with the human:animal societal transition that is our focus. Through the early decades of the twentieth century, most of the labour roles that animals played in Western societies disappeared as they were replaced by machinery. Cars, trucks, electric trams, semi-trailers and other vehicles took up the labour that had once been powered by nonhuman beings. The shared labour environment of human and nonhuman animals has largely been erased. Few of us now labour with nonhuman beings. Rather, for most people living in Western societies, our contact with animals has become predominately a leisure experience. Sitting with the dog or cat on the couch in the evening, having a horse that we can ride on the weekend, or visiting nature parks, zoos and aquariums as part of our leisure activities are all examples. Animals are rarely co-participants in our work and non-leisure spaces now.
The aim of this chapter is to unpack the multiple implications of this shift from animals being key participants (whether willingly or not) in human non-leisure spaces to predominately leisure companions for humans. What may have been lost and gained in this shift – for animals, humans and for our cross-species understandings and experiences? Our approach to this topic is to provide a snapshot of the presence of animals, then and now, in Adelaide. This is followed by a description of the research and theoretical frameworks used, followed by an exploration of the gains and losses for humans and animals in the demise of labouring roles for animals. We conclude by considering where these thoughts might take us into the shared future we have with domesticated animals.
Urban historians are revealing that the animal-free cities that characterise contemporary Western societies are surprisingly different from past times. Authors such as Velten (2013) in her history of “Beastly London” and Atkins’s (2016) edited collection, entitled “Animal Cities”, reveal that cities such as Paris, London, Edinburgh and Australian suburbia were places where animals were historically far more present than now. Livestock animals jostled with working/labouring animals, entertaining animals, stray animals, sporting animals and pets (Velten 2013). Within these cities facilities that addressed the needs of animals (water troughs, stables, pens) and the reasons they were in the city (butchering yards, carriage barns) were present. Adelaide was no different.
Figure 9.1 provides a snapshot of the animal accommodation facilities that existed in the city of Adelaide prior to the uptake of the motor car and other motorised transport such as electric trams, trolley buses and trucks (the horse and cattle symbols), and those that exist now (see circled). What this visual shows is that prior to the take-over of the motor car, there were nine stables across the city. In the northern corner, there was also a cattle yard where cattle were transported to the city for sale. None of these stables or the cattle yard exist anymore. The only remaining animal facilities in the city are the Adelaide Zoo (established in 1883), which sits on the northern edge of the city (circled), and the Victoria Park racecourse (first race meet held in 1846) (circled) on the south-eastern corner, where animals are accommodated periodically in line with the racing calendar. Both of these facilities exist primarily to serve human leisure.
The arrow identifies the War Horse Memorial Trough, which originally functioned as a horse water trough in the city and is now a memorial to the horses of World War I. The horse memorial actually predates the obelisk it now sits beside by two years. According to contemporary news reports the horse memorial was desired by the men who had ridden these horses (Register Jan 30 1925). It was two years later that the obelisk memorial to the Light Horsemen was unveiled (Register Apr 15 1925). In addition to what is shown in Figure 9.1, sheep and cattle were allowed to graze in the park lands around the city until the end of the 1960s (Sumerling 2011).
Figure 9.1 Animal facilities in Adelaide, SA, past and present
Courtesy of City of Adelaide, used with permission
Figure 9.2 “A day out” sculpture by Marguerite Derricourt
Photograph provided by sculptor, used with permission
What this snapshot presents is a striking change from a time when domesticated animals were embedded in the life of a city, to now, where human interaction with animals is positioned as novelty. Larger, living creatures are now safely contained in a corner of the city (aka the zoo) or deceased, stuffed and arranged for presentation (the museum). Four bronze pigs in the city mall can also be found, which according to their collective title, ‘A day out’ (Figure 9.2), do not live in the city. Photos of tourists and children sitting on or with them can be found on the internet. They are safe, clean … and non-living. Adelaide is no longer a city where humans and domesticated animals cohabitate, it has become a single-species, human, city.
