Equine Cultures In Transition

Societal views on animals are rapidly changing and have become more diversified: can we use them for our own pleasure, and how should we understand animal agency? These questions, asked both in theoretical discourses and different practices, are also relevant for our understanding of horses and the human–horse relation. Equine Cultures in Transition stands as the first volume to bring together ethical questions of the new field of human–horse studies. For instance: what sort of ethics should be developed in relation to the horse today: an egalitarian ethics or an ethics that builds upon asymmetrical relations? How can we understand the horse as a social actor and as someone who, just like the human being, becomes through interspecies relations? Through which methods can we give the horse a stronger voice and better understand its becoming? These questions are not addressed from a medical or ethological perspective focused on natural behaviour, but rather from human acknowledgement of the horse as a sensing, feeling, acting, and relational being; and as a part of interspecies societies and relations. Providing an introductory yet theoretically advanced and broad view of the field of post humanism and human animal studies, Equine Cultures in Transition will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as human–animal studies, political sociology, animals and ethics, animal behaviour, anthropology, and sociology of culture. It may also appeal to riders and other practitioners within different horse traditions.

As much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activities—from racing and riding to police work, farming, warfare, and therapy—and have figured heavily in the history of natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Most accounts of the equine-human relationship, however, fail to address the last few centuries of Western history, focusing instead on pre-1700 interactions. Equestrian Cultures fills in the gap, telling the story of how prominently horses continue to figure in our lives, up to the present day. ​ Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld place the modern period front and center in this collection, illuminating the largely untold story of how the horse has responded to the accelerated pace of modernity. The book’s contributors explore equine cultures across the globe, drawing from numerous interdisciplinary sources to show how horses have unexpectedly influenced such distinctively modern fields as photography, anthropology, and feminist theory. Equestrian Cultures boldly steps forward to redefine our view of the most recent developments in our long history of equine partnership and sets the course for future examinations of this still-strong bond.

This edited volume demonstrates the broader socio-cultural context for individual human-horse relations and equestrian practices by documenting the international value of equines; socially, culturally, as subjects of academic study and as drivers of public policy. It broadens our understanding of the importance of horses to humans by providing case studies from an unprecedented diversity of cultures. The volume is grounded in the contention that the changing status of equines reveals - and moves us to reflect on - important material and symbolic societal transformations ushered in by (post)modernity which affect local and global contexts alike. Through a detailed consideration of the social relations and cultural dimensions of equestrian practices across several continents, this volume provides readers with an understanding of the ways in which interactions with horses provide global connectivity with localized identities, and vice versa. It further discusses new frontiers in the research on and practice of equestrianism, framed against global megatrends and local micro-trends.

This volume provides a unique introduction to the most topical issues, advances, and challenges in medieval horse history. Medievalists who have a long-standing interest in horse history, as well as those seeking to widen their understanding of horses in medieval society will find here informed and comprehensive treatment of chapters from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, legal, economic and military history, urban and rural history, art and literature. The themes range from case studies of saddles and bridles, to hippiatric treatises, to the medieval origins of dressage literary studies. It shows the ubiquitous – and often ambiguous – role of the horse in medieval culture, where it was simultaneously a treasured animal and a means of transport, a military machine and a loyal companion. The contributors, many of whom have practical knowledge of horses, are drawn from established and budding scholars working in their areas of expertise.

This book explores human–animal relations and species-based domination at the intersection of feminism with critique of our domination and exploitation of nonhuman animals, in conversation with power dynamics around coloniality and race, class, sexuality and embodiment. The collection demonstrates the continued vital importance of feminism – conceptually and theoretically, methodologically and politically – to the development of animal studies. Feminism has made an incisive critique of the ways in which gender and other intersecting differences and inequalities are constitutive of our destructive, exploitative and often violent relationships with nonhuman worlds. An international group of scholars and activists showcase new work, revisiting and extending established debates while negotiating new paths. Amongst the issues addressed in this collection will be questions of animal being and animal rights, caring relations, the relationships between activism and theory, interspecies sexual violence, tension in the animal defence movement around body politics, gender politics and professionalisation, different spaces of gender and animal relations from social media to sexology, safe spaces and sanctuaries, spaces of home – both in times of ‘business-as-usual’ and in times of lockdown. This multidisciplinary volume will be essential reading to students and academics working in the fields of cultural studies, criminology, geography, history, law, philosophy, politics and sociology, with interest in gender, environmentalism and animal studies. The editors work in the School of Applied Social Sciences at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, and share interests in gender and species violence, environmental harms, social justice matters and intersected inequalities.

This original and insightful book explores how horses can be considered as social actors within shared interspecies networks. It examines what we know about how horses understand us and how we perceive them, as well as the implications of actively recognising other animals as actors within shared social lives. This book explores how interspecies relationships work, using a variety of examples to demonstrate how horses and people build social lives. Considering horses as social actors presents new possibilities for improving the quality of animal lives, the human condition and human-horse relations.

This book explores how equestrians are highly invested in the idea of profound connection between horse and human and focuses on the ethical problem of knowing horses. In describing how ‘true’ connection with horses matters, Rosalie Jones McVey investigates what sort of thing comes to count as a ‘good relationship’ and how riders work to get there. Drawing on fieldwork in the British horse world, she illuminates the ways in which equestrian culture instils the idea that horse people should know their horses better. Using horsemanship as one exemplary instance where ‘truth’ holds ethical traction, the book demonstrates the importance of epistemology in late modern ethical life. It also raises the question of whether, and how, the concept of truth should matter to multispecies ethnographers in their ethnographic representations of animals.