Animal Ethos - by Lesley A Sharp (Paperback)

About the Book

"What are the moral challenges and consequences of animal research in academic laboratory settings? Animal Ethos considers how the inescapable needs of lab research necessitate interspecies encounters that, in turn, engender unexpected moral responses among a range of associated personnel. Whereas much has been written about codified, bioethical rules and regulations that inform proper lab behavior and decorum, Animal Ethos, as an in-depth, ethnographic project, probes the equally rich--yet poorly understood--realm of ordinary or everyday morality, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox thought and action evidence concerted efforts to transform animal laboratories into moral, scientific worlds. The work is grounded in efforts to integrate theory within medical anthropology (and, more particularly, on suffering and moral worth), animal studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Contrary to established scholarship that focuses exclusively on single professions (such as the researcher or technician), Animal Ethos tracks across the spectrum of the lab labor hierarchy by considering the experiences of researchers, animal technicians, and lab veterinarians. In turn, it offers comparative insights on animal activists. When taken together, this range of parties illuminates the moral complexities of experimental lab research. The affective qualities of interspecies intimacy, animal death, and species preference are of special analytical concern, as reflected in the themes of