Captivity

Cannot consider "captivity" as a privileged category that resolves into a neat captive/free binary or a gradient. Need to take into account broader relationality.

Possible key tension:

How can we recognise and promote beneficial coculture and codependence without allowing relational language to conceal coercion, property relations and the unequal power dynamics?

Cf.

• Domestication
• Companionship, friendship, kinship
• Husbandry
• Vassal animals
• Prey/predator relationships
• Care
• Domination, oppression, exploitation
• Liberation, abolitionism, emancipation
• Self-determination, autonomy, agency

See also: Relations, Multispecies Cohabitation, Paternalism, Rights, Zoo, Companion Animals, Critical Animal Studies, Animal Studies, Freedom, Justice, Participation, Representation, Power, Thriving, Health.

Relational Profile

Dimensions for comparing arrangements

Consider several lumpy and partially independent gradients:

• Coercion: imposed control and inability to refuse.
• Dependency: reliance on another for the conditions of life.
• Agency: capacity to initiate, choose, negotiate and withdraw.
• Reciprocity: mutual responsiveness and distribution of benefits.
• Institutional asymmetry: unequal legal, economic and epistemic power.
• Flourishing: opportunities to develop individual and species-related capabilities.
• Historical responsibility: obligations generated by capture, breeding, domestication or habitat destruction.
• Collective belonging: participation in animal, human or multispecies communities.
• Reparative orientation: whether care merely maintains captivity or attempts to redress harms.
• Transformability: whether animals can modify the terms of the relationship.

As an example, this makes several combinations discernible:

• High dependency, high agency: a companion animal in a responsive household.
• High care, low agency: an intensively managed zoo animal.
• High constraint, reparative purpose: an unreleasable animal in a credible sanctuary.
• High mobility, high dependency: a free-roaming but provisioned urban animal.
• Low direct confinement, high structural domination: wildlife living in fragmented, polluted or intensively managed landscapes.

Complementary Methodological Aspects

• Experiential: what this animal appears to feel, want, avoid and enjoy.
• Relational: what humans and animals (as well as other beings) make possible in one another.
• Structural: who controls territory, resources, reproduction, representation and death.

Frameworks for Representative/Illustrative Settings

Sites and settings vary:

• Exclusion areas to protect wildlife from introduced predators, disease or human disturbance.
• Animal hospitals.
• Pounds, shelters and rescue centres.
• Zoos, aquaria and wildlife parks.
• Sanctuaries.
• Companion animals in households, farms and workplaces.
• Wildlife in urban, agricultural and industrial landscapes.
• Working animals in kennels, stables, farms and laboratories.
• Etc.

Relating to the distinct situations of captivity, the complementary setting might be:

Animals at Zoos

Contemporary zoo scholarship identifies weak evidence around reproduction, social bonds, visitor effects and behavioural diversity.

• Five Domains and preference testing for individual welfare.
• Biopolitics for breeding, contraception, transfer and population management.
• Political theory for legitimacy and representation.
• Critical geography for enclosure, display and visitor surveillance.
• Conservation science for evaluating whether captivity delivers defensible conservation outcomes.

Animals at Sanctuaries

A sanctuary might remain a site of captivity while also constituting a reparative response to prior exploitation.

• Sanctuary studies and abolitionist ethics;
• Ethics of care;
• Multispecies community and justice;
• Trauma-informed care;
• Analysis of institutional dependency and succession;
• Animal participation in everyday governance.

Companion Animals

Companion animals (or pets) can invoke many relations such as property, kin, dependent, co-worker, captive, and consumer object. Concepts such as guardianship, supported agency, shared household membership and interspecies family should not conceal control over movement, reproduction and death.

• Companion-species theory;
• Domestication and coevolution;
• Relational autonomy;
• Animal citizenship;
• Family and kinship studies;
• Labour studies;
• Disability and dependency theory.

References

Bovenkerk, Bernice. “Animal Captivity: Justifications for Animal Captivity in the Context of Domestication.” In Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring Boundaries in Human-Animal Relationships, edited by Bernice Bovenkerk and Jozef Keulartz, 151–71. Cham: Springer, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44206-8_10.

Browning, Heather, and Walter Veit. “Freedom and Animal Welfare.” Animals 11, no. 4 (2021): 1148. https://doi.org/10/g82tz7.

Clay, Anne Safiya, and Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers. “Individuals Matter: Dilemmas and Solutions in Conservation and Animal Welfare Practices in Zoos.” Animals 12, no. 3 (2022): 398. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12030398.

Doyle, Catherine. “Captive wildlife sanctuaries: definition, ethical considerations and public perception.” Animal Studies Journal 6, no. 2 (2017): 55–85.

Fraser, David. “Assessing Animal Welfare: Different Philosophies, Different Scientific Approaches.” Zoo Biology 28, no. 6 (2009): 507–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.20253.

Garner, Robert. “Animal Rights and Captivity in a Non-Ideal World.” In Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals, edited by L. Syd M. Johnson, Andrew Fenton, and Adam Shriver, 191–204. Cham: Springer, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31011-0_11.

Gruen, Lori, ed. The Ethics of Captivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Hutchins, Michael, Brandie Smith, and Ruth Allard. “In Defense of Zoos and Aquariums: The Ethical Basis for Keeping Wild Animals in Captivity.” In The Animal Ethics Reader, edited by Susan J. Armstrong and Richard George Botzler, 958–66. 2003. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Keulartz, Jozef. “Captivity for Conservation? Zoos at a Crossroads.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28, no. 2 (2015): 335–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9537-z.

Learmonth, Mark James. “Dilemmas for Natural Living Concepts of Zoo Animal Welfare.” Animals 9, no. 6 (2019): 318. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani9060318.

Minteer, Ben A., and James P. Collins. “Ecological Ethics in Captivity: Balancing Values and Responsibilities in Zoo and Aquarium Research under Rapid Global Change.” ILAR Journal 54, no. 1 (2013): 41–51. https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar/ilt009.

Sauve, Drew, Jane Hudecki, Jessica Steiner, Hazel Wheeler, Colleen Lynch, and Amy A. Chabot. “Improving Species Conservation Plans under IUCN’s One Plan Approach Using Quantitative Genetic Methods.” Peer Community Journal 2 (2022): e50. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.163.