Wild Animals and Leisure

Rights and Wellbeing

Neil Carr, Janette Young, Neil Carr, Janette Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367592356
• eBook ISBN: 9781315457390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industria dell'ospitalità e del turismo
• Index: Business

Wild animals form an integral component of the human leisure experience. They are a significant part of the leisure industry and are economically valuable entities. However, as sentient beings, animals also have rights and welfare needs, and, like humans, may also have their own leisure desires and requirements. This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the rights and welfare of humans and wild animals as the two relate to one another within the sphere of leisure studies. It examines a wide array of animals, such as wolves, elephants, dolphins and apes, in a diverse range of leisure settings in international locations, from captive wild animals in zoos, hunting, swimming with dolphins and animals used as educators and for tourist entertainment. This book provides a forum for future considerations of wild animals and leisure and a voice for animal welfarist agendas that seek to improve the conditions under which wild animals interact with and are engaged with by humans.

1 Wild animals and leisure

An introduction

Neil Carr and Janette Young

Introduction

This book provides a forum for the discussion of the position of wild animals in leisure studies and leisure experiences. As such, the chapters within it examine the potential benefits and drawbacks of the positioning of wild animals in leisure environments. These benefits and problems relate to humans and the welfare of individual animals and entire species. All of these issues are grounded in the recognition of the sentience¹ of animals and the implications of this for animal rights and welfare concerns.

Subsequent to the recognition of the sentience of animals it must be recognised that any research agenda for wild animals and leisure that speaks only of the position of them in human leisure is arguably guilty of missing the idea that as sentient beings, animals may also have desire, and/or need leisure. Such leisure may coincide with but should be perceived as distinct from human leisure. This suggests that leisure is not only a right of humans but also of non-human animals. Consequently, a central theme discussed within the book is the right to and need for leisure of wild animals.

The chapters within this book have not been collated simply to provide a display of the current state of research within the field. Rather, the book is designed to be a venue for forwarding knowledge and thinking concerning wild animals and leisure, a tool for championing the need for further work in the field, and a voice for animal welfarist agendas that seek to improve the conditions under which wild animals interact with and are engaged by humans. In this way, while the book is clearly an academic piece of work, it is one that follows contemporary calls for such work to have meaning beyond the boundaries of tertiary education institutes. This meaning applies not just to humans, but to animals as well, helping in the process to give a voice to the voiceless.

This is not the first work to look at wild animals within the human leisure experience. Indeed, a variety of such studies have been published in the past. Most have referred to tourism rather than leisure. This may reflect the relative strengths of leisure and tourism studies in tertiary education institutes over the last 10–15 years. During this period tourism courses and research seems to have gone from strength to strength, while many leisure studies programmes have been closed (Collins, 2017; Fletcher et al., 2017; Silk et al., 2017). In the face of these closures, some commentators have talked about the crisis afflicting or the death of leisure studies (Henderson, 2010; Rowe, 2002; Samdahl, 2000). However, the death of leisure studies is proving to be an erroneous thought as we have seen leisure studies as a research field demonstrating rude health in the last couple of years (Fletcher et al., 2017). This may confirm Henderson’s point (2010) that the occasional crisis is no bad thing for a field of study to experience and reflect on. A sign of this rude health is the launching of a new leisure studies journal (International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure). In addition, publishers are producing leisure studies book series (see, for example, the Leisure in a Global Era series published by Palgrave Macmillan), and the vibrancy of conferences such as the one run annually by the Leisure Studies Association in the UK seems to be increasing.

It is not just the increasing health of leisure studies as a research field that suggests the need for this book to be focused on wild animals and leisure. Rather, it is also related to the understanding that while tourism is arguably a part of leisure, leisure is a larger concept. Consequently, a focus on only tourism and tourists misses a wider population (leisured people) and the industries that cater to them. In addition, leisure studies as an academic area of endeavour offers a rich conceptual history that can provide a foundation upon which to develop understandings of the experiences of people at leisure in relation to wildlife, and the leisure experiences, needs and desires of wild animals. This is arguably not surprising when it is recognised that conceptualisations of leisure can be traced back to classical Greece and the work of people such as Plato and Aristotle (Juniu, 2000; Kelly, 1981; Murphy, 1974).

Today, leisure is conceptualised as a complex and multi-faceted entity that encapsulates measurements of time and is often associated with specific activities or types of activities. However, it is at root more concerned with the concept of freedom, encapsulating both freedom from external forces and actors, and the freedom to be. These freedoms link leisure to the concept of liminality and issues associated with discovery of the self (Carr, 2017).

