Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the second and the anthropology screening Speaker Series. We're joined today by Dr. southern mothers who will be speaking on becoming animal with Kubernetes. Chromatin is an assistant professor in the Integrative Studies in Social Science at Michigan State University. She has a bachelor's degree in anthropology and environmental studies from W and U, and a PhD in cultural anthropology from Michigan State University. Her research examines the intersections of human and animal life, including through methods like multispecies ethnography. She's looked at questions of disaster preparedness for animals, multi-species resiliency, and the increasing significance of human animal bond, the cross cultures. Herbert, because engaged for policy change and direct action with non-profit organizations. Her research and publications have explored the aftermath as to who disasters in 2011 and animals left behind in Fukushima. In the evacuation zone, perceptions of wildlife and human-animal relationships in different contexts. She's also currently working on research with the pandemic, including efforts to discuss potential anthropological research agendas for COVID-19, junctions of COVID-19 and meat consumption and intersections of COVID-19 and companion animals, some of which she'll be sharing with us today. So keys join me and welcoming the wonderful doctors had us take it away. Thank you. Hello everybody and happy St. Patty's Day. Me, share my screen here. There we go. Insect. Hope it's working. It was stuck there for a second. So thank you for coming, everybody. Hope it says Beautiful where you are as it is here. So as Jennifer explained, I am a anthropologists and I work at the intersection of human animal studies and Disaster Studies. And that's exactly what I'm going to be talking about today, but in relation to COVID-19. So my work is most often based in Japan. Along with many anthropologists, COVID has of course grounded me and many other colleagues, given me the opportunity to really think about the global pandemic from research lunch and give me something to think about from isolation. So we're going to go into a little bit of a topical spiral today. A fun thank you. Spiral, not the depression spiral. Time to look at how this never ending virus has highlighted some of our most hidden in ignored aspects of our multispecies entanglements, blurring boundaries, blurry and buy-in areas, and kinda challenging our cultural norms and institutions. This is what we're going to look at today. We're going to start with everybody's favorite topic, which is companion animals. No matter what I talk about when it has to do with cats and dogs, people get really excited. I hope you guys do too. And then we're going to jump into the animal origins of COVID-19 and then end and bring it back to multi-species, multispecies resiliency is in particular. So the overall goal here today for this talk. But I want to note that this is an ongoing research project and we're in the survey stage right now, as well as a lot of informal interviews until the pandemic laws otherwise. But the goal here is to use COVID-19 as a means to illustrate the various trajectories that we can explore, but the multispecies lens. And especially to learn the importance of the very least technology or multi-species lives when we approach disasters. And COVID is a fantastic example of all of this. So first of all, I want to define this word because I'm going to use multispecies so often that you're probably going to wonder what it means. I'll probably start blurring together by the fifth time or so. It does sound like motor species, so get used to that. So I'm multi-species is the term we use to kind of step back from humans and look at our overall landscape and all of the connections that we have to other species. So as a researcher, I'm interested in what can be understood by decentering the human. And anthropology, which is of course kind of a funny thing because anthropology means the study of humans or the study of men. But especially in the anthropology and disaster are seeing those interconnections and looking a little bit past the human at the center allows us to see a lot more that we would miss. So multispecies perspectives, also sometimes called post-human, recognizes that our social world is composed of an affected by whole lot of interspecies relationships. And we take seriously the subjectivity of non-human actors. So nonhuman animals and sometimes that includes trees, oceans, water, etcetera. Depending on the context you're looking at. Traditionally, traditionally anthropology that's usually approached animals as objects, as things that we work off over use or impact, but we don't usually see them as impacting us back. So we might see them as objects and I'm not capable. Like inter-subjective experiences with each other. So that's changed a lot in the last 20 years, really kicking into gear in the late nineties. But it still has a pretty far away to go. So the work I'm reporting on here has, like I said, get to get to the ethnographic stage that's in the works. But the road I'm on is referred to as a multispecies ethnography. So Ogden defines multispecies ethnography as quote, an ethnographic research and writing that is attuned to life's emergence within a shifting assemblage of agentive beans. This is a very fancy way of saying that we look beyond the human and we include the multitude of non-human others that make up a cultural context. Necessarily as I have a typo here that says that snake up a cultural contexts animal show up all over the place unexpectedly. So let's dive into it with again, companion animals. So specifically, I want to start with it's glorious specimen of a cat right here. This is my catch up above. So I am biased, but she has perfect. So I foster kittens. I've been fostering kittens since 2016. I'm very much used to getting a whole bunch of cute, fuzzy, but often pretty gross and messy kittens from off the street, usually full of worms and mites and you gotta clean them up and you were a mom and do all these things to them, and then hit cutesy pictures of them, put it up on Pathfinder. And just hope and hope and hope that somebody sees them and says, I want that cap, that cat belongs to me. I'm I'm used to that long process. So used to it. It's kinda like that having a baby thing is you kind of forget about how ROS the initial stages and you just remember those last Tuesday just so then you go and get a whole bunch more. So the predicted this particular batch of kittens I want to focus on because they came in life and May of 2020. So it was in the early stages of the pandemic back then, we also had hope and that Zoom was a novelty and meetings for constant. So the meetings brought our work life home with us. They also brought her whole life in the work. As you guys can see, this is this is my home office. Some of you might be working from a couch, from your home desk, even from a bad no judgment whatsoever. And what that has done is it's created that blur the boundaries between that private and that public setting. Sometimes our work life never ends because we don't go earlier work. But a big part of that has been that our private life, which is often where a companion animals reside, has come into our public existences. So sometimes they walk into the background. I was really hoping my cat walking in the background when I got to the far up as probably napping somewhere. But they walk into the background and usually they're in a batch when that happens. Oh, well, she's right there. You guys can share so that people stop. They want to know the names. They become part of our sociality is we check in on them. We ask how Loyola's give me and how boosters doing. How was the vet appointment and so on. They become part of our general lives. So it's not only the cats. Oh, and I also want to note that while this is an individual experience, I've had a lot of the dispersed it's come out of 2020. 2020 to 2021 especially has recognized this as a global phenomenon. One of joy, which is An important in such dismal times is that it's very common now for cats to be a celebrated part of Zoom meetings, to bring that little bit of joy or sometimes considered coworkers. So it's not only the cats that have been important, but of course there's children and spouses who come into the background. But hats in particular, you don't necessarily hit mute for. They're allowed to come in a little bit longer. So, not surprisingly, my early 2020 pandemic kittens were ahead and such a hit in fact, that all of them were adopted via Zoom. That's ever happened before. Most of them. That one over there on the left is Jazz of all the one that I got my very first foster failed pandemic cats were a lifesaver. So the other four napkins, you need to be part of my social network. They were all adopted by faculty, the faculty meetings. So this transition from public to private life. Private and public life was not just limited to individual companion animals, but also to a lot of viral social media animals. Wild cats and other animals have of course, always graced us with the, on the Internet. My favorite beam, the very early trendy cat, Maori with the one who's very chubby and tries to fit in different boxes. It was quite a while ago. I don't know. I don't even know if he still alive. They've always been around us. But especially during the pandemic, we've had cats, dogs and other species go viral on places like Tic, Tac, Instagram and so on. And become part of our daily conversation to the end where they've even been commented on by politicians. So for example, I have now incorporated the story of John and George in my union meetings. Given they're organized labor support. If you're not familiar with John and x4, it's a highly recommend looking them up. You may have heard of the no