Human-Elephant Encounters in Music

Cultural Animal Studies, 2019

The term 'encounter' is multifaceted. Its primary meaning as the OED describes it is "[a] meeting face to face" that happens mostly "undesignedly or casually" (215). Deriving from the Old French encontre or the late Latin incontrāre, there is however also a confrontational quality inherent in the word. It is also "a meeting (of adversaries or opposing forces) in conflict; hence, a battle, skirmish, duel, etc." (215). The contrary aspects of presence, the accidental and unintentional, then, characterize encounters as well as violence, difference and rejection. Based on the definition of the term and its etymology, many questions and issues arise with regard to human-animal encounters. How do human and non-human animals interact? Where do encounters take place? How are those encounters represented in literature and the arts, and performed in socio-cultural practices? The present volume concentrates on these topics by focusing on the concept of 'encounter'. Issues, problems and questions of contact and interaction between human and non-human animals that are addressed in philosophy, literature, the fine arts and socio-cultural practices are discussed systematically and in a historically comprehensive manner in the contributions of this volume within a cultural studies perspective. The volume argues that the concept of 'encounter' has its place as a distinct and meaningful category next to theories of agency that recently have dominated the field of Human Animal Studies.

2018

This collection of essays offers multifaceted explorations of animal encounters in a range of philosophical, cultural, literary, and historical contexts. Exploring Animal Encounters encourages us to think about the richness and complexity of animal lives and human-animal relations, foregrounding the intricate roles nonhuman creatures play in the always already more-than-human sphere of ethics and politics. In this way, the essays in this volume can be understood as a contribution to alternative imaginings of interspecies coexistence in a time in which the issue of human relations with earth and earth others has come to the fore with unprecedented force and severity. Dominik Ohrem & Matthew Calarco (editors) Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

International Society of Ethnobiology Newsletter, 2012

Society & Animals 15:4, 2007

Human and elephants shared habitats and interacted from Paleolithic times to the present day. It appears that prehistoric hunteregatherers were wise enough to understand that elephants are cohabiters of the human race and not a product to be exploited in an uncontrolled way. The understanding of the long tradition of human and elephant relationship and kinship may change the mind-set of modern humans to lead to carry on the important relationship between man and elephant in particular, and man and nature in general, and prevent future extinctions of all species involved. This study is conducted in the spirit of the newly developed multidisciplinary study field of 'Ethno-elephantology' that studies human and elephant relationships and strives to protect the endangered species. In order to have better understanding of this unique relationship we will explore it through the study of food taboos in modern hunteregatherers societies. More so, in this study we detected multiple striking similarities between elephant and man in several fields, such as physical, behavioral/social and conceptual. The importance of this study is in providing a new and better perspective about human and animal relationship, specifically elephants. We suggest that the physical and social uniqueness of the elephant, and its unique resemblance to man in so many aspects, alongside its pivotal role as a major food source, is what makes it appropriate for serving as a cosmological and conceptual beacon, mostly conceived in recent hunteregatherers societies by the concept of taboo. Although detecting food taboos in the deep past are not possible, we believe that the archaeological evidence presented in this paper could indicate that humaneelephant interactions in the past were complex, and were not based solely on human perception of the elephant as a food and raw material source.

Relations Beyond Anthropocentrism, 2013

Two firsts are to be celebrated. The first is the inaugural volume of this journal, Relations, and the second is The Emotional Lives of Animals, the first conference of its kind in Italy. Together, they signify the continuing emergence of Human-Animal Studies in Italy and across the world. I understand Human-Animal Studies (HAS) to mean the study of our relations with animals and their relations with us. "Our interest lies in the intersections between human lives and human cultures", writes Margo DeMello, "and those of nonhuman animals, whether real or virtual" (DeMello 2010, XI).

"The history of animation is interlaced with the use of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism as a device for creating popular characters and narratives. In the ‘post-modern’ critique of animal representation in art, there has been a largely negative debate surrounding anthropomorphism and the symbolic use of animal forms; echoing theories formulated for scientific studies in biosciences, social anthropology and social geography. How, then, can animation be understood as a relevant creative medium for investigating relationships between humans and non-human animals in the modern world? The first section of the paper will identify a range of anthropomorphic forms and show how these are present in character design and narration. Links will be made to an understanding of human psychology (Winnicott, 1971;Langer, 1953); and the development of storytelling ( Boyd, 2009; Ingold, 1994 ). This will include an exploration of ‘the metaphor’ as a literary and visual device capable of bringing richness to the language of moving image work (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). Moving on, the role that animation has played in a present day discourse of ecological and socio-biological issues will be highlighted and related to modern day discourses. In this way, the unique qualities that animation has as an expressive art form will be shown to be eminently suited to portraying the diversity of experiences that human and non-human animals share. "

Ⅲ ABSTRACT: Humans and elephants have lived together and shared space together in diverse ways for millennia. Th e intersections between these thinking and feeling species have been diff erently explored, for diff erent reasons, by disciplines across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Such disciplinary divisions, predicated on oppositions of human-animal and nature-culture, are integral to the confi guration of modernist thought. However, posthumanist and biocultural thinking questions the underlying epistemological conventions, thereby opening up interdisciplinary possibilities for human-animal studies. In relation to issues of confl ict and coexistence, this article charts the emergence of an interdisciplinary research program and discursive space for human-elephant intersections under the rubric of ethnoelephantology. Recognizing continuities between the sentient and aff ective lifeworlds of humans and elephants, the mutual entanglements of their social, historical, and ecological relations, and the relevance of combining social and natural science methodologies, the article surveys recent research from anthropology, history, and geography that exemplifi es this new approach. Ⅲ KEYWORDS: captive elephant management, elephant conservation, elephant welfare, ethnoelephantology, ethnoprimatology, human-elephant relations, more-than-human geography, multispecies ethnography