Equine Cultures in Transition

Ethical Questions

Jonna Bornemark, Petra Andersson, Ulla Ekström von Essen, Jonna Bornemark, Petra Andersson, Ulla Ekström von Essen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351002455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Zoología

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.

Part I

Horses at work

Chapter 1

Horses’ labour and work-lives

New intellectual and ethical directions

Kendra Coulter

Introduction

The complexities of work are entangled with most ethical conversations about human–animal relations, and this is certainly true when examining horse cultures. Across space and time, horses have worked for people, people have worked for horses, and many kinds of shared labour have been pursued. Both “[t]he history and contemporary state of human–horse interactions are underscored by two main related factors: horses do work of various kinds for people, and people garner material, social and/or personal gain from that work” (Coulter, 2014, p. 148). At the same time, when people keep horses, human labour is always required. Work is essential to the nourishing, sustaining, and reproduction of horses’ lives, and it makes all interactions with equines possible. As a result, work warrants not only greater attention but thoughtful and careful consideration. Moreover, there is a need for strengthened, and, in some cases, entirely new vocabulary for properly seeing and understanding multispecies and interspecies work, and animals’ own diverse engagements in labour.

This chapter uses work as an organisational framework, engine, and springboard. Work is inherently relational, so human–horse dynamics are pertinent, but as part of expanding scholarship beyond its human-centric conventions, I concentrate on horses. How people understand horses’ work is a complex and uneven matter, however, and made even more significant because our perceptions affect horses’ lives. Therefore, I begin by synthesising key ways horses and their engagements with work have been viewed. Next, I propose an expanded and nuanced way of conceptualising horses’ work, and elucidate a set of complementary concepts for more effectively seeing and understanding horses’ work. I do so by enlisting and integrating feminist political economy, gendered labour process theory, behavioural research and cognitive ethology, and my own theorising of animals’ labour (Coulter, 2016a, 2016b), as well as by building from field research in a number of horse cultures. I reject the idea that horses used to work and now do not. Such a claim is rooted not only in anthropocentric but also in androcentric and ethnocentric ideas about labour. It fails to grasp the multi-faceted nature of work, period, and how theory can be effectively employed, expanded, or modified to recognise and unpack horses’ labour. It also suggests a disconnection from or lack of interest in horses’ experiences and perceptions. Instead I urge the pursuit of more grounded, multi-faceted, and attentive examination of horses’ work, and present a set of complementary concepts intended to help facilitate such understanding. We need to both expand our lens and sharpen our focus.

Why is a new approach necessary? First, because it encourages us to more carefully understand the diversity and complexity of what horses do for us. We must move beyond the idea that if something is leisure for the person, it is automatically leisure for the horse. Similarly, if work is only brute strength, this denies or obfuscates a range of horses’ challenges and accomplishments, and, crucially, the active roles both their bodies and minds play. In other words, by better understanding horses’ work, we are better understanding horses.

Similarly, new conceptual tools open up both scholarly and practical possibilities. The shortage of research on horses’ work in contemporary horse cultures is a noteworthy gap. Part of the issue is that turning our attention more to horses and less to people challenges firmly entrenched anthropocentric paradigms across the social sciences and humanities. Indeed, a great deal of recent human–animal studies scholarship remains fundamentally human-centred and emphasises humans’ relationships with animals, what other species tell us about ourselves, and so on. These are worthwhile considerations, but are not the only or necessarily most pressing concerns, particularly from an ethical perspective, unless being used to reassess and remake our actual relations with other species. The absence of an engaging, useful, and guiding vocabulary for thinking about animals’ work exacerbates the problem, and conventional ways of thinking about horses’ labour do not inspire or facilitate intellectual creativity or rigour. Crucially, if we refine our vocabulary and approach, this can also affect our empathy and our requests (or demands), and thus directly shape horses’ lives. Better understanding can foster improved practice. Ideally, a broadened and more precise, multi-dimensional, and updated view of horses’ labour could also help affect broader structures, including horse welfare standards and public policy. Succinctly, it is high time that we update and strengthen our ideas about animals’ labour in order to more accurately and fully understand horses’ realities, experiences, and contributions.