The theoretical and methodological framework that underpins this research is historical sociology and ethnography. History is a tool for understanding. Historical sociology is sociological analysis with a keen awareness of the longitudinal nature of social phenomena (Skocpol 1984). Historical sociology seeks to make connections between the past and the present, tracking changes and the impacts of these on predominately human society. This speciesism of historical research has been critiqued (Hribal 2007; Johnston 2012) and it is this critique that this chapter hinges on: seeking to explore the inter-species impacts of social change.
Historical ethnography (Mead and Metraux 1953) is a useful methodological approach for historical sociology. Historical ethnography uses the multi-source approach that characterises ethnography (Tedlock 2003) and applies it to cultures and societies that may be inaccessible due to barriers such as time and politics. The technological revolution of the internet, and the wealth of online access to historical data, newspapers, books and photographs is making the process of seeking past connections much less onerous. This access to historical documents offers the opportunity to “observe” past generations, and get a sense of their lived experiences and perspectives about topics that are still pertinent today. In the case of this chapter, it allows us to see some of the intersections between human and nonhuman lives in leisure and non-leisure/labour, and to speculate on the implications of changes.
A simple history-based definition of leisure is that it is those activities that occur outside of paid employment (Bailey 1978). It is acknowledged that this definition has been superseded by some leisure theorists (Rojek 1995; Roberts 2006). However, for the purpose of this chapter and the focus of the research on which it is based, this old theoretical understanding is useful. The industrial revolution regulated the distinction between leisure and non-leisure time as (debatably) industrial workers were freer outside the factory walls than they had been in previous eras. Outside of the factory, employees had no obligations to their employer, as distinct from pre-industrial times and society when the divide between employer obligated time and personal leisure was not clear-cut (Bailey 1978).
Marx critiqued the industrial revolution as oppressing humans, positioning them as animals (Perlo 2002), arguing that humans had a right to non-labour time (leisure). From a human labour/leisure perspective, early activists argued that giving workers leisure time enhanced their opportunities to participate in civic and democratic activity (Henderson and Presley 2003). From an anti-speciest approach, as Perlo (2002) identifies, nonhuman workers were not included in Marx and his theoretical descendants’ anti-oppressive framework. However, this does not mean that ideas from Marxist theory cannot be used and applied to the situation of animals. Recently, Young (2015) has argued that animal rights/welfare have progressed at the interface between leisure and non-leisure, as leisure-time civic engagement (volunteer-based animal welfare organisations) partnered with non-leisure activities within the political sphere (e.g. key politicians).
As a twist on the species hierarchy that exists now, animal and child rights were homogenised in early civic rights/welfare movements. Many of the first animal welfare organisations focussed on both child and animal welfare, in “humane” (Pearson 2011, 21) societies. In the USA between 1866 and 1908 (based on McCrea 1910 in Pearson 2011), there were 185 dual focus societies: 104 animal only ones and 45 focussed on child welfare. As indicated by this imbalance, at times animals were valued more highly than children. Animals provided commercial benefits and legislation was enacted to protect them as economic commodities before substantive laws regarding children were enacted. Indeed, the first child welfare rescue in the USA was on the basis of animal welfare legislation that made animal cruelty illegal (Pearson 2011). Pearson (2011) argues that the philosophical development and integration of sentimentalism with liberalism lead to a separation and re-ordering of the valuing of children and animals. Children came to be viewed as citizens, of equal democratic value to adult humans, with rights. Animals remained in the subservient position of not being considered potential citizens. Their wellbeing remained in the conceptual space of welfare; concern for their wellbeing could be requested/chosen but there was no demand for consideration of them as equals to humans (Pearson 2011). Children’s labour was increasingly regulated (Anderson 2011), while legislation focussed on preventing cruelty to animals was less of a specific focus.
While Marx may not have considered animals in his writing and thinking, as the photo in Figure 9.3 shows, animals provided literally horse-power much of the time, inhabiting the labour space with humans. Horses are the most visible to us now via photographs often taken in cities. Bullocks were another common transporting animal in South Australia and Afghan cameleers transported goods and supplies on camel-back (Bull 1884) providing the origin of the feral camels now in the Australian Outback. Dogs, like horses, were bred for specific tasks and the diversity of breeds of each species reflects histories of multiple labour roles. With regard to dogs we have the legacy of guarding, hunting and companioning (Serpell 1995); horses, the powerful farming and industry workers of draught breeds (Angus and Morris 2008) and the hardy Australian “Waler”, many of whom were taken overseas in World War I (Khanshour, Duras and Cothran 2013).