bones. Bones they dog, whose name I can never remember. But what's important is whether or not he has bones for not familiar with him. He's a Tic Tac czar who he's a very old pug, and his person will go. Pick them up and if he stays up and it's a Bones day, he falls down back into bed like many of us do. And that's a no bones day and it's followed with affirmations about it's okay. It's okay if you have a no bones day, take care yourself. Very important during the pandemic. So there's no bones. Dog became so important that he was commented about all over the world. He was a global phenomenon and continues to be, but the trend did die down a little bit. But the important thing is that these guys accompany us throughout the pandemic. They brought us joy, comfort, and something new to talk about as we open yet another Zoom meeting like this one. Thanks for being here guys. So why am I telling you about these guys? Because my adoption story, Arts and John, all of these guys, they are not stand alone phenomenon, but they're part of a broader cultural event with a lot of interesting theoretical connections. So let's talk about them. Move away from these really cute pictures. Watching them grow up has been fantastic. This one here, Lola, She was adapted, been the head of my department. Covid and pats highlights there are COVID has highlighted pets, integration into our lives and into our families. This has been a growing trend for the last century. And they've become more and more like family. I'm a result work by Andrea Lawrence methods sociologists call just like family how companion animal starting the household traces the integration of companion animals into the home here in America. So whereas cats were once outside, often in the same spaces as agricultural animals were recently they've been brought inside. So first the transition was indoor, outdoor, and then sometimes completely inside. And now their family, they sometimes don't even ever go outside. This transition is significant. That also parallels a couple of other important trends. The first theme, our increased research and non-human animal minds. And a lot of that research does start off with hats, primates, pets, etc. Those animals who are close to us, either biologically or emotionally. So we're more aware now of their cognitive and emotional capacities. Both on an intimate scale is because we have more relationships with them, but also on a scientific scale. We know about their ability to communicate with us, to understand us, and so on. At the same time, our food animals are agricultural animals, has moved far away from us. So this is referred to as the post domestic contexts by Richard Boolean. So for many of us, as the food animals have moved away, pet animals have moved into our homes. The majority interaction that we have with living animals is with our paths with little to complicate that relationship. So Laura Smith also connects this transition to other shifts and the American family structure that more and more families are choosing to not have children for countless reasons, everything from climate change to finances and so on. We've also had a change in the family structure. So we've had a lot of these childless won't access. We have more clear homes. We have alternative home structures like having multiple families living in one apartment trying to afford it. And San Francisco or something, I'm sorry. We have a lot of non traditional structures and they're just going to continue. So this transition is of course not just limited to America. This is experiencing this happening around the globe and a mini post domestic societies. And I want to talk about Japan for an example. So a term used to describe this changing structure which parallels a lot of what we've seen in America but in a slightly different time period is post familial. Cause familial is the change from quote, a predominance of largely patriarchal agricultural extended family systems to increasingly egalitarian, individuated urban nuclear ones. Common in Japan has emerged since World War II. And so this post familial shift was also accompanied by other, other societal changes such as a declining birth rate. So less children in the homes in Japan, economic stagnation and unemployment. So while people were becoming more on their own, they were also having a hard time with it. So as and explains plants and he does studies on Pat's in Japan. There has been an increasing trend for Japanese rely less on assistance from extended family and a decrease in the desire to start new families. Though it's occupies in giving these trends that the breakdown of traditional human effect, the relationships was the most prominent reason given for why people choose to adopt the August in Japan, both in his research as well as in mine. Dogs are sometimes envisioned as stand-ins and Japan, or perhaps in some cases, full replacement for what would usually be a human relationship. Our complete fuzzy boundaries. Pollyanna refers to this, to them as fuzzy you can, as well as trans species, fictive kinship, which is much more of a mouthful. So Hanson says that we are currently witness to trans species fictive kinship and which if you guys don't know the term fictive kinship is any sort of kinship that's not by blood or traditional family line. So you might have like your dad has an uncle that comes over all the time, or your dad has the best one that comes all over all the time from college and you just call him Uncle uncle Marc. Maybe not actually your uncle, but you don't care. So same thing with species. We might have a pat than our home, who we just come through as a kid. We might not say it in a public setting, but we might say in a private setting. And that is a fuzzy can or a trans species fictive relationship. So not surprisingly, saying this out loud can be embarrassing. This is something that Louis Laura Smith has comments about amongst other scholars, that when we do acknowledge these trends, species fictive kinship relationships or these fuzzy can, it can be embarrassing and it can be filled with shame. Because we are supposed to, their cultural norms have these relationships with humans, not with other animals. So honestly, even as a scholar working in human animal studies, even though pets are a key part of my research that I've been doing for quite some time. Even talking about this in an academic setting is uncomfortable because I've been in contact where people say, we should not take seriously that pets are not a serious thing to consider because cats are associated with often with femininity, with child, with that children as well as width will really emotional people. And so having those connections of Pat's talking about an academic setting. Although these come with a discomfort that you're not supposed to do this, you're not supposed to take pretty seriously. But of course we find that when we take that seriously, we learned a heck of a lot. And also that they're already being taking enough seriously, we just have to notice it and acknowledge it. So one of the the aspects of our shift from private to public of bringing our offices into our homes, bringing our cats into the public eye. We have a brand new form of verification and validation of these fictive kin trend species relationships. That it's not just us, that people all over, your coworkers, your friends, your family also are crazy cat ladies also consider their dogs very important to them and refer to them sometimes in kinship terms, maybe not daughter, but make it something like it like my kid. And one of as one of the ongoing issues with having these new types of, of households in America is, you know, you might talk about your daughter, Your husband with their, with their partner in public, you'd say, Oh my dog. But now with this shift, it's becoming more common and verified that now there are kids. We spend a heck of a lot of money that they deserve that title. So one other aspect that companion animals that's been deeply highlighted by COVID-19 is that of touch starvation. So as cats come into our homes and of course into our hearts, we know that it's not just they're, they're crazy antics and so on, but also their emotional comfort to us. Both physical touch as well as their emotional support, whatever that might be for your pet. I know for our cat it can be praying for a lizard. I'm not really sure. But we get something from this relationship. One of lesly Irvine's delineation of why we have hats is deficiency. And while I don't really like the way she phrases that she says that we have pets because we're deficient in something that we should get from a human. A human can. Because of course, some people do prefer that from an animal that's perfectly fine. But the meaning is still very relevant. We are sometimes lacking something and part of that is because of that ship and how we're living in our society now, we're lacking social interaction, social support, emotional support, and Physical Touch. And weren't. The importance of that physical touch is something that's really been brought out with COVID-19. So we know that there's been a dramatic rise in the use of not only therapy animals, but also emotional support animals has some of that can get a little strange. I know somebody with that emotional support horse, there's an emotional support P pack and cockatoo. You in my town. It's a whole other bag aware of them not going to talk about. But we need to know that this has brought up in a lot of studies about, okay, what are they actually do for us? Why, why does this help? And we found there's illness examples, but just to name a few, that for example, if a bonded human than a dog look at each other, they gaze at each other. Oxytocin is released because they have, they have, they're having to experience together the dog recognizes them, the human recognize the dog. And it's a