Returning to 'The Good Life'? Chickens and Chicken-keeping during Covid-19 in Britain

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5797641
AutoresCatherine Oliver (0000-0002-5332-0468, University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen10
Número1
Páginas114-139
Fecha de publicación2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnimal studies journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2200-9140 • E-ISSN: 2201-3008
EditorialUniversity of Wollongong Library (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.14453/asj.v10i1.7
OpenAlexW3177319684
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas22

Through the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, humans have been exposed to the threat that the exploitation and eating of animals poses to humanity and public health. It has also become obvious that animals want to and are willing to take up more space. In the relative absence of humans during lockdown, animal populations have spread out and some have entered cities and towns for the first time. At the same time, humans have chosen to bring animals into their domestic spaces in the form of companion animals in staggering numbers. The lockdown's slowing of time has opened the possibility to cultivate our domestic space as habitable for other species. In this paper, I explore an emerging animal-human space and dwelling in the surge of interest in and process of re-homing chickens, the motivations underpinning this growth, and I trouble these ostensibly benevolent relationships. In the final part of this paper, I connect and contrast chicken re-homing with the 'frontlines' of intimate animal-human risky relationships of Covid-19 in the slaughterhouse. This paper thus argues that backyard rehoming of chickens has not lowered the labour demands on them and conversely, during Covid-19, the picking up of chicken-keeping as a response to human lockdown is not a subversion but an extension of the expectation of chicken labour

Homing (biology · Human animal · Pandemic · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Human-Animal Interaction Studies