Figure 9.3 shows humans and animals labouring to build tram tracks through the centre of Adelaide. Labour was risky and potentially harmful for animals. For example, the following newspaper article appeared in the Evening Journal, Friday 14 January 1910:
EXCITEMENT IN WAYMOUTH STREET [Adelaide].
Horse and Dray Fall Over Embankment.
At about 2 o’clock on Friday afternoon an unusual accident occurred in the excavation at the side of Waymouth Chambers, Waymouth street, where the foundation to a new building is being laid. A horse attached to a dray was being backed down an incline which ended abruptly with a drop of a few feet at the bottom, when the horse became restless and slipped over the embankment at the side. For some time the animal rested on the brink of the excavation, with the prospect of a drop of about 12 ft., and despite the efforts of the men it eventually dropped over the embankment upon a partition some distance below. Luckily the dray remained poised upon the incline, otherwise the horse’s back must have been broken. The combined efforts of the men at last succeeded in freeing the animal from the dray, and it came out of the ordeal with nothing but slight injuries to the mouth. After some trouble the dray was dragged back out of harms way. But it was necessary to cut much of the incline.
Figure 9.3 Preparation for tram tracks, King William Street, Adelaide, SA (1909)
City of Adelaide Archives ACC HP0938 (used with permission)
This sounds like a terrifying ordeal for the horse, but the animal did survive this scenario. However, it is not uncommon to read of horses being killed in accidents. For example the Advertiser newspaper reported this incident on March 19, 1912 (Advertiser, March 19, 1912):
HORSE KILLED IN A COLLISION
Kapunda. March 19
On St Patrick’s Eve a collision occurred on McCarthy’s-bridge, over the River Light, a few miles from Kapunda. Two vehicles came into contact, and a valuable colt was killed through the shaft penetrating its chest.
This regular section in the newspaper, entitled “Fatalities and Accidents”, reported a range of mishaps and calamities, including and impacting both humans and animals. Yet another article shows the, at times, dangerous intersection between human and animal lives in an era where animal labour was crucial to human daily lives:
A LITTLE BOY KILLED.
Launceston. March 19.
Whilst Elsie Stephens, aged 13, was driving a light vehicle near Scottsdale, having with her a boy named Sweeney, aged 5 years, a dog ran out and frightened the horse which bolted. The vehicle upset, falling across the boy’s back, injuring his spine, and he died shortly afterwards.
What these newspaper reports demonstrate is that the intersection of human and animal lives, and deaths, was far more visible in the past than it is now. Both human and animal lives were vulnerable at times from the use of animal labour. Morris (2007) provides a graphic picture of the manner in which this intersection of human and animal lives made living in American cities (and others which were highly horse dependent) an unpleasant, smelly and unhealthy experience in the nineteenth century. “American cities were drowning in horse manure as well as other unpleasant by-products of the era’s predominant mode of transportation: urine, flies, congestion, carcasses, and traffic accidents” (Morris 2007, 2). Horses were literally driven to death, with the average lifespan of a streetcar horse being just two years. Animal welfare groups had highly visible evidence to argue for responses to animal cruelty and neglect as horse deaths in the street whilst undertaking labour were common. The overcrowding of streets meant it was not uncommon for horse carcasses to be left in the streets until they had rotted and were easier to remove in parts (Morris 2007).