positive thing. We know that petting a cat, homes or heart rates. We know that pets can be used to sense when something is wrong and if try and seek assistance, we know that humans breathe for Pat's when they pass. Sometimes the same if not more than they might be for a human family member. We know of course, that they're not merely objects of a faction, but you're not really objects at all. But their subjects capable of having and our subjective experiences with us. Even the joints of the bunch, even the dung cats, they still something's going on there. One of the most significant aspects of COVID-19 has of course been that physical touch because some of us are living alone, some of us are isolated from any ability, any capacity for physical touch. We need. We knew before COVID-19 that one of the aspects of our modern masculinity, gender roles is that men are especially touched on in our society because whereas it was one very common for men to be able to touch each other, sit next to each other, sometimes share a beds. Have that seemed close relationship that other genders are allowed to in our society without that fear of being seen as gay or less masculine. So on. I don't know if kids still say it nowadays, that gives used to have to say no homo. They touched each other. I don't know if that's still a thing. I hope it isn't. So a man but only experience physical intimacy with sexual partners or sometimes with his parents if he lives in that general realm. So combined with the distance that we now often have from our extended families, as well as with COVID-19. And that isolation many of us has felt the touch starvation was deeply highlighted. Not just the reality of it, but also the psychological impacts of it. So of course, it's not very surprising. And I really want to say directly correlated, but I'm waiting on survey data to come back. That in the first year of the pandemic, we saw a huge, massive increase pet adoption. The shelters were cleared out for a certain period of time and pets increasingly went into homes to perhaps help a little bit with that touch starvation. So to look at this from another angle, a little bit more of a human angle. Well, we know that one of the most dehumanizing aspects of homelessness, of people experiencing homelessness is the invisibility that they feel. So if for instance a woman that's on the street asking for money and people pass them all the time. But avoid eye contact. You, you've probably done it too. It is emotionally challenging to the person experiencing homelessness to not have that gaze back. We know that we identify ourselves and we think about ourselves partially in reaction to the people around us, to the people reaffirming our humanity, reaffirming our value and our worth. And so that lack of the gaze is devastating. This the mirror insignificance of a person meeting IS view acknowledging your humanity is of course steep. So can our humanity, the reaffirmed in the gaze of a non-human animal. A. Lesly Irvine's recent work, my dog eats first, which is a book about people experiencing homelessness who have pets, talks about how important it is to have a companion animal who acknowledges not only your presence, your humanity, but also your worth and your value because they need you for something. And how having a companion animal, you did the dog, as the title says, the dog is perfectly fine. It gives them a reason to get better. But mostly it's that gaze back that they can experience that gaze back from an animal and recognize their own humanity, their own birth, their own value in somebody else, especially in a world where the humans avoid their gaze. So how many pets provided this need during the pandemic? And hopefully ongoing research will highlight this. Then finally, of course, we know from older multiple contexts that especially including disaster studies, that we have to take that seriously. There's so much of our family that we will not leave them behind during an evacuation. We know, especially after Hurricane Katrina as discuss really well, I'm filling the arc by us lesly Irvine, that companion animals cannot be left behind without also leaving behind the humans because we can't tear families apart. Of course, the pets act follow that. And 2005 and the Yang and Farmer's book talks about how that's really just the beginning. But what's interesting here is that while research is increasingly done regarding the significance of including these companion animals in disaster scenarios. The pandemic highlights the significance of non-human can for our mental and social resilience. So a lot of, a lot of the work I've done in the past has been how do we help them? So of course we can help ourselves as well. But COVID has presented a new trajectory, which is how are they helping us? How are they getting us through this disaster? And that's fine that there's so many different aspects of essence has been fascinating. So that's the end of the pet section. We're now going to talk and kind of problem Matthias, some of the terms that I used in the last section, we're going to look at humans and animals and the origins of COVID-19. So asking questions, very basic questions, like, what is a human? But don't worry, I'm not going to get all philosophical here. I'm not really my jam analysts have had like a couple of glasses of wine and I'm drinking tea. But we're not going to lightly delineate how COVID-19 has highlighted are animal cells. Helps situate us within a broader multispecies landscape. And broken down some boundaries that we just usually take as a given. So this is my favorite picture in the whole talk. I found this early 2020 and I try to put it in every class, every semester. So let's focus on the biology here. Our original originator of COVID-19, the batch. So bats don't really have the best Sarah type in America. There are often perceived as dirty as pass their liminal species. They are often living amongst us, but they're very rarely welcome. So when they were identified, much of the couple other candidates, I'm exotic animals. People were reacted with disgust, with confusion. How did this happen when you people even interact with that? And of course happened because we do have interactions, sometimes close, intensive interaction with bats. And of course, coronaviruses are zoonotic, which means that they can jump from humans to animals. And I chose this definition specifically because it highlights the weirdness of how we talk about this. Because of course, humans are animals, so it's transmitted from animals to these other special here animals. But this zoonoses in general is an example of our biological continuities with other species. And when I say Biological, Biological continuities, and I'm pulling this specifically from Samantha horns, but humans and other animals. We're not looking at humans and then a blockage and then all the other species, we're looking at a spectrum of species in humans or simply on it. They're just one of the other species. And just fun fact, one of the aspects of our domestication of non-human animals and their domestication of us is the sharing of these diseases. When we, when we go through the process of domestication, we're not just, it's not just a social process, but also we're getting used to viruses. We're going to use the R is we shared things beyond saliva and whatnot. So COVID-19, as well as all coronaviruses, are zoonotic. They come from that interaction between humans and other animals. So basic anthropology fact here we know that animals are perceived differently by in any different cultural contexts. It's going to change everywhere you go and all time periods, and it's constantly shifting. We've got a bug here. So we humans have a lot of cognitive dissonance about our placement with other animals. And burt fantastic at keep in that cognitive dissonance I'm holding paradox like pros. But I want to specifically talk about how COVID-19 has challenge that, how challenge that only how we separate ourselves, but also on that stark anthropocentric hierarchy that we often associate and eurocentric cultures like ours. So most importantly here is that we define ourselves and we defined animals. Any binary. So as our definitions of BIM chef and they constantly view with new research and rapid new research that since becoming more and more stuff coming out about octopuses right now, freakin amazing. But as we learn more about them, we have to shift. What makes us, us, because it's 100% unrelated. So for example, we were once man the hunter, and then we found out, heck, watch an animal side we owe, we are Amanda tool user. Now we know even ants use tool, so we've got to really change things and it was language and culture and so on. So are constantly having to redefine. We are in COVID-19 has done that as well from a little bit different of an angle. So I also want to note that from our are often perspective where we separate ourselves. We're also using usually only looking at other animals based on how they work for us, how they're useful to us. So with this bunny here, we see them differently depending on what context they are based in our society. So one of them multispecies lens that I want to highlight here is that we have to see them for who they are beyond that. So we have humans, we have animals. One of these categories has one species, Homo sapiens. Sapiens, and the other has millions. There are 8.7 million species on the planet. Just about 2 million of those are animals. The majority are insects. We've got so many insects. But I always pose this question to my students here when we talk about this contiguity, which is who is more like a human and a chimpanzee or a chimpanzee and a shrimp. And I like asking this question because both at a curiosity, but also because it really brings out how this question is deeply tied to our cultural background. It's deeply tied to our