Lindsay Hamilton

Ethnography in evolution: adapting to the animal “other” in organizations

Purpose – Traditionally, ethnography has been well placed to take account of the messy and complex processes that produce workplace cultures. Likewise, it has always taken interest in the objects, materials and symbolic artifacts that help furnish those organizational cultures. Yet researchers face a particular challenge when the organization in question includes animals. The purpose of this paper is to ask: How do we take account of such others? Are they objects, things, agents or should they be considered to be workers?Design/methodology/approach – The authors consider several examples of animal‐human workplaces, including abattoirs, laboratories and farms, to argue that ethnography can, and should, take account of animals in creative new ways. First‐hand experience of such settings is drawn upon to argue that contemporary post‐human scholarship and the creative arts offer the potential for more subtle research methods.Findings – The authors’ fieldwork shows that it is not always a straightforward desir...

Animals at work

Animals at Work considers the ways in which humans make meaning from their interactions with non-humans in a range of organizations. This is done through ethnographic research in a range of workplaces, from farms and slaughter-houses to rescue shelters and veterinary practices.

‘It’s just a job’: Understanding emotion work, de-animalization and the compartmentalization of organized animal slaughter:

This article contributes to an understanding of the nexus between humans and animals by drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a British chicken factory and, more particularly, by exploring the emotional subjectivity of Meat Inspectors employed by the Food Standards Agency to oversee quality, hygiene and consumer safety within this plant. We argue that these Inspectors displayed a complex range of often contradictory emotions from the ‘mechanized’ to the ‘humanized’ and link this, in part, to the technocratic organization of factory work that compartmentalizes and sanitizes slaughter. This serves to de-animalize and commodify certain animals, which fosters an emotional detachment from them. In contrast to research which suggests that emotions switch off and on in a dialectic between violence and non-violence, or that we are living in a post-emotional society, we elucidate the co-existence, fluidity and range of emotions that surface and submerge at work. While contributing to the extant literature on ‘emotionologies’, we add new insights by considering how emotions play out in relation to animals.

Dignity and Species Difference Within Organizations

The concept of dignity has traditionally been framed by ideas of human rights, such as respect, worth, and esteem. It is a notion that does not usually extend beyond human social interactions within our homes and workplaces. This is largely explained by powerful and ancient distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, based not only on physical and genomic differences but on our vastly different experiential and behavioural registers and our capacities for choice, action, and cognition. The attendant status gap that tracks these apparent differences sustains the ‘moral categories’ of animal and human and helps explain why we tend not to think of dignity as an animal quality. For millennia, however, humans have relied upon the productive capacities of other species for transport, defence, law enforcement and food. The important work that other animals do for the human animal prompts us to think more deeply about the organizational status of that animal and their dignity in labour.

The kill programme : an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ in a slaughterhouse

It has been argued that ‘dirty work’ is characterised by strong occupational and workgroup cultures. This literature has mainly focused on direct workers, but this article largely attends to indirect ‘dirty’ workers, specifically meat inspectors, through ethnographic research conducted in a UK slaughterhouse. Four arguments are developed; the first is that ‘dirty workers’ may not all display group cohesiveness; indeed, individualisation may be more evident depending upon the technology used, internationalisation and employment conditions. Second, there is complexity and diversity within ‘dirty work’ and even single occupations can contain considerable variety, rendering generalisations problematic. Third, we argue that much greater attention needs to be given to the wider contextual issues affecting ‘dirty work’, specifically changing labour markets, itinerant labour, economic conditions and technologies. Finally, we argue that stigmatised work may become more so if it is equated with the low wage economy and/or undercutting conditions of employment through exploiting migrant labour.

A gendered perspective on Learning to Labour

This paper presents an auto-ethnographic study of the personal experience of learning to labour. Heather Hopfl reflects on the prospects and opportunities presented to her as part of her life and experiences of learning to labour during the same period as Williss study: which, of course, is specific to young men. Consequently, the paper reflects on the implications of class location and life chances, on the social engineering experimentation of the 1950s and 60s, on the options presented by a grammar school education and on the impossibility of return occasioned by such opportunities. It discusses the escape routes open to some but closed to many.

Ethnography beyond the country and the city: Understanding the symbolic terrain of rural spaces

The 2012 London Olympic Games opening ceremony presented onlookers with a carefully choreographed vision of the British countryside. There were sheep, hillocks, trees, hedgerows and even working rainclouds. It was familiar, homely and bucolic and, according to the artist Danny Boyle, was intended to represent a humorous ‘picture of ourselves as a nation’ (Boyle, cited in Magnay and Heath, 2012). Condensing like the water droplets from the fake rain clouds suspended overhead, a moment of British culture was coalescing on the grass and tarmac of the east London Olympic Park; a stadium that was constructed painstakingly and expensively on the sanitized remains of centuries-old industrial brownfield that still smelled of wet coal (O’Hagan, 2012) and resonated with the echoes of long-closed warehouses and works. In place of ‘derelict and weedy’ came ‘green and pleasant’ – animated, magnified and given vibrant life against the roars and camera flashes of the assembled crowds. Despite the contemporary significance of the digital, virtual and the post-industrial, this pastoral spectacle served a timely reminder of the enduring significance of the rural landscape to identity and culture. A throwback to a simpler period of history, perhaps – a time when communities appeared to be more stable, authentic and ‘real’, or a time when people lived in close proximity with the land and other animals. Of course, many have questioned whether the countryside has ever really been a ‘green and pleasant land’. But this is to miss the point. Rural myths are both real and imagined – a juxtaposition and a blending of the ‘somatic’ and the symbolic; the fleshy and the representational – and they are given life through praxis, the many and varied doings that constitute human life-worlds. This is where ethnography – turning a Janus face to both naturalistic social interaction and academic rigour – makes its unique contribution.