Horse manure was a major sanitation and urban space problem. A “horse manure crisis” lead to the first international urban planning conference held in New York in 1898 (Morris 2007) – a forum that having been planned to last for 10 days was called off after just three as the problem of horse manure was seen to be intractable. In fact, the advent of motor transport provided the unanticipated alleviation to what was a public health crisis. It also led to a dramatic reduction in levels of public systemic animal abuse. While such changes can be seen as positive for both humans and animals, Hribal (2007), using a Marxist analysis and historical examples of animal responses to human mistreatment, argues that the changes also had a sting as animal resistance to labour and the harsh conditions imposed on them was overcome by the non-negotiated imposition of mechanisation. Perhaps to some extent, horses may be seen to have had the last laugh, remaining as farm (and some urban) labour into the 1950s, and having a micro-resurgence post-World War II in the era of petrol rationing (Angus and Morris 2008). But as shown in Figure 9.4, by the 1930s the streets of Adelaide were dominated by automobiles with just a few horse-drawn vehicles remaining.
Figure 9.4 Rundle Street, Adelaide, SA (c1930s)
City of Adelaide Archives ACC HP1620 (used with permission)
It seems reasonable to state that there have been gains for some groups of animals as their labouring roles have largely disappeared. They are no longer the common victims of vehicular accidents, public abuse is less possible (there are fewer animals in public) and they are not overworked pulling massive loads or forced to labour in all conditions. Where public animal labour does occur, there is often protest. For example, the carriage horses in New York, now a tourist novelty (Kumar 2013), the responses to circus animals (Cornish 2017) and concerns for zoo animals (Carr and Cohen 2011).
For humans, the gains can be seen to include major urban hygiene improvements (Morris 2007), and we do not see animals abused publicly in a systemic fashion as in the past. For example, imagining the horses in Figure 9.5 pulling that laden horse trolley in the 40 degree Celsius days that Adelaide routinely experiences in summer is distressing. Removal of this burden is a positive step for both species – horse and human.
There are now fewer large animals to be abused in cities and it is possible to suggest that some past animal welfare concerns, such as the abuse of animals, has been reduced. But it is far more complicated than simply ‘cars rectified overt animal cruelty’. Institutionalised animal abuse and use is now largely hidden. Farming has been moved to the outskirts of urban locales. Factory farming, the mass production of animals for slaughter in particular, is hidden – commonly undertaken in enormous sheds, distant from towns and cities where the lives of animals and conditions in which they exist are hidden from everyday view (Taylor, Butt and Amanti 2016). The numbers of these animals also works to ‘hide’ their plight as individuals, akin to the manner in which mass human starvations and crises can become overwhelming to psyches (Singer 1993). We would save a child we saw in danger, but for many people, knowing that thousands or tens of thousands of children die each year from simple, easily preventable conditions does not mobilise individuals leading to mass action.
Figure 9.5 Horses pulling dual level trams, Grenfell Street, Adelaide (1896)
City of Adelaide Archives LS0/LS0642 (used with permission)
For example, in the Pinery fire that occurred in South Australia in November 2015, it was estimated that 51,000 chickens and 500 pigs died when several sheds were engulfed in a fast-moving fire front (Rose 2015). There was little information about these large numbers of animal deaths and an official published comment illustrates the de-individualising impact that mass farming of animals engenders: “(w)hen you think that some of these poultry farms have 500,000 or 1 million birds on them, then 50,000 pales into insignificance to be frank” (Rose 2015, np). Pictures of injured pets and native animals made the response to individual animals much more public and graspable (Williamson 2015).
There are animals which have been evolved over time via selective breeding to be labouring animals; and now these animals are ‘freed of labour’. But is this a ‘freedom’ that they would choose (Hribal 2007) and for animals ‘bred to labour’ or selectively bred over generations to be best suited to human identified tasks, might this be akin to the experiences of unemployment and lack of occupation experienced by humans?
Unemployment can have detrimental effects on human health and wellbeing, particularly with regard to mental health, but also physical wellness (Drydakis 2015; Gathergood 2013). These patterns of reduced health can be tracked longitudinally; that is, unemployment at one stage in life is statistically linked to poorer health in later life (Strandh et al. 2014, Kaspersen et al. 2016). Hence, would a loss of engagement in activities that animals had been specifically bred for generations to undertake not impact on the wellbeing of animals? While horses, once driven to death pulling heavy loads of buses and trams in city streets and denied adequate rest and recreation when not undertaking such labour, are spared some significant negatives; might the loss of possibly meaningful engagement, reduced everyday contact with other horses and non-horses not create sub-optimal wellbeing in some, if not all of these creatures? Today’s individuals are descendants of animals bred selectively, from friendlier, stronger, less fearful ancestors who were allowed to breed to create genetic strengths that enhanced their labouring abilities. Might these animals not actually suffer some losses from “forced non-obligated time” (Stebbins 1992, 131)? This is akin to the gilded cage concerns that helped to drive feminist agendas of extending the labour market to married women in the 1960s (Strachan 2010), and concerns that people with significant disabilities should be able to engage in meaningful labour (Murphy 2013). Do (some) animals want to labour?
