Birds as buddies

The politics of sentimentality in the Birds in backyards (Australia) Facebook site

Bibliographic Data

ID12341900
AuthorsRuth Barcan (0000-0003-1001-9576, The University of Sydney, corresponding author), J Johnston (0000-0002-8564-2138, The University of Sydney)
Year2023
Volume38
Issue1
Pages98-110
Publication date2023-07-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueContinuum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1030-4312 • E-ISSN: 1469-3666
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10304312.2023.2234106
OpenAlexW4384341060
LanguageEN
References cited24

This paper takes up Howard’s (1999) suggestion that sentimentality can be a lens on self-world relations. It focuses on human-bird relations in a Facebook site dedicated to Australian wild birds: Birds in Backyards (Australia). We argue that the traditional ideal of intellectual and affective distance through which critiques of sentimentality are still so often couched is not very useful in understanding and valuing the dynamic, interactive and immersive forms of social media. A study of Birds in Backyards suggests that there quite different ways that the love of wild birds can manifest and that sentimentality is not inimical to the generation of a community of care for, and celebration of, birds. Moreover, an older assumption that sentimentality might be the opposite of, or an impediment to, practical action seems hard to justify in the discursively and emotionally complex milieux of the digital age. Today, there is no place for an opposition between feeling and doing, and scientific action often requires and mobilizes emotion

Action (physics · Aesthetics · Art · Environmental ethics · Feeling · Media studies · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Sentimentality · Sociology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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