Previous works on wild animals and tourism have tended to focus on particular animal types, specifically those that are most attractive to people. Small (2012) and Carr (2016), amongst others, have identified such animals as being large, intelligent, cute and cuddly, and exotic and rare. Those animals most favoured by humans have been identified as ‘flagship, charismatic, iconic, emblematic, marquee and poster species’ (Small, 2011: 232). It may therefore be no surprise to see that the focus of tourism research on wild animals has been on ones like polar bears (Lemelin, 2006; Lemelin et al., 2008), whales (Catlin & Jones, 2010; Davis et al., 1997; Ziegler et al., 2012) and dolphins (Lusseau & Higham, 2004; Orams, 2004). While reptiles and invertebrates have been identified as being unattractive (Cushing & Markwell, 2011; Small, 2012), there have been some studies of them within the tourism experience (Lemelin, 2007). Similarly, while Moss and Esson (2010) have suggested that birds may be unattractive to people, there has still been some work published on them in relation to tourism (Connell, 2009; Steven et al., 2015). However, it is clear that the focus of wildlife tourism work has been on the most attractive animals, leaving many under-studied.

The need for this book is not just grounded on an argument of the dearth of studies of wild animals in relation to the broad field of leisure, or the relative lack of engagement with the conceptual richness encapsulated by leisure studies by those looking at wild animals, in their own right and in relation to humans. Rather, it is also related to the myriad ways in which wild animals are a part of human leisure environments and experiences. The variety of ways in which wild animals are a part of human leisure and the issue of animal sentience that leads us to question the leisure experiences and needs of wild animals are discussed in the following sections of this chapter. However, before we can get to these sections we must first of all identify what we actually mean by ‘wild animals’.

What is a ‘wild’ animal?

Young and Carr (forthcoming, a) have provided an extensive definition of domestic and domesticated animals. This is important, as wild animals have been defined in opposition to their domesticated counterparts. For example, Usher (1986: 4) has defined wildlife as ‘a collective noun relating to non-domesticated species of plants, animals or microbes’. However, this type of definition fails to take into consideration the process of domestication. As a result, it sets up a binary state between domesticated and wild animals, whereas Carr (2015) has noted the existence of a continuum between wild and domestic animals. This continuum recognises that domestication is a process: a journey which some species and individual animals have travelled further along than others. Consequently, while we may see differences between animals we can define as domestic or wild that reflect a binary divide, we can also observe similarities which hint at a continuum filled with fuzzy divides between wild and domestic animals. In this way within individual species we may observe wild and domestic animals, as well as those that exist somewhere in between. Take, for example the pig. Most commonly we may define this animal as being domesticated – certainly a component of a human environment, but not domestic in the sense of living in the human home. However, there are also feral pigs – animals whose predecessors were domesticated but who now live a wild life beyond day-to-day contact with humans. Furthermore, wild boars still exist today, reminders of what pigs were like before they were domesticated. At the opposite extreme, we see some breeds of pigs, particularly pot-bellied pigs, being kept as pets. Such animals have arguably passed across the divide between domesticated and domestic to become part of the human family and live in the family home.

The example of the pig raises the question of whether place matters when defining an animal as ‘wild’. Does the animal need to live in the wild to be wild itself? Such a question leads automatically into the thorny question of what is a wild space and then to the equally problematic question of whether any such places actually exist in the world today. This chapter is not the place for an elongated analysis of these questions. Rather, it is sufficient to suggest that a ‘wild space’, meaning one untouched by humans, is, today, like Utopia, potentially very desirable, at least in the sense of us wishing that it existed rather than having to be in it, but ultimately unreal. Instead, it is recognised that there is no corner of the planet untouched by humans in one way or another, even if the extent of that touch varies dramatically. This brings us to the recognition that just as there is a continuum rather than a binary situation between wild and domestic animals, the same is true of wild, domesticated and domestic spaces. The two continuums are arguably interrelated, with the physical space an animal occupies influencing its positioning on the wild–domestic continuum. This allows wild animals to exist in spaces other than the wild. Newsome et al. (2005: ix) have utilised this in their definition of wildlife tourism: ‘It can take place in a range of settings, from captive, semi-captive, to in the wild’. Yet such a definition is problematic as it suggests that only in the wild are wild animals free, whereas in any other space they are captive, held against their will. It also ignores the increasing number of non-domesticated (wild) animals that exist in the urban centres of the world. These include hawks, foxes and deer amongst many others. Such animals are clearly not domestic and have learned to live alongside humans rather than being domesticated by them.

