Animal Geographies III: Ethics

Abstract

There is no animal geography without ethics. The very coupling of the words gives rise to an ethical endeavor; an acceptance that animals have a geography, a making visible of animals within our human geography and scholarship, an acknowledgement that our relationship with animals has consequences. For some, this ethical endeavor extends to politics and includes engaged activism or to individual commitment such as not to eat meat, not to ‘own’ a pet, not to visit zoos and so on. This is a personal choice but at a broader level, animal geography, in recognizing animals as co-respondent subjects gives them a moral placing within the academy that, arguably, they rarely enjoyed before. This final report considers the contribution of animal geography and animal geographers to a more informed ethics of human-animal relations, one that increasingly confounds an over simplistic view of animals as merely moral patients to suggest an ethics which guides a broader, more inclusive moral community.