Exploring the notion that there has been a loss of cross-species labour in modern societies prompts considerations as to possible animal perspectives of this shift, including the potential for boredom, depression and anxiety when they are only able to engage in ‘leisure’.
Animals can be seen to engage in productive activity or occupation. Productivity as a human concept has been defined as “contributing to the economic and social fabric of [a] … community” (CAOT 1997, 34). If we look at animals in their ‘natural state or environment’, there is a need to engage in productive occupations to survive individually and collectively. For example, ants and bees create and maintain their nests and hives (Visscher 2007), their collective homes. Animals need to search for food, whether carnivores, herbivores or omnivores – a life-sustaining requirement and another example of productivity. Indeed, competition for food or productivity resources with humans can be a reason why domesticated-gone-wild (feral) animals can be regarded with anathema. Examples include feral dogs killing sheep (Treves and Karanth 2003), cats killing wildlife, especially in native environments (Loss, Will and Marra 2013), and animals such as pigs, goats and horses competing for resources with farmed, contained animals (DEWR 2007).
The canine literature has an understanding of animal needs to labour and experience more than the freedom of leisure (Carr 2015). For example ‘working dog’ breeds – descendants of lineages bred for specific tasks such as hunting, guarding and herding need to be kept occupied (Coppinger and Coppinger 2002). These breeds often fill rescue shelters (as shown by this analysis of petfinder data: https://mom.me/pets/19900-dog-breeds-commonly-found-animal-shelters/item/rottweiler/). Having perhaps arrived as a cute, sleepy (much of the time), puppy, they may become destructive, noisy co-habitants in human spaces if not exercised (mentally and physically) regularly. The selective breeding that lead to them being the animal of choice by humans for a particular task may become the characteristics and behaviours that can lead to them losing their homes, or being surgically adapted to changed human requirements and environments. One of us (Janette) lives with a small pomeranian dog (Sooks) who is an exemplar of such a mismatch. These feisty, pint-sized fur balls, with a sharp bark and a blindness to their own relative size and capacity, are the descendants of larger spitz guard dogs in Northern Europe (Vanderlip 2007). However, over the last 150 years they have become predominately a domestic non-labouring breed. Now the characteristics that made them such good guard dogs (the bark and self-confidence) can be the cause of significant neighbourhood tensions in modern suburbia. Sooks was debarked as the outcome of such conflict prior to coming to live with her current guardians. According to her previous caretaker, it was this or being ‘put to sleep’ aka euthanized. For her part, Sooks seems oblivious to the lack of volume that she produces, and maintains her feisty guarding approach to her property and people. Her need to labour, to be active in undertaking a task that she identifies as important, seems clear when one spends a day at home with her. Simply leisurely snoozing at her humans’ feet is not enough. She has a mission and an occupation to fulfil.
This moves us to the next question: do (some) animals want to labour with humans? Having evolved alongside each other as species for so long that the human need for occupation and labour may be paralleled in some domesticated animals, might there even be an inherited ‘need’ to work together? For perhaps both humans and animals there has been a loss of the opportunity to labour, and experience (meaningful) occupation and endeavour, not to mention simply time, together.