religion, to our philosophy is due all of these different aspects of how we are born. There was absolutely no wrong or right answer to it. I just like to highlight and think about what goes through your head. When you think about who's more like human and chimp or a chimp finish or so. And just to highlight again, if we look at animals outside of ourselves, outside of that, that human exceptionalist perspective, we recognize that they have ability, his desires, lives, communities, cultures. They have all this stuff completely outside of us and we are adjusted as limited in our ability to know them as they are. Loss if they even want to know us. We're pretty cool, but we do cause some problems. So that brings me to the point of this questioning, which is human exceptionalism. So human exceptionalism is the view that humans are different from in separate from all other organisms. And this shows up all over the place. It's this idea that we are separate for some reason and it can be an idea of a physical separation as well as to set philosophical or ethical one as well. So coronavirus emphasizes the continuities that we have with other species, which fuzzies up batch separation. It turns it into biological continually rather than a pioneering. So this origin of a bat, especially how it makes people uncomfortable, because it's recognizing that we share something with them. This exceptionalism often finds expression in humans mistakenly located themselves, quote, at the center of the ecosystem when they are only one of its actors. I really like that quote from CAC. Rather the stories of cats, tigers, all sorts of animals who were contracting COVID throughout the pandemic and needed to be. So further adds this recognition that we are simply one of many species virus to hold on to an attack. But also challenges our anthropocentrism, which centers the humans in a multitude of forms. Much of, most of which presumes that humans are, that the planet was put here for our species, makes it quite difficult to think about when we have something like COVID-19 as act as back in, sorry, I need to be. As Kirk's explains, he proposes that COVID-19 proposes the end of the humans at the center because we're being brought to our knees by a microbe. We barely understand challenging all facets of society. Now, if you're not familiar with ethnocentrism, It's got two parts. The definition, the belief that consider as human beings to be the most significant entropy of the universe. And then how it interprets or a regards the world in terms of human values and experiences. So it's not just that we see ourselves as the center or the purpose of the universe, but also we might look at another animal and value them based on how close they are to us. It's why we might give rights to a chimpanzee, but not to a pig. Because even though pens are very similar to us, but we see things like of us and them and therefore the hammer worth and value. It's also why you might look at, say, a dog and say, ha, you don't know physics here, lesser than us. And the dogs, of course, like I just want snacks, I don't care. But we have a way of interpreting the world based on what we think and value about ourselves. And that brings us to our last border crossing here. And that is in regards to, well, first actual physical borders. So I want to talk about the breaking down of borders and the cultural misunderstandings that happen all in between. Then there's a couple of borders in this. So I admit that despite being an anthropologist, despite a lot of my work, fall, falls, falling in Japan. Display became fully aware of how viruses work when COVID first hit in January of 2020. There have been a little bit before that. Remember reassuring myself like it's really far away, it's fine. It's in China. It's very, it's never going to come here. I think that was his optimism. But of course, we know that borders and nations are merely socially constructed and viruses don't see borders. So we are constantly coming and going. Berg global, global network. We've got people, non-human animals have this hitchhikers as well as viruses coming and going at all times. So we know that coronaviruses really have no need for these imagined borders. Only living bodies to infiltrate. And those are plentiful when it comes to humans. And we tend to crowd ourselves into small spaces like classrooms. Regardless of best we respond to and continue to respond to the coronavirus within those borders. So we not only have different policies country to country, but also state, the state sometimes even town to town. But the point of discussing these borders, animal species talk, is that the discourse that surrounds the origins of COVID-19, heavily, especially in the early days, focused on China, the borders in which it came out of, and especially the focus on wet markets. And there are various spaces of human animal contact that occur within them, both realistic and stereotypes. So the language that was used, especially in the early days, but it's still kinda continues now, but luckily less so often has orient lists notion that's very much othering to the people who live there and very misinformed. So the origins that we talked about in the early days was that of wet markets. A wet market is of course, very comparable to the farmer's market. I have a farmers market or black for me. Kind of looks like this by it's, of course, it goes only once a week, whereas these can occur continuously. So a wet market is in contrast to a dry market, which is where nonferrous or where possible non-perishable go the dry goods. Whereas wet markets is where perishable items are sold like vegetables, meats, and so on. And it is true that there can be live animals like chickens and so for slaughter and the stereotype back in the day was that they all have exotic wild animals and no, they don't. But that can be an occasional think this is it can be anywhere from some other vitriol is on welcomed and wildly harmful. But also spoke to the last boundary that I want to talk about, which is that between the consumer and the producer of animals, of animal products. So I mentioned earlier applets, domestic contexts that in which agricultural animals are really, really, really far from us, behind walls, use it. People have little contact with them and yes, unless you're directly engaged. Whereas passive come very close to us. And so our relationship with animals tends to be path-based. We have very little awareness of how food is produced so that when we see it in another country, it's very easy for us to, through the lens of ethnocentrism, say that's 30, that's wrong, That's bad, That's roads and so on. And so the reality is of course, that intensive human animal agriculture is a global norm, especially here in America. And with it comes the risk of zoonotic disease production and spread. My work here at the The swine facility on campus for another, another research project. And to get into see the pigs, you have to come in, remove all of your clothes, shower. But I'm different bows, even somebody else's underwear. It's very awkward. The ones you, the pigs and do the exact same process probably now because there are hyperaware kids are very much like us. And it's very easy for a virus to jump from me to them and them to me. And we want to keep both are well protected as well as their world protected. They'll producers are highly aware of this connection. So Americans and countless others and other post domestic contexts have a cognitive and spatial disconnect from the raising, slaughter, and packing of animal products. Covid-19 us really highlighted that. And close this distance a little bit underline. Both are biological similarities to the animals were producing in the shared vulnerabilities we have in terms of viruses. So it emphasize or heavy reliance and animal products as well. So meat was declared a central at the height of the pandemic by Trump, and production was forced to continue because of our reliance. It has brought the risks of all of this intensive human animal contact to the forefront and expose other associated issues such as labor exploitation. And perhaps most importantly, it's also reminded us of our biological similarities with the animals that are producing similar enough to share a virus, but different enough to slaughter. There's my other favorite image on the slide. Very good to think about during the pandemic is you're never truly alone as bugs all over you at anytime. So COVID-19 as a catalyst for highlighting, acknowledging and bore and a lot of the boundaries that happened with our relationships with animal others. Everything from pets and family, perhaps public and private, which are interrelated, global, national consumers production and my favorite human animal. Covid, continues to be a highlighter and an acknowledgment of our multispecies reality, something that we usually don't think about unless you have two. So from those bugs and our eyebrows, the yeast and our sourdough, the cat than our hearts and the pigs on our plates. We are constantly enmeshed in a non-human world. So meanwhile, we're also invest in a society that has linguistic, symbolic, conceptual, and many other ways of separating ourselves from those exact species. So when we talk about multispecies, realities and disaster studies or in anthropology in general. The most important part, a simple acknowledgement, which is often not, not included. A simple acknowledgement that they're here, they're significant, poor in or connect us. In contrast to human focused perspective that's usually based on human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and often ignores all of these important connections as well as the vulnerabilities that we share. So especially those that were closely tied to non-human animals like COVID-19. So just as our vulnerability, especially our viral roan or vulnerabilities are co-produced with other species. So to our potential resiliency is thank you guys. Again. So I will note real quick that you're in charge of your own view on Zoom. We would like to open this up for Q and a. So if you click at the top right where it says View, you can switch it to gallery view that will let you kind of see everyone and we'll open up for questions for us. I see where the view is. Cool. Yellow people. I'll jump in if that's okay for everyone. Thank you for that terrific talk though is be very interesting. See so timely. And so it's cool that you're talking about something that we all have, something a little bit of a, of a familiarity with the surrounding Coptic and issues. So I I guess I should tell you I'm a, I'm a faculty member in the department. I'm a cultural anthropologist. So it seems to me that there's a couple of things going on with the, with the relationship of the animal in relation to COBIT. And so there's like this domestication as a means of human, That's part of human resiliency. That the incorporation of an animal into a domesticated and something like you noted has been going on for a long time, but but takes on some kind of new significance in the era of lockdown at, and then there's dislike, other kind of problematic idea or understanding of this discourse about the Y old or the, you know, the untamed, the, the, the, the market as a space of sort of uncontrolled danger. That's also animal related. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit actually about the middle of those because it's not only, I assume it's not only cats and dogs and kind of familiar animals become sources of resiliency. The wildly popular like Tiger King, like on TV, right? So we're, we're in lockdown, but we're also watching like the freqs array of animals as they're like weird the domesticated kind of at the end of the era of pets and in a new era of, of, of like strange kinds of evolutions and, and multi-species happenings. Tiktok is replete with with people with all kinds of crazy things going into rivers to catch like the world's largest cap. Just like that. And so it's not domestication. That is providing a source of class or status or identity, whatever you want to call it, you know, in a lock-down situation. But it's, it's actually an interesting relationship. So wildness and to nature. That's of a particular sort of domestication or mediation. Does that make sense? So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Yeah. And I'm so glad you brought up Tiger King. And when I try to forget time, tire, exactly a great example because there, yeah, it was the early pandemic or that made a big, and it really showed that there is a wrong way to have an experience with non-human animals. Though, of course, that's an opinion-based. Some people might think that's perfect. But they, they had a very open and problematic relationship with tigers that I think really fascinated people because the way they related to them, even though they were often abusing them, was as, you know, these are my family, These are there so important to me, they're so close to me. While at the same time, of course, having problematic relationships with them. But yeah, that, that connection with nature, that connection with the wild is something that made it big, especially in the early days, the isolated days of the pandemic. Because not only were we isolated from our family members, who were isolated from any place to go. And so a lot of us rediscovered the outdoors. So we, there's a lot of talk in the biophilia hypothesis in the early days of how a lot of us are rediscovering how important it is to be in the wild, to go outside, to go into the forests of touching things. And the pandemic for those of us who are privileged enough to work from home, had that extra time or at least that extra space to experience things. That's not a cubicle or not your basement office at the university and have connections we perhaps wouldn't have before. But there's another comment on there. Well, that's great. Thank you. Okay. Oh, also whenever people imagine what they see on their Tiktok that so algorithm base. So the first thing, first thing I thought, How did you see like cat scratching the object? I've got a knock on wood prompts on mine. Kinda Nadella there. Oh, yeah. I guess it's not a very wise thing to say what comes across like your For You page. I'll just say that it was on my sudden for you pitch. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's yeah. That's fair. I mean, minds filled with a lot of cat. So, you know, not not surprisingly. I don't know if I have a question or just like a rambling, I'm not doing that. This is a comment, not a question. Thank them. Are hormones are completely accept. A and this is real. You are the expert here. This is why I thought I'd just like kind of in our spitball this a little bit. It's something I've been thinking about a lot as I've gotten older, as someone who's like in a reproductive age group. And witnessing all my friends in this age group and the discussions we have around having kids or more often not having kids. And I'm not sure. This is all based on my anecdotal evidence. You know, a lot of my friends and people I know are talking increasingly about their pets and children. It really doesn't seem like it to be a topic, at least in my circles. In fact, if you sort of voice the opposite, well, like pets are not children. People like stock. And they look at you and they're like, I'm sorry, what did you say about my dog? And it's like, okay. You know, there's, there's a distinction. But anyway, maybe there's not, there's a blurring of boundaries. But my question isn't so much about that boundary. My question is actually about, what? If you think that there might be a link between this, you know, reef formation of kinship around the inclusion of pets and this kind of future anxiety that's like mine sort of theory around this. And I think that one thing the pandemic also did was put that future anxiety at the forefront a little bit for many of us in a really tangible way. Especially for those of us who recognized that the pandemic was in a way related to climate change, related to like that forest, like this sort of like encroachment on forest and that sort of thing. So unlike just the month for in January 2020 when the bush fires were happening in Australia. I was reading articles from women who were saying that like this has made me not want to have children because the climate crisis is sort of coming to fruition in front of our eyes. And then the next month we had this pandemic and so, and people are getting isolated and then they're getting pets as part of this. So I suppose this rambling all comes to, you know, as someone who studies disasters and animals and animal human relations. Do you see these things, this kinda like feature anxiety as something that is linked in that sort of. Absolutely. And if you just look historically at other moments when we have those big anxieties, like for instance, the population concerning the 70 is along with the oil crisis. And then during any sort of major war or conflict, It's always takes a little period of time afterwards, before people start having babies again because that anxiety is extreme. But I think it's that combination of having that anxiety of thinking, what is the future going to bring combined with this new acceptance of pats as family members, like you said, your, your social circle is pretty awesome about it. Not everybody circle. Social circle is. And having that validation that this is an option because even in my mom's age and she is in her 60s now, even at her age, she has told me it's just a given like why did you have kids? You had to you, that's what you do. And nowadays it's a little bit more acceptable to say, no, I'm not going to have children and that's a new phenomenon. It's something that we're all kind of explore. And especially in my age group, I'm 38. But the younger generation when we talk about population and about climate change, when we talk about the future. They're very vocal about this, that I don't feel like I have to have children, I have a choice. And I'm going to do this instead. And sometimes because they're 18, It's like runoff into a commune or follow ban. But the idea is that they no longer feel like they're here to get married, to have children and have that traditional family structure. And pats conveniently fill a lot of that gap that we expect from that and also helps with grandparents. That's one aspect I didn't talk about. But Grant, like your parents want you to have children heavier if you're of a certain age that talk and that happens a lot with me. Never going to have children. And your cat is now a grand kid, and that can sometimes be fine, but the grandparent, they can actually buy things. But it also can knock. And that's very true. Yes, Good, Great, great thought, great ramble. Let's see when to jump in and try to unmute myself. Thank you for a great talk. I have a few questions and actually partly inspired by George's question about pets and people with children. But then also now your mention of elderly people. So we've been doing a study for the last year. So looking at public perceptions of the microbiome, and particularly with people that have pets, to people that have children, people that are elderly, people that have chronic disease and people that use CAM. And what we were really intrigued to explore and we're just beginning to analyze the data. But when and how people use more ecological metaphors for their understanding of the relationships to the microbiome and then also militaristic metaphor horns. And what we found, especially we had hoped to start doing this before the pandemic and it got delayed. And then now we only have post-pandemic interviews, but that's not true. We have informal kind of exploratory interviews