It is at the fuzzy edges along the continuums that the most problems exist. At what point does an animal cease to be wild and start to be domesticated? This question raises its head within this book when looking at the experiences of animals within zoos and sanctuaries. These are ostensibly wild animals but they are situated within spaces clearly constructed and controlled by humans. This question is potentially most clearly brought to light in Chapter 8, by Scutter and Young, where the focus is on bears rescued from bile farms and other forms of exploitative captivity who cannot be released back into the wild because they would be unable to survive in their ‘natural’ habitat. Yet, just because such animals may exist at the margins of any fuzzy divide between being wild and domesticated does not make them any less important. These animals have been positioned in this book rather than in its twin, which is focused on domesticated animals (Young & Carr, forthcoming, b), simply because as a species they are most often associated, in the eyes of people, with the wild rather than the domestic sphere.

Overall, the important point is not how we define wild, domesticated or domestic animals but the recognition that all three are related along a continuum. In this way the issues that influence and impact upon animals is much more important than how we as humans categorise them. Yet this does not make such categorisation unimportant. Rather, the categorisation and the processes that underlie it is another human-constructed influence upon the animal that needs to be considered when examining the experiences of animals in the human leisure experience and human constructions and perceptions of animal’s leisure needs.

Animal sentience, welfare and rights

In order to determine whether animals have rights and welfare needs we must first ask whether they are objects or sentient beings, as defined earlier in this chapter. This is a contentious question that has been analysed in detail elsewhere (Carr & Broom, forthcoming; McConnell, 2005). Increasingly, the evidence suggests that animals are not automated objects incapable of feeling or thinking for themselves. Instead, the evidence is increasingly aligning with the notion that animals are sentient beings (Bradshaw, 2011; Goodall, 2007). This is not to say that they are (merely) the same as humans. As noted in Carr (forthcoming), such a view degrades animals, ignoring the differences that exist across the species (human and non-human) divides. While animal sentience clearly exists in its own right, it is also a human construct as well. This is because animals, and their sentience, exist within a human-dominated and controlled world. Animals, and what they are and what they are capable of, are defined and moulded, both literally and figuratively, by humans. As such, it is important to recognise that social constructions of animal sentience, like any other socio-cultural construct, are temporally and spatially specific (Carr, 2014). In other words, how we as humans view animals and recognise their sentience is prone to change over time and is not constant across different place-based cultures.

All of the authors in this book clearly support the notion that animals are sentient beings. From this standpoint stems a recognition that animals have specific welfare needs and rights. These needs and rights encompass individual and species wellbeing in relation to their involvement in human leisure. In addition, they raise questions about the leisure needs of animals. These issues have been discussed in Young and Carr (forthcoming, b) and encompass the notion forwarded by Broom (2010) that rather than focusing on human constructs of animal needs we must place emphasis on our obligations to animals and the empowerment of animals. This means casting aside humancentric constructs of animals’ rights and welfare, and actively listening to what animals tell us they actually need. In this way, the book and the individual chapters within it reject the anthropocentric view that gives no value to the animals beyond that which may accrue to humans who own and/or utilise them. In contrast, they may all be identified with a biocentric perspective that ‘gives moral standing to all living things’ (McLean & Yoder, 2005: 136).

Wild animals and leisure

The importance of this book...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and box
• List of tables
• About the contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Wild animals and leisure: an introduction
• 2 Human-wild animal leisure experiences: the good, the bad, the ugly
• 3 Interactive zoo visitor experiences: a review of human and animal perspectives
• 4 Consumer perceptions of keeping wild animals in captivity
• 5 Zoos and animal encounters: to touch or not to touch, that is the question
• 6 Being Camilla: the ‘leisure’ life of a captive chameleon
• 7 Human leisure / elephant breakdown: impacts of tourism on Asian elephants
• 8 Volunteering for bear charities: what’s in it for the bears?
• 9 Wild dolphins, nature and leisure: whose wellbeing?
• 10 Angler and fish relations in the UK: ethics, aesthetics and material semiotics
• 11 Do wild canids kill for fun?
• 12 Ferals or food? Does hunting have a role in ethical food consumption in Australia?
• 13 Conclusions: charting a way forward
• Index