Victor J Krawczyk
I am an emerging scholar in the humanistic social sciences or human sciences. I blend knowledge from social sciences (e.g. sociology, political economy, management, psychology, etc.) and the humanities (e.g. visual and performing arts, history, literature, philosophy, etc.) to answer socio-cultural research questions.
I further describe myself as a critical thinker and researcher. This incorporates the social scientific way of collecting data about social groups for research work. However, in the spirit of the humanities, I have the ability to think laterally about social problems and thus devise novel ways of researching them to find solutions. I am comfortable to apply my skills in a range of contexts. To date, I have published and presented papers engaged in the areas of health, organizational studies, entrepreneurship, historical-legal work, human-animal studies, dance, art history and film studies.
In my current PhD research, I draw attention to how much management and general business research now needs to provide further consideration into how animals are considered in organisational contexts. This is of critical importance, as many consumers across the world question purchasing goods and services produced in business contexts, where animal welfare, rights or other modes of being respectful to animals require more attention and action. With this research, I am hoping to make a contribution to developing ethical and socially responsible managerial frameworks for organizations to better engage with animals in their care.
Another key passion for me is art, as it is leading the way to conceive of different ways to engage with our fellow humans, non-human animals and our natural world. I am very attracted to art that challenges us to create a different world, along with art produced in non-western contexts and by ethnic and religious diaspora, which provide avenues to see the world with different eyes.
I further describe myself as a critical thinker and researcher. This incorporates the social scientific way of collecting data about social groups for research work. However, in the spirit of the humanities, I have the ability to think laterally about social problems and thus devise novel ways of researching them to find solutions. I am comfortable to apply my skills in a range of contexts. To date, I have published and presented papers engaged in the areas of health, organizational studies, entrepreneurship, historical-legal work, human-animal studies, dance, art history and film studies.
In my current PhD research, I draw attention to how much management and general business research now needs to provide further consideration into how animals are considered in organisational contexts. This is of critical importance, as many consumers across the world question purchasing goods and services produced in business contexts, where animal welfare, rights or other modes of being respectful to animals require more attention and action. With this research, I am hoping to make a contribution to developing ethical and socially responsible managerial frameworks for organizations to better engage with animals in their care.
Another key passion for me is art, as it is leading the way to conceive of different ways to engage with our fellow humans, non-human animals and our natural world. I am very attracted to art that challenges us to create a different world, along with art produced in non-western contexts and by ethnic and religious diaspora, which provide avenues to see the world with different eyes.
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Papers by Victor J Krawczyk
The application of a more embodied approach to ethics that also accounts for both animal and animalised humans can be found in the work of Pick (2011), she calls a creaturely ethics that takes the position that living beings, regardless of being human or not, are vulnerable beings prone to violent forces. Her work blurs the divide between the ontological status of both animals and humans, which can be the starting point of our discussions in this stream. Pick believes that individuals and societies have an obligation to try and protect vulnerable beings from violent exposure and exploitation.
Drawing on the philosophical writings of Simone Weil, Pick further argues for ‘creaturely poetics’ for ‘the creature, then, is first and foremost a living – body – material, temporal, and vulnerable’ (p. 5). At the same time, vulnerability is not a mundane fact of life. Weil (1953 as cited in Pick, 2011, p. 3) believes that: “[T]he vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is the mark of existence.” At the first instance, it seems counter-intuitive to conceive of the vulnerability of living beings as beautiful, particularly when violence is inflicted upon them. But if, as Pick (2011) argues, “fragility and finitude possess a special kind of beauty, this conception of beauty is already inherently ethical. It implies a sort of sacred recognition (our emphasis) of life’s value as material and temporal” (3). In turn, this understanding of sacredness invites a reverence for the lives of others for it encourages a mode of thought that in our view, is an expansive love, to some even reflecting a form of divine suffering (Linzey, 2009). A type of love born out of the sharing of organizational space (O’Doherty, 2016), inspired by a caring ethic that heightens visibility and moral consideration (Connolly & Cullen, 2017) or ethical affordances (Warkentin, 2009) to other-than-human animals. Arising from this embodied ‘moral imagination’ (Hamington, 2008) which these relationships bring forth, empathy and care can extend beyond previously considered limitations to animals, but also certain groups of humans as well or at some intersection of the two. Afterall, a number of poststructuralist thinkers, such as Derrida (1997/2008, 2009) and Deleuze and Guattari (2004/1987), have emphasised the continuity between human and non-human animals in addition to developing critiques of anthropocentrism.
The convenors of this stream welcome submissions that explore the vulnerability of diverse subjects, within multiple contexts and different disciplinary fields of study. This includes disciplines that are not traditionally associated with management and organizational studies, such as anthropology, history, film studies, art, ethnic and racial studies, ecological studies, cultural studies, queer studies, settler and colonial studies, indigenous studies, literature and health care. The overarching aim is to wrestle with the idea of the vulnerability of life and consider the possibility of sustaining ethical relations between beings that are intrinsically motivated by love, but often exists in contexts that are not always conducive to sustaining such relations. Hence, submissions to this stream could consider how an organizational, institutional or industrial context plays some role in hindering and/or facilitating ethical relationships in multiple contexts or settings.
compassion for animals in late Georgian Britain through visual media, bills, legislation, and other materials. These various forms of communication were all aimed at heightening public concern for mistreated animals and at relieving their suffering through legislative means. The analysis shows how non-wild
and wild animals were perceived at the time and how the law reflected these views. It is clear that Parliament did not seem particularly interested at the time in being compassionate to wild animals. Indeed, there was an effort to exclude them from legal protection on the basis that they had fewer human
qualities than their domesticated counterparts.