prepared to act. But I hope it has been wonderful for this research in the sense that people are really thinking about the microbial world. But interestingly, we find that there's some tension between what people had been sort of shifting towards ecological metaphors. People that had heard about the microbiome and knew that, you know, you should be doing things that are good like and like yogurt and all the marketing activity and things like that. But then with COVID coming in, we saw this sort of embracing of very militaristic metaphors, particularly for cleaning, you know, cleaning products. And, and when people are being interviewed, sometimes they sort of sense that tension. Like wait a minute, maybe I shouldn't, I don't. And I just, I see that depending on the domain, depending on the population, we're seeing some very interesting ideas and people still kind of processing, maybe recognizing that baby, their ideas don't even match up sometimes. So I'm just curious to hear your thoughts. I mean, we're just at the very beginning stages of exploring this. So love to hear your thoughts. So I'm not too familiar with microbiome might grow like that whole area of studies, but I'm fascinated by it. So you're definitely the expert on that. But absolutely in the early days of the pandemic, of course, wasn't just the pets and the Tic Tac animals, but also that awareness of the smaller parts of our world. And I think that has given us a perspective that we hadn't considered before because the virus is so small, we're doing all of these actions, mass gain in and different types of mass. And think about how these things come and go. And that is simply opened our brain up there. Not only the little lifeforms like that, but the living life forms all around us and all the things happening at the same time. But I don't really have myself will say about that. Sorry. Your thoughts, your talk was actually very stimulating for me to be thinking about my dataset too. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Excellent. And I want to, I want to theories or it's late on that because I, I'm fascinated by that stuff, especially the gut bacteria and other research there. I think you cited Frederick Kecks work, I think. Right? Yeah. He's he's in our microbiome think tank and we just had a multi our conference this morning all about the microbiome. So I was just thinking about this. We just had, one of my collaborators just went off into the Amazon to collect samples from an indigenous population where I was presenting today on all these pictures of here we have dogs and cats primarily there. They have tens and tens of species of animals that they live with and are in their houses in our on them monkeys and birds and things like that. So such a different view of what normal interaction between humans and animals are. And also all the kids and the women, everybody touching all the parts of the animal and taking them out and not washing their hands and giving them to people snow. Your talk fits so well with the discussion I had this morning and has given me lots of thoughts, so thank you. That's awesome. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I my computer keeps making a birth. I'm using my work computer and I haven't put it on for a while and apparently there's a lot of updates. Don't know how to make it stop. So I actually have a question. Go ahead. I was just so the first thing I was going to say it was thanking seven because I was the one in our group who was so adamant that we invite someone like yoga was doing multi-species work, should be part of it because it's just so, it's so fascinating to me. So thank you so much for that. I I guess I'm thinking about the way that you were talking about principally two groups of animals, right? Pets and the animals that are food sources for us. And in the way, and certainly in both of those cases, there have been a lot of efforts to protect them from getting COVID right to protect them because we care and to protect them because we need them. But learn what you knew about efforts to protect other kinds of species, right? In that fall into that fall outside of those two groups. And protect them from ravaging by COVID. It's not something and I'm not even on Tik Tok, so I have to apologize for my hair. And so what's going on in the world around us. But I, you know, I I just I don't I haven't seen that much being talked about in relation to this kind of other categories of of Anna and fish and whales tuna zone. So that's a really good question. And so I've had since about April of 2020, I've had these I don't know if you guys use Google Alerts to tag any sort of articles that have certain key words. And one of those, I have the origins of COVID, animal origins of COVID. But another one of them is simply animals and COVID and most of those that come out. Our, in regard to exactly that zoo animals, a lot of circus animals, animals that we have in our lives that aren't necessarily the paths at our homes. But also there's regarding the path in our homes. The idea that they too can contract COVID was huge in the early days before we knew a little bit more and still kind of up in the air, has a lot of articles. So come, keep coming out saying this is can't have Kobe and are we at risk? And see in your companion animal as a threat is something that's new, like can you pet somebody's dog when you walk down the street? But zoo animals were big on that because I think it was the ones in New York who contracted COVID. And not only was that. Concern where you started to think about the vulnerability you share with the animals at the zoo or can you catch from them? Hopefully you're not that close to the lions and tigers and whatnot, but who knows? But also the the, I completely lost my train of thought. Oh, do the 5'-end, the uproar over giving them Kobe vaccines before humans received them. That came out a lot, especially with zoo animals, because it brought in that hierarchy of yes, they're important and yes, we don't want them to get sick, even though we've seen other lions and tigers get sick. Why should they get at first when there are humans who don't have it? And so it's brought up a lot of, I, like the human animal studies scholar like COVID has been just a literal circus. I'm like, Wow, I never would have thought that would make the news. And it just keeps making the news and it's been fascinating. And there's also a lot of talk about other animals who could potentially produce other coronaviruses are other zoonotic diseases that are threats and that's usually often like focused on East Asia, but not always. And so those issue is simply what other close contacts are we having that's maybe not safe, is highlighted. It's in the news, which is very exciting. I'd actually virtually well, because I was going to actually ask you about how thinking about kind of your larger work, how that plays against this, the question that we often encounter disasters and pats. I'm not going to evacuate because I can't take my pets for me, right? I can the shelter. It's not going to take a pencil. I'm not going to leave versus this question in the pandemic subpath degraded question. But this, I think the pandemic of your locks down, your heart rate. And so it's these two, I mean, we're thinking about qubit as a disaster. But these two very different hats in disaster situations and I guess are you getting at AU? So this is a congressman or you're getting very different data that you get. Can you talk about that a little? Yeah. So that's one of those thing for a lot of the stuff that I've been the foundations I've built and other projects or just do not work whatsoever. Like for instance, I always have somewhat of a hierarchy of species that exist and they're giving political contexts because you know, which animals are going to be pulled out first. Like, of course, agricultural animals I usually stock and pet animals go with you and so on. Wild animals are on their own. Now it's completely disoriented. A lot of us, if we had the option to give our cat a vaccine, would probably give them the vaccine. But for other humans, in this, this hierarchy of work is more dependent on honestly like capitalistic need than anything else. Economical need. For example. One of the other projects I'm working on is in regards to whether or not slaughterhouse workers are concern, as valuable as the animals. They are packing and soldering because they are forced to work without proper protections. And so they're in a very vulnerable position. And often this is before the vaccine came into play in order to produce and slaughter me because it was deemed essential. So they were essential workers to produce meat. But they were also kind of games syllable just like the animals they were producing. So it's completely distorted my usual hierarchy because it's not just a disaster and an evacuation. And humans first and animals and Pat second and et cetera. Instead, it's what do we need? Who do we need? Where is it going to go? And it's long-term and there's a lot of thought put into it and a lot of uncertainty because this isn't something we've experienced before. Good question. I just wanted to say thanks also for such an interesting and evocative talk. And just a couple of things that it brought to mind for me. One in line with your research at the intersection of multispecies ethnography and Disaster Studies. I just learned yesterday that there's this whole program of moving animals from Southern shelters, from shelters in the US South, the shelters in the Northeast. And it, it made me really think about the way that for humane associations and animal rescue societies, there's an idea that there's this kind of like long crisis or like just perpetual disaster of unrest skewed animals in the US self. That in the literature, in the way that these programs are talked about, sort of