Angus and Morris’s edited book (2008) is a collection of highly personal stories of what life was/has been like to labour with working horses, often in farming endeavours but also more broadly as people recalled driving horse-drawn milk carts, brewery wagons and holiday caravans. People speak of the shared rituals that humans and animals undertook in these activities. For example, the “cup of tea time” (66) when workmen would ensure that the horses had a feedbag and drink before their humans had their meal break. There is also talk of the cross-species ‘respect’ needed to ensure that both human and animal were able to undertake the required work as safely and efficiently as possible, linking to the concept of animal welfare, but within a shared human and animal labour environment that is far less common now. At times human workers risked their lives to save horses they knew in a similar manner to that of people who lose their lives seeking to save their nonhuman (including equine) companions in natural disasters now (Thompson 2013).
In contemporary Western societies, there has been a loss of human:animal interactions/interface across the working day. Interests in canine performance sports (Hultsman 2015) and the evidence that the vast majority of dogs in Australia (85 percent see AMA 2016) go places outside of the home with their owners indicates a desire to spend more time with non-humans on the part of some humans. While there are some initiatives such as ‘pets at work days’ and animal petting setups especially focussed on human mental wellbeing, this is focussed on human needs and animal instrumentality. It is also a therapeutic framework rather than a shared labour/occupation approach. There is not a concern to give animals any rights or recognition as equals, or as ‘workers’ in these processes (Cochrane 2016).
Suggestions that support the possibility that some animals may actually want to labour with humans exist. For example, there are arguments that rather than humans domesticating some animals, the animals actually made the decision to stay with humans (Beck and Katcher 1996). These animals benefitted from having more ready access to food when they spent time near or in human settlements. The differences we see between domestic dogs and wolves, for example, may be the outcome of tamer, less fearful wolves breeding with similarly natured wolves in or on the outskirts of human settlements (Serpell 1995). The physiological changes that are linked to domestication (Trut, Oskina and Kharlamova 2009) may be at least partially agentic outcomes of self-selected interbreeding by these human-seeking/co-habiting canines. There is evidence that some dogs are now more attached to humans than to other dogs (Tuber et al. 1996). We would argue that there is space to theorise that while operating with an element of reproductive agency there may be some populations of domesticated animals, the descendants of those who desired to associate closely with humans, who may have self-selected over time and generations who desire engagement and activity with humans; the engagement is desired hence it is meaningful. Given the evolutionary breeding history of other domesticated animals, it is not unreasonable to think that this trait is not unique to canines. Yet from our searching of the literature, there does not seem to be a field of research exploring animals’ needs for meaningful engagement, aka non-leisure with humans.
There is a belief that pets, the animals with which we live, are increasingly anthropomorphised (Franklin 1999). But while they lack democratic rights (see Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011), our positioning of pets (and also larger domesticated animals that some people feel a similar pet-like sense of attachment to such as horses – see chapters by Danby and Henderson), embeds these animals in a welfare, subservient-to-humans position. Pets are recipients of our emotional benevolence not co-species with rights. ‘Working animals’ tend to be conceptually situated with pets (commonly dogs). For example, Shane the retired police dog (Sarkauskas 2014) has become his handler’s family pet, despite having a distinguished career finding narcotics, cadavers and other things that his unique species-based abilities have provided to the human public for many years. The idea that this nonhuman retired worker might feel the same sense of loss of meaningful occupation that human workers can experience (Nuttman-Shwartz 2004) does not seem to be given any validity. Shane is either a resource assisting humans, or a leisure-bound, reborn ‘pet’. Not a retiree with rights to a pension and care from the state that he has spent his healthiest years providing services to as Cochrane (2016) has recently been arguing could be the case.
Perhaps one reason for the failure to consider the breadth of meaningful occupation possible to animals, domesticated ones in particular, is that as modern humans, we tend to not recognise, ignore or forget our inherent animality. In his book “Dependent Rational Animals” (2009), Alasadair MacIntyre reminds us of the chief importance of acknowledging our animal nature. MacIntyre suggests that it is our animality – humans’ underlying state of being as first and foremost an animal one – that has been forgotten in recent times, putting our understanding: “at odds both with older Aristotelian modes of thought and with modern post Darwinian evolutionary naturalism” (2009, 11). According to MacIntyre, we conceive of ourselves as “exempt from the hazardous condition of ‘mere’ animality” (2009, 4).