Books by Victor J Krawczyk
To intersect means to come across another being on their course, to occasionally even intercept this other. An intersection is the
fact or action of crossing another, or the place where two beings (or things) come across each other. In our multispecies world, it is inevitable that animal and human life intersect, sometimes in rather calculated ways, sometimes in rather joyous ways, and sometimes by haphazard chance.
The idea of ‘animal intersections’ has been embraced by the 2017 Australasian Animal Studies Conference’s arts programme. The exhibition at Peanut Gallery, along with the performance and moving-image screening at Nexus Arts, will allow viewers to consider how artists, in their unique ways, have responded to the words ‘intersect’ and ‘intersection’ (or even ‘intersectionality’ if one considers how multiple social forces can compromise animal lives). However, what is constant is that these words are concepts that help to visualise the many relations between animals and humans/humans and animals.
The application of a more embodied approach to ethics that also accounts for both animal and animalised humans can be found in the work of Pick (2011), she calls a creaturely ethics that takes the position that living beings, regardless of being human or not, are vulnerable beings prone to violent forces. Her work blurs the divide between the ontological status of both animals and humans, which can be the starting point of our discussions in this stream. Pick believes that individuals and societies have an obligation to try and protect vulnerable beings from violent exposure and exploitation.
Drawing on the philosophical writings of Simone Weil, Pick further argues for ‘creaturely poetics’ for ‘the creature, then, is first and foremost a living – body – material, temporal, and vulnerable’ (p. 5). At the same time, vulnerability is not a mundane fact of life. Weil (1953 as cited in Pick, 2011, p. 3) believes that: “[T]he vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is the mark of existence.” At the first instance, it seems counter-intuitive to conceive of the vulnerability of living beings as beautiful, particularly when violence is inflicted upon them. But if, as Pick (2011) argues, “fragility and finitude possess a special kind of beauty, this conception of beauty is already inherently ethical. It implies a sort of sacred recognition (our emphasis) of life’s value as material and temporal” (3). In turn, this understanding of sacredness invites a reverence for the lives of others for it encourages a mode of thought that in our view, is an expansive love, to some even reflecting a form of divine suffering (Linzey, 2009). A type of love born out of the sharing of organizational space (O’Doherty, 2016), inspired by a caring ethic that heightens visibility and moral consideration (Connolly & Cullen, 2017) or ethical affordances (Warkentin, 2009) to other-than-human animals. Arising from this embodied ‘moral imagination’ (Hamington, 2008) which these relationships bring forth, empathy and care can extend beyond previously considered limitations to animals, but also certain groups of humans as well or at some intersection of the two. Afterall, a number of poststructuralist thinkers, such as Derrida (1997/2008, 2009) and Deleuze and Guattari (2004/1987), have emphasised the continuity between human and non-human animals in addition to developing critiques of anthropocentrism.
The convenors of this stream welcome submissions that explore the vulnerability of diverse subjects, within multiple contexts and different disciplinary fields of study. This includes disciplines that are not traditionally associated with management and organizational studies, such as anthropology, history, film studies, art, ethnic and racial studies, ecological studies, cultural studies, queer studies, settler and colonial studies, indigenous studies, literature and health care. The overarching aim is to wrestle with the idea of the vulnerability of life and consider the possibility of sustaining ethical relations between beings that are intrinsically motivated by love, but often exists in contexts that are not always conducive to sustaining such relations. Hence, submissions to this stream could consider how an organizational, institutional or industrial context plays some role in hindering and/or facilitating ethical relationships in multiple contexts or settings.
compassion for animals in late Georgian Britain through visual media, bills, legislation, and other materials. These various forms of communication were all aimed at heightening public concern for mistreated animals and at relieving their suffering through legislative means. The analysis shows how non-wild
and wild animals were perceived at the time and how the law reflected these views. It is clear that Parliament did not seem particularly interested at the time in being compassionate to wild animals. Indeed, there was an effort to exclude them from legal protection on the basis that they had fewer human
qualities than their domesticated counterparts.
To intersect means to come across another being on their course, to occasionally even intercept this other. An intersection is the
fact or action of crossing another, or the place where two beings (or things) come across each other. In our multispecies world, it is inevitable that animal and human life intersect, sometimes in rather calculated ways, sometimes in rather joyous ways, and sometimes by haphazard chance.
The idea of ‘animal intersections’ has been embraced by the 2017 Australasian Animal Studies Conference’s arts programme. The exhibition at Peanut Gallery, along with the performance and moving-image screening at Nexus Arts, will allow viewers to consider how artists, in their unique ways, have responded to the words ‘intersect’ and ‘intersection’ (or even ‘intersectionality’ if one considers how multiple social forces can compromise animal lives). However, what is constant is that these words are concepts that help to visualise the many relations between animals and humans/humans and animals.