describes the situation that these animals confront in terms of higher rates of poverty, fewer access to resources, including veterinary care, but also just people not being able to take care of. Pets that they thought they would be able to take care of. Because of presumably higher poverty rates in some parts of the US South as compared with parts of the Northeast. And I thought that was so interesting to learn about and to think about from an anthropological perspective that there would be these organizations like this large-scale mobilization around moot, transferring pets from sort of good places to be pets. I mean, from bad places to be pets to good places to be pets. So I don't know what I want to say about that. I just thought it was really interesting. And it really, I don't know in line with what with, with what you're talking about with us here. Just highlights for me the ways that our notions of sort of what counts as a disaster, like COVID is a disaster or hey, yeah, but there's a way in which that, that mobilization of resources also calls attention to a long disaster, right, of, for pets but also for potential pet owners. Rate for these humans who might, who might want to be pet owners but are not for various reasons. One thing that I just wanted to mention that your talk really highlighted for me was, you know, the way that there are these appropriate and inappropriate relationships to animals. And the way that, that so wrapped up with broader notions of ethics and morality, but also historical. Or we can historicize notions of civilization versus being uncivilized. In colonial discourses and an ongoing colonialist, right rhetoric around the appropriate ways of interacting with animals. I think that has been so highlight it in what you've said today. But just in the sort of broad context of COVID, where the wet market is scandalized as this place where people are interacting with animals in the wrong ways. And this sort of Orientalist connotations there. I just think that's so important for us to be thinking about from an anthropological perspective. So thanks again for, for your really, really interesting presentation. Thank you. I don't want to comment on that. That first perpetual disaster regarding the animals from the south coming up to the north is one of the organizations that I don't foster dogs currently that I used to work with his big fluffy, which is a great name for a rescue organization. It's called big fluffy dog. They do exactly that. And I, a lot of my friends, my colleagues in this area adopt dogs that came from the south. And it's such an interesting phenomenon and such an interesting cultural phenomenon because in the South, that only is there this idea of increased poverty, but it's really the systems in place. They do not have as many. And they don't have a animal social safety net like we have here and well, most states, but not all, they don't have as many non-profit organizations or programs to help and they don't have the financial support of those programs to ensure that they are able to say, Do you like a spay neuter program? So one of the things I like about that question that you're talking about or that comment is that it points out the disaster. So not always just human. So even if a human is involved, it's still a disaster. And the fact that these animals continue to be left, to be abandoned, to be allowed to reproduce over and over to the point where they're open, they're carrying capacity in their zone or maybe even defined as pest and killed, like what happens in Australia. That is a disaster. It's just an animal disaster. And it's not something that we are usually paying attention to as anthropologists, Bye, come in and rescue in that particular situation because of that weird space of what our feral animals are they while they are they not wild that we pick them up and take them to homes. We do. So, yeah, there's also this interesting and there's a colleague of mine and, and I'm hitting myself for not remembered her name, but she does this fantastic work about bringing dogs from down south like other countries down south like in Latin America, and then GIMP and rescuing them and putting them in shelters and very wealthy Florida neighborhoods. Because people will want to adapt them just as people in Japan 12 adaptive, That's their dogs from the Fukushima disaster. Because they come with the story. They come with a pity story. They make you feel like a hero. And so she studied this in the perspective of a white savior complex, which depends on the contacts that can apply, but not always. But this idea that you don't just have a dog, you have a dog that you've rescued who lived as a community dog down south and wow, look what you did. And same thing in Japan, my, my shelter workers and you know, it's far enough away now that I can say it out loud, they would label dogs who weren't getting it adopted as Fukushima disaster dogs because they would be out there in a second. Even if they weren't, even if they were just dropped off. Because people want that story and they want to feel like a hero. And that does, that does help. It really is all about us as hearing you. Oh gosh, yeah, international adoption, very related. I actually have another e settling really early on that struck me back when we still had hope. You had a little hard in many ways. But it made me feel there's all this talk about late. We're returning to normal, which is a whole other complicated layer cake of things. But what habits to Penn, sim, to animals will not. Could we go back to Lake? Either we're done with COVID or if we pretend like we're done with COVID. What happens to these newly reinforced and restructure human-animal relationships? What happens to the animals in that context? I don't know if that's something you can speak about, but they don't talk about. So it's been it's been the fear it's been the ongoing fear of anybody and animal rescue because like this, as I've said though, sentence and incent, Friends, a set of puppies out. We know that things are eventually, people are eventually going to go back to work and people are eventually going to go back to perhaps not the same normal but a different type of normal. They might be required to physically be out work. What's going to happen to those dogs that need to be let out and taken for walks and so on. So that's been the continuous gear and we have seen animals being brought back pressure but not at the level that I think we are expected. But of course we're still in the early days, so I'm hoping that it doesn't happen at the rates that we expect. But I also think that the pandemic and sign such a new light on these relationships though. I mean, I'm a very optimistic thinker, so I like to think that things will not be, you know, we won't get a whole bunch of dog back at the shelters that people will recognize their value. Like I said, they should have had a dog all along that there are they're getting their steps in and they're like, Yeah, they're happy to have a dog when they come home from work. And then they'll find new ways. Maybe donkey data keras will expand our parks and so on. I like the optimistically think that this has permanently changed our structure and not so much as something where it's temporary. But I am very optimistic. I'll take questions or ramblings. That's the case. Maybe I can jump in and say this. One thing I'm curious about, I just put it in chat bot from vet, colleagues and friends of mine. I've been hearing That's thanks to the pandemic. So many people getting pets that have never had pets before and don't have a clue about having pets and they'd been coming in. And I had not fully appreciated how bets treat not only their patients, the pets, but often the client, It's the owners for all sorts of mental health problems that they've been having. I was relatively unaware until recently that the mental health crisis among vets, the dropout burnout rates are off the charts. Like I have been working with some colleagues and I was unaware that that even more than other frontline health workers, like Doc, Cuban doctors, veterinarians have been suffering among some of the highest rates of suicide and things. So that was kind of an unintended angle that I hadn't ever contemplated, but I don't know if your work ever brings you into that. That's actually out. So yeah, it absolutely does, but that's a perfect example of how this works. And I that anybody has said that because I said interview veterinarian specifically on this and I don't think I had them on my, on my radar yet, but they are a perfect example of this because they often go into veterinary school because they love animals as well. They usually go in with that. Throughout that near a school, there's a lot of studies that show that they have to learn to see animals as, you know, sometimes this objects, but not always, order to get through the emotional trauma of the work. And veterinarians themselves have to deal with the worst and the best people. They have to deal with the people that will spend tons of money on their path as well as people who will say, well, you put my dog down, he looked at me funny. And so it has an incredibly challenging perspective because they have to live in that world where there's multiple inlets, different ways of relating to proceed when your cat, sometimes as objects and sometimes as family. And they have to just be professionals through all of it. And I can't even imagine I will not be able to do that. And I'm not at all surprised that people get emotionally exhausted from that. I'll try to send you a piece that a veterinarian friend of mine wrote about her bone piles. She calculated that under 20 years of working as a bet, she's probably youth and nice 5000 animals. And it just sort of with the pandemic and everything and a rescue animals is just sort of pushed over the edge and she