When I ask myself these questions

The complexity and diversity of family life, coupled with the hidden and intimate nature of domesticity – whatever its flavour – has always held the potential to make participant observation difficult. Yet, for well over a century, anthropologists and ethnographers have sought to do precisely that, whether reporting from the leafy tropics of the tribal ‘developing world’ or the suburbs and tower blocks of high-rise cities. Debates have endured as to whether families mirror and reproduce the conditions and norms of broader social life – best understood firmly within the context of socio-economic forces – or whether they might be regarded as pockets of creative resistance against society and its conventions. But however we go about the study of kinship, many sociologists agree that family life in the 21st century is a changing experience for individuals, couples, parents, and children (Giddens, 1992; Gillies, 2005; Hill, 2012). The family has taken on new significance in contemporary research. In anthropology, for example, the last two decades have witnessed a true renaissance of the topic, especially regarding new transformations of the family in new contexts (see, for example, Carsten, 2004). Such new forms of family are now being carefully documented and discussed across the humanities (see, for example, Chambers, 2012, for a good summary) and there is increasing attention being paid to the meaning-making of daily home life, often through narration of what are ostensibly mundane materials (see, for example, Bennett, 2010; Casey and Martens, 2007; Chambers, 2012; Lull, 2013; Martens, 2012; Pink, 2012; Watson and Shove, 2008). Many of these studies share the belief that taking a close-up view of the family can tell us much about power, agency and social structure in a broader sense (Pink, 2012), so one of the biggest concerns in current social science is how family and paid work fit together (or do not). How, for example, do individuals juggle

Investigating the Other: Considerations on Multi-Species Research

Abstract Purpose The last few decades have seen the rise of a new field of inquiry – human–animal studies (HAS). As a rich, theoretically and disciplinarily diverse field, HAS shines a light on the various relations that humans have with other animals across time, space and culture. While still a small, but rapidly growing field, HAS has supported the development of multiple theoretical and conceptual initiatives which have aimed to capture the rich diversity of human–animal interactions. Yet the methodologies for doing this have not kept pace with the ambitions of such projects. In this chapter, we seek to shed light on this particular issue. Design/methodology/approach We consider the difficulties of researching other-than-human beings by asking what might happen if methods incorporated true inter-disciplinarity, for instance if social scientists were able to work with natural scientists on multi-species ethnographies. The lack of established methodology (and the lack of cross disciplinary research between the natural and social sciences) is one of the main problems that we consider here. It is an issue complicated immensely by the ‘otherness’ of animals – the vast differences in the ways that we (humans) and they (animals) see the world, communicate and behave. This chapter provides the opportunity for us to consider how we can take account of (if not resolve) these differences to arrive at meaningful research data, to better understand the contemporary world by embarking upon more precise investigations of our relationships with animals. Findings Drawing upon a selection of examples from contemporary research of human–animal interactions, both ethnographic and scientific, we shed light on some new possibilities for multi-species research. We suggest that this can be done best by considering and applying a diversity of theoretical frameworks which deal explicitly with the constitution of the social environment. Originality/value Our methodological exploration offers the reader insight into new ways of working within the template of human animal studies by drawing upon a range of useful theories such as post-structuralism and actor network theory (ANT) (for example, Callon, 1986; Hamilton & Taylor, 2013; Latour, 2005; Law, Ruppert, & Savage, 2011) and post-humanist perspectives (for example, Anderson, 2014; Haraway, 2003; Wolfe, 2010). Our contribution to this literature is distinctive because rather than remaining at the philosophical level, we suggest how the human politics of method might be navigated practically to the benefit of multiple species.

Purity in danger: power, negotiation and ontology in medical practice

Purpose – Organizational analysts have long questioned the ways in which professional knowledge becomes powerful. The purpose of this paper is to extend that enquiry by examining two professional groups in the UK – doctors and veterinarians.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines a selection of social interactions, tensions and disagreements between practitioners and non‐medical actors and draws on a range of qualitative research methods, particularly structured interview and participant observation, to analyse and interpret these as “epistemological conflicts”.Findings – Hospital doctors and veterinary surgeons share a common belief that “truth” and “facts” are at the core of their clinical and surgical work. This positivist paradigm underpins a range of practical engagements with bodies and diseases and lends them a sense of ontological security when dealing with people from outside their professions, especially those without medical training. This paper examines the practical effects that such...