Unveiling Shared Histories : Crafting Sanctuary and the Work of Care in Troubled Domestic Domains

Summary, in English

Farmed Animal Sanctuaries, fristeder in Danish, are places devoted to previously farmed and abused animals. This chapter explores the transformative nature of caregiving within sanctuaries, navigating difficult political landscapes characterised by unrecognised care work and legal and hegemonic standards of care shaped by industrial practices. Based on ethnographic material collected at two sanctuaries in rural Denmark, the chapter underscores critical aspects of the effort of crafting sanctuary in what is described as troubled domestic domains marked by historical and ongoing processes of domestication. It explores how sanctuary making disrupts and challenges social and conventional images of human relationships with other animals, playing a pivotal role in prefiguring multispecies futures. Central to the discussion is the assertion that the work of care at sanctuaries provides a stimulating context to ponder the question of shared histories and the ethics and politics of entanglement. Sanctuaries provide spaces for addressing past injustices inflicted upon other animals while still acknowledging the agency and role of nonhuman animals in shaping social worlds.

• Author: Marie Leth-Espensen
• Department/s: Department of Sociology of Law
• Publishing year: 2024
• Language: English
• Pages: 61-72
• Publication/Series: Heterotopia, Radical Imagination, and Shattering Orders : Manifesting a Future of Liberated Animals
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003366706-5
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Routledge
• Topic: History of Science and Ideas
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 9781003366706; ISBN: 9781032433004