doesn't think she can work again. So she's among the many people who have basically dropped out of the veterinary profession. But that was something that was very enlightening to me I'd never ever considered. And maybe that might be an interesting angle to, to explore. Where are they? I love to read that these, i'll, I'll say I'll email it to you. Bone pile, whatever way of thinking about yeah. Yeah. I'm trying not to jump in and ask all the questions, but I will. I'm going to go the the kind of work I think we touched on others via email, just kinda be them or grease inside of the work. But yeah, the contrast with the meat packing plants and markets. And this, this, this association that we have with animals as food in the United States for example. But the ways in which that we see the wet part, particularly early on in the pandemic, the wet markets were seen as the cause specifically. So not even so much the animal itself, but the human activity in the market became this sort of origin point for the pandemic. And yet we do a really great job of pretending like American meat packing plants aren't. And if you could talk about that specifically sound, I'd really like to hear more about it. Yeah, it's been one of my favorite parts. I mean, like I said, most of my favorite parts, the way COVID-19 has highlighted human animal things. Because of that, that distance between us and animal production is so fierce that just bringing it up in a classroom setting and it's something I had to clear with my department, had to be like, Can I talk about this and they had to go in and, you know, think about it and the impacts of where an agricultural college, we have an entire Animal Science Department. But talking to you everyday students about how animal products are produced is harsh. It's triggering, it's dangerous, it's stressful. It makes students cry, does it every semester, I always feel awful. But it's such an important part of our reality because the I said that the most, the most common human contact or human animal contact that occurs between humans and live in animals as pets. But the most common contact we have with animals in general is greatly easily way over the board. Animal products, we interact with animals is dead far more often than we interact with them alive, but we have so little connection to how they even get there in so much discomfort with making that connection. And so COVID-19 has done a really good job of saying, Hey, look at this, and unfortunately it did so in a foreign nation which allowed us to even double down and think, well are ways okay, there with dirty and disease causing been problematic. And so while it's been It's been primarily human focus that, that turn on to slaughterhouses and meat packing plants in America and how COVID-19 has forced them to go back. And I really appreciated that both because it didn't highlight the problematic labor issues, but also had people in the media talking about how does this neat enough on your plate and show that the problems aren't just there. So we've had people, even John Oliver was talking about how meat is packed and how there's, it's messy, it's dangerous, it's, it's dirty, it's problematic and how people have to do the same motions over and over and having that on national television than Oliver's national telling me that it's something a lot of people watch. I don't know if it works anymore. Out there. I fully appreciate and it's something that we don't get and we don't see and we don't want to get mercy. But the ethnocentric perspective of looking over at China's markets and same you like, that's, that's what, that's how we get diseases. I'm hoping to help people in general think about. That's not just there, it's off also here. But it's, it's been fabulous, fabulous and a grotesque way of just having that back and compensation. And it's made it easier talking to talk about in class and students because it's no longer that taboo subjects. Now we're aware this happens. Look, it's on John Oliver. It's something that we can talk about in an open way and not have it be as taboo, at least for now. Yeah, I think that's to me. I remember watching that show and immediately thinking those, UH, your work and being like, oh, I remember when I came out I was like, Oh, yes, Yeah, it's on TV. There's another another segment he did just on intensive confined animal feeding operations once and I was like, this is happening, this is TV and it just never happens. It's so distance from us. It's awesome. I guess building on that, do you think that having that national lens on it makes a difference? Because like somebody who went to grad school in the Midwest, that there was some conversation around it in local. Like I remember seeing all my Iowa friends post local because Iowa of Christians kind of in the middle of fat middle of nowhere horribly. And so like everybody I knew her, I was talking about it. But obviously that's a very particular bumble. So do you think having a lens like his on HBO's, does that make a difference? I guess. Because I think that even if people don't see or talk about a directly, it just couldn't get out there and makes that something can talk about. Like it's it's because nobody wants to be the Debbie Downer sitting there saying, Do you know how your hamburger got there? I think no. But if you ask me to grab onto you like did you hear about this, then it's something that's relevant and timely. And it's not just you bringing up something that nobody wants to break and bring up or think about. Now I'm Carol Adams, refers to it as the absolute referent, which I think is kind of a silly term for it. But the, the absolute reference, the reference to the animal body that it used to be you. If you bring it up in any context, people immediately react with defensiveness, with discomfort, often challenge you on why you're even thinking about it. It makes everybody uncomfortable and you never want to be that person. But having it out there in the overall discussion makes it a little bit more easy to bring it up. You have a reason. You're not just bring it up to bring it up. I've been in a lot of those kitchens ever thought obvious. I try not to be the Debbie Downer, but it's so fun to talk about. This conversation reminds me of JSON de Leon's discussion of the hybrid collective idea where it's like, you know, everything can be traced in some way. And so we start with the, I think he actually uses a hamburger as like a object that to begin with and then traces it back to like the the truck that transported the frozen patty to that. Yeah. You know, the the the McDonald's and then the person they're very vulnerable poor person who is like making the thing for you there, but then also the workers who are potentially undocumented, who are processing the MI and then like how they got there and then the globe ahead, I'd like just links and links and where am I? I teach that to my students. I study migration and borders. And my students are like we're talking about hamburgers. And I also like about migrants and migration. And it's like yeah, because these things are, these things are linked and really tangible ways. And I think it's, I think part of the confronting this is like the complicity that people have by participating in a systems. Of course you can't really ought to out of them, but like a part of the complicity is not acknowledging the hybrid collective that goes into it, you know. So it's like I found it interesting throughout your, your talk that you were using like borders to discuss like, and of course you would and you should. That makes total sense. But I think another thing that our discipline is potentially needs to work on and is working on is like some of the borders between how we think about field than our areas, right? Just said, I study migration as if that doesn't have any relation to like what you would do or what Jen would do, right? Yeah. So yeah, I just thought that because even what we're talking about here with like human-animal relations and like the processing of me has so much to do at a conversation about human value and the value of migrant lives and things like that. So it's been really cool to see the sort of collapsing of that come through in your talk. There should be like more of that. So nice. I love those. Those traces of how one object gets to be like at the store on the dollar or something are on your plate like those, those traces. I usually use those to teach like negative externalities, like what are all these things that are happening in the process? Those are absolutely fascinating. I don't think I've seen the one with the hamburger and that would be really cool to do. Yeah, a, it's in the land of open graves again, Like it's not it's no way you would expect to find it. Yes, I was great. I like that. Yeah, but it works the way it made me think about this. And cadherin put in the chat to the object implosion sort of content. I find it's really useful for teaching the students are, you know, they really start to trace stuff back and they're like, Oh my gosh, they've just blows your mind though. Absolutely. Hey, I think we hit on nothing like perfect note to end on with this one like we did it last time to enrich snail did on this one again. So excellent. Thank you all for joining us and thank you, Doctor 7 for that amazing on thought-provoking journey through humans and animals. I really appreciate it. We all did. Please remember to join us again next month. The third talk in our series will be happening with Dr. Katherine plantae speaking on medicinal betrayal, menstrual experiences, and the COVID-19 pandemic on April 21st at 03:30 PM seven. I will send you that link as you ask. So yes, and I'll see you guys all later. Thank you guys. As to meet you.
Becoming Animal with Covid Recording
From Coleen Popp May 06, 2022
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