Full Description
What kinds of moral challenges arise from encounters between species in laboratory science? Animal Ethos draws on ethnographic engagement with academic labs in which experimental research involving nonhuman species provokes difficult questions involving life and death, scientific progress, and other competing quandaries. Whereas much has been written on core bioethical values that inform regulated behavior in labs, Lesley A. Sharp reveals the importance of attending to lab personnel's quotidian and unscripted responses to animals. Animal Ethos exposes the rich—yet poorly understood—moral dimensions of daily lab life, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox responses are evidence of concerted efforts by researchers, animal technicians, veterinarians, and animal activists to transform animal laboratories into moral scientific worlds.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Moral Entanglements in
Experimental Animal Science
Accessing Animal Science
Everyday Morality in Laboratory Practice
The Boundaries of Interspecies Encounters
The Parameters of Ethnographic Engagement
part i: intimacy
1. The Sentimental Structure of Laboratory Life
Animal Welfare and Species Preference
Modeling Human-Animal Intimacy
The Intimacy of Laboratory Encounters
Affective Politics
Conclusion: Sentimental Values
2. Why Do Monkeys Watch TV?
A Monkey's History of Visual Media
Primetime for Primates
Macaque Care in Practice: Welfare as Domestication
Coda
part ii: sacrifice: an interlude
3. The Lives and Deaths of Laboratory Animals
Animal Erasures
Beyond the Trope of Sacrifice
Managed Suffering and Humane Care
Reimagining Moral Frameworks of Care
Conclusion: The Limitations of Humane Death
part iii: exceptionalism
4. Science and Salvation
The Politics of Animal Suffering
Specialized Practices of Animal Welfare
Eclectic Forms of Animal Exceptionalism
Conclusion: Totemic Creatures
5. The Animal Commons
The Ethos of Sharing
Uncommon Creatures
The Animal Commons
Conclusion: Other Animals' Fates
Conclusion: The Other Animal
Notes
References
Index