One reason for this separation, between humans and nonhuman animals, has been a tendency to award humans ‘non-animal’ status because of our language skills. Yet it is crucial to consider the skills and abilities we share with other animals, which often form a basis for our action: “we still rely in very large part on just the same kind of recognitions, discriminations, and exercises of perceptual attention that we did before we were able to make use of our linguistic powers…. Much that is intelligent animal in us is not specifically human” (MacIntyre 2009, 40). Although the language ability of humans, and specifically our “ability to put language to certain kinds of reflective use” sets us apart from other animals in important ways (MacIntyre 2009, 58), MacIntyre suggests it is more apt to talk of many animals as ‘prelinguistic’ rather than ‘nonlinguistic’, illustrating this with examples of more intelligent species of animal such as dolphins and chimpanzees. In addition, what this belies is that there are humans who are not able to use language (for example those with significant intellectual disability, or some stroke victims, or those who are experiencing late stage dementia). A lack or loss of language does not mean that nonlinguistic humans or animal viewpoints should not be taken into consideration.
The animal studies field argues strongly that the distinction between animal and human is far more blurred than generally accepted. In recent times Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011) have constructed an argument for animal citizenship on the basis of this diversity of human language and high level intellectual skills using severe intellectual disability as their pivot point for the citizenship of domestic and domesticated animals. Their argument is that animals are akin to these humans in that they may be unable to vote, require support to obtain their basic needs and may be inarticulate, but we afford them rights as citizens to have their interests, desires and needs addressed and considered. Hence, we should provide the same kind of response to domestic animals, in particular, who share our human environments. Our argument would be that animal needs for meaningful non-leisure, or purposeful engagements should be part of frameworks that seek to pursue justice for animals, particularly domestic and domesticated ones.
We have argued that non-leisure and meaningful occupation is important for humans to achieve a balanced and fulfilling lifestyle; and that given our shared animality, there is scope to consider that nonhuman animals, in particular domesticated animals, may well share these needs. Radical historical changes have created a scenario for pets and some of our previously co-labouring animal companions that may mean that they are now destined to live a life of unfulfilling ‘leisure’. With the demise of many co-labourer roles, are some domesticated animals now deprived of important occupations which bring meaning to their life? From a human-animal perspective at least, there is a strong argument that a lack of meaningful occupation can lead to boredom and depression, not to mention loneliness, as many occupations are social in nature. What of domesticated animals?
We would argue that there is scope for thinking that some animals need labour, and perhaps even need and desire to labour with us as cross-species companions. Furthermore, that for some species or maybe just some individual members of a variety of previously labouring species, a lack of meaningful engagement and occupation with (and maybe without) humans is a loss and a detriment to thriving for them. Into the future these are ideas, possibilities and potentials that research can and, we would argue needs, to explore.
There are capacities and skills that humans are yet to master, and these are often the skills recognised in the animal co-labour roles that exist. These are predominately opportunities for dogs to use their superior olfactory abilities – sniffing out drugs (Dunn and Degenhardt 2009), bombs (Gazit and Terkel 2003) and people (Stitt 1991). There are also increasing roles that we entitle ‘on the verge’. These are the service/assistance and therapy animals (Fine 2010) where the human-animal intersection and bond is being recognised as inherently beneficial – to humans; but we wonder about its need by some animals as well. Maybe in the future, there will be new, currently un-thought of roles for animals; perhaps these roles will grow out of the skills and capacities that some animals have that humans lack. While the concern is often that we are usurping animals’ capacities simply in the aid of humans, considering the potential animal needs for meaningful activity and engagement suggests that we may add to the quality of some animals lives by re-integrating them back into human non-leisure.
Stebbins, the doyen of serious leisure, has stated “I remain convinced that serious leisure is an important antidote to the dreary state of being unemployed” (1992, 133). Is this the potential for domestic animals who have been ‘relieved’ of labour as well? Are some now condemned to endless ‘leisure’ and pampered slavery? As Hribal states: “(s)lavery is not just a human condition” (2007, 107); in this scenario, what losses are we accruing to ourselves as a co-species? Considering the leisure and non-leisure needs of our fellow animals suggests hidden losses and gains across species that merit further investigation that could enable cross-species flourishing.
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