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Rentrée universitaire : et si vous étudiez… les animaux

By September 4th, 2022September 13th, 2022No Comments

Document type : article published in Le Parisien

Author : Axelle Playoust-Braure 

Preview: Increasing numbers of training courses related to animal law or ethics are offered in France, while "animal studies" are multiplying - discreetly - in the field of scientific research.
Whether their subject of choice is animal law, ethics or veterinary science: more and more young people are choosing to embark on professional training to help animals. Campus Animaliste, the youth wing of the Animalist Party, has even compiled a catalogue of training courses on the topic.  Margaux, at 27, has her sights set on the Master's degree in ethics at the University of Strasbourg. Since 2015, this program has offered the opportunity to specialise in animal ethics. The program includes ethology (the science of animal behavior), philosophy and the economics and management of wildlife, and is accompanied by two internships of two and six months. "I will finally have time to read all the classics in animal ethics and animal law! I then plan to use this knowledge in journalism, politics or academic research... I haven't decided which yet."


New professions to bolster animal protection
Another resolutely multidisciplinary training program, the "Animals and Society" University Diploma from the University of Rennes 2 is about to welcome its fourth cohort in a few weeks time. The 77-hour course, which is followed over several months, is aimed primarily at professionals wishing to add an animal protection-related skill  to their job descriptions. "We receive applications from lawyers, teachers, people in culture and media, working on animal documentaries and in publishing... It's very varied," explains Émilie Dardenne, the lecturer who runs the decree course. Since 2017, there have been more and more elected officials responsible for animal protection in towns and cities, there is an ongoing process of professionalisation and recruitment to the field. Not to mention that the French 2021 law to combat animal abuse introduces the requirement, for moral and civic educators, to raise awareness of the need to respect pets. All of this creates an unprecedented need for training, which the University should be able to meet."


The arrival of animal studies in France
The Rennes training program is part of a field of research and teaching that is still low-key in France: "animal studies". In the English-speaking world, this field has been institutionalized since the 1990s, through the organization of conferences and the publication of scientific journals such as Society and Animals, Humanimalia and the Journal for Critical Animal Studies. In France, from 1991, the Cahiers antispécistes set out to disseminate "information and analysis of a sort likely to nourish reflection on the animal condition". The journal was to play a decisive role for the French antispeciesist movement, but would operate on the margins of the academic world until it ceased publication in 2019. For Jérôme Michalon, a researcher in sociology at the CNRS, animal studies are a good example of the growth of "studies" . "Based in the social sciences, 'studies' are fields of research that adopt a more or less committed position on their subject matter - in the manner of gender studies, disability studies and racism studies. The academic studies community is concerned to produce knowledge that is useful to activists and even to the subjects of research themselves. "In the case of animal studies, this concern translates into a rejection of anthropocentrism. The idea is that the description of reality is not complete if the point of view of animals and their interests is not taken into account."


Showing your hands are clean
The recognition that animals are serious subjects of scientific study is generating new research questions: "Investigations of how farm animals are slaughtered, how euthanasia is carried out in animal rescue shelters, veterinary clinics and animal experimentation laboratories - animal deaths are becoming very important to us", observes Jérôme Michalon in an article on the sociology of science that offers a genealogy of animal studies. "And when we take stock, we realize that this social interest in the animal cause is indeed producing new knowledge. But this porosity between scientific issues and pro-animal activism is not to everyone's liking. Since I entered this field, I have been under pressure from agri-food lobbies and certain political actors," says Émilie Dardenne, author of Introduction aux études animales (PUF, 2020). 'We are systematically made to show our hands are clean. We have at last reached the point where the first feminist researchers found themselves, having to justify why they were talking about the issue of women's rights." For those wanting to learn about animal issues at home, the Université Virtuelle Environnement & Développement durable is offering an online course "Vivre avec les autres animaux" (living with other animals). It is free, but demands 2 to 3 hours of work per week, for three weeks.

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