An intellectual lead change

In the scholarly arena, much, if not most, contemporary labour theorising leans, to varying degrees, on Marxian analyses. As I will elucidate below, I do not think that Marxian theory is necessarily the most useful foundation or gateway for thinking about horses’ labour, however. Marx emphasised particular forms of labour, namely “productive” manufacturing work in factories, and he downplayed or ignored other kinds, including service, retail, caring, and unpaid labour. Moreover, Marx primarily discussed animals in order to demonstrate human superiority. Interestingly, he briefly considers horses:

Of all the great motors handed down from the manufacturing period, horse-power is the worst, partly because a horse has a head of his [sic] own, partly because he is costly, and the extent to which he is applicable in factories is very restricted.

(Marx, 1889, p. 371)

In other words, the domesticated animals who were at work all over city streets and rural roads in Marx’s time are only cursorily considered, and are viewed as a “motor”. Seeing animals as unthinking and unfeeling machines was not unusual for the time period, but this characterisation was also being questioned and challenged by anti-vivisection activists, among others (see, for example, Beers, 2006; Cronin, 2018; Kean, 1998). At the same time, horses were seen as inferior to inanimate power sources by Marx, precisely because they have minds.

There is a larger discussion needed here (see, Coulter, 2016a, pp. 65–71; see also Benton, 1993), but what is most significant about these linked issues for this chapter is that in addition to mostly dismissing animals’ cognitive abilities (his contradictory views on horses notwithstanding), Marx’s emphases have shaped scholarship on labour in significant ways. Even though decades of feminist, anthropological, and cross-cultural research have highlighted many kinds of unpaid labour, including domestic work, as well as the diversity of subsistence and livelihood strategies people use, “work” is still often or first associated with wage labour, and, in many cases, specific kinds of work like manual labour. Scholarly emphases are expanding somewhat, but paid work is still the primary scholarly focus for labour researchers across disciplines. It is likely that the widespread influence of Marx and similar theorists’ approaches has both influenced and reinforced popular, narrow ideas about work, whether people outside of the academy are conscious of this or not.

How horses’ work is conceptualised – or denied – by laypeople, practitioners, and scholars alike is uneven and untidy. Over the last couple of centuries, around the world, most horses would have simply been assumed to be working for or alongside humans, whether pulling carts or carrying people on their backs. Although there is historical and archaeological evidence of earlier humans having more than mere utilitarian relationships with horses, function and utility were undoubtedly important factors, particularly given the precarity of people’s lives. Horses’ cooperation, strength, and speed were integral to the erection of homes and buildings of all kinds, the distribution of goods and services, and the movement of people (see, for example, Greene, 2008; McShane and Tarr, 2007; Olson, 2017). There is little disagreement about the fact that these horses were working.

In contemporary contexts, even if doing the same types of tasks, whether horses are seen as working varies. The act of carrying people around may or may not be recognised as “work” for horses today. Rugged or big-boned draft horses hauling carts are more commonly seen as “work horses”, while the specially-bred and meticulously groomed equines who pull royal carriages are viewed differently. The specifics and context affect people’s perceptions in noteworthy ways. So, too, do people’s ideas about work. For example, during a listserv discussion among equine researchers about horses’ work, one person claimed that horses may exert physical energy, but that they do not work and that they cannot “have a Protestant work ethic”. Of course, many humans do not possess a Protestant work ethic and thus would not meet this person’s narrow criteria for “working” either. But this ethnocentric view also reflects the fact that people tend to apply or impose their own preconceived ideas about what does and does not constitute or accompany “work”, when considering animals.

In show jumping and dressage cultures, however, people often talk about “making a horse work” when they are under saddle/being ridden. This normally means focusing on specific muscle groups, or pursuing particular tasks or exercises which will engage the horse physically and/or intellectually. People will also speak of horses liking and/or understanding “their job”. For example, a horse ridden by an amateur is expected to not only respond to the aids applied by the rider that adjust speed, gait, length of stride, and so on, but to actively disregard those directions that the horse deems incorrect, and to instead proceed in a safer manner. Horses ridden by amateur riders are expected to take care of the people on their backs as part of their jobs, yet show jumping horses are not considered “workers” (Coulter, 2016a, p. 55; see also Coulter, 2014; Thompson and Birke, 2014).

So, in other words, people may recognise that horses do work for people when they perform the intricacies of dressage or the physical feats of jumping, even if they do not apply the specific term “workers”. The horses in such contexts are more often called athletes, if given a specific title. The same extends to race horses of various kinds. They have a job, do work, and are athletes, but are not usually seen as workers.¹ Overall, whether we see horses’ actions as work or them as workers depends on a number of factors.

When people in horse industries are seeking to mobilise political support or to highlight their roles in the economy, horses can be referred to as “job creators”. This term is now predominantly wrapped in neoliberal connotations, although there may be objective truth to it. When there are horses, there need to be people to care for them along with a range of primary and spin-off or supplementary jobs (feed and tack store staff, farriers/blacksmiths, veterinary workers, farmers growing feed, etc.).

Equine assisted therapy practitioners often refer to horses as healers, co-therapists, or even co-workers. In my preliminary research with equine assisted therapists in Canada, for example, 76 per cent of them refer to horses as healers, 66 per cent as co-therapists, and 45 per cent as co-workers. Admittedly, “worker” is not likely to be among the first self-identifiers therapists would ascribe to themselves for a range of reasons (see Carlsson, 2017); the term still has particular associations in a number of cultures, and may evoke the image of a blue-collar, manual, male worker. But in this field, it is promising that the horses’ active participation in the formal context of therapy is being explicitly recognised.

Across contexts, many people refer to horses in caring ways, seeing them as friends, family, partners, and/or other terms of endearment, and some leisure riders identify their horses as their healer or therapist despite the relationship not being a formal therapeutic context (see, for example, Dashper, 2014; Davis, Maurstad, and Dean, 2013). The word “partners” evokes ideas of reciprocity and collaboration, positive dynamics, without question. At the same time, I caution against the de-contextualised and completely uncritical usage of the term partners as it can obfuscate power dynamics and the larger structural constraints on horses’ lives. Horses may indeed partner with us in a range of tasks and exercise agency, but the situation is not one of absolute equals. Humans still determine what activities horses will perform, when, and for how long. Undoubtedly, if envisioning a partnership, well-intentioned people will pay attention to horses’ levels of interest, pleasure, discomfort, and so forth, and the relationships are always in process (see, for example, Birke and Thompson, 2018; Dashper, 2017; Maurstad, Davis, and Cowles, 2013). Horses can also refuse and defy – with varying potential consequences for human and equine depending on the particulars. But humans still legally own horses, and have control over the large majority of their lives. Striving to pursue reciprocity and partnership is very laudable, but we also must remember the overarching structural realities.

As I have argued elsewhere,

regardless of what people call them, animals are friends, family members, allies, supporters, guardians, caregivers, mentors, enemies, survivors, agitators, and countless other identities, including workers … I do not propose replacing the other, multiple identities – and subjectivities – animals possess with the singular category of worker … I suggest identifying animals’ work and their contributions as another dimension of their lives as individuals, species, and community members, as a way of thinking more widely and carefully about animals, about people, and about our connections.

(Coulter, 2016a, p. 146)

Indeed, properly recognising work does not automatically mean the subsequent or simultaneous application of the identity “worker”, and I do not suggest that the latter term necessarily needs to be applied. These terms are not inextricably bound together or synonymous. Most important, I argue, is that we take a more nuanced approach to seeing and unpacking horses’ work.

I have developed a more robust conceptual and organisational framework for thinking about animals’ labour overall (Coulter, 2016a, see especially Chapter 2, 2016b). Here I include, deepen, and elaborate on the aspects which are most pertinent to horses. My larger lens includes wild and domesticated animals, and certain of the concepts have relevance for thinking differently about wild horses and their work (Coulter, 2016a, see especially Chapter 2, 2016b; see also Dalke, 2010) but that is beyond the scope of this chapter. Here I focus on domesticated horses and on the most compelling elements which have relevance across a number of equine contexts.

Horses’ labour processes

A gendered labour process approach has been fruitfully used as part of an examination of people’s work with horses (see, for example, Adelman and da Costa, 2017; Coulter, 2013, 2014; Hedenborg, 2007; Hedenborg-White, 2012; Larsen, 2006a, 2006b; Miller 2013a, 2013b). I suggest that certain key concepts used by labour process and feminist political economy scholars can be enlisted and reshaped for the study of horses’ labour. Many of these scholars trace their intellectual roots to Marxian approaches. What is different about these newer intellectual frameworks and why I think they offer theoretical tools of greater value than purely Marxian theory, is that they are more interested in the intricacies, details, experiences, and social processes of different kinds of work and workers. Moreover, these approaches give greater attention to interactive, service, caring, and, most importantly, unpaid work. Animals are not paid wages for their work in a conventional sense (see Coulter 2016a, pp. 76–81 for a longer discussion of animals’ compensation). It is feminist scholars who have recognised and emphasised the crucial importance of unpaid work, and offered theoretical fodder to foster deeper understanding of and appreciation for it – and for those who perform it. Therefore, it is only logical to mine feminist scholarship when seeking to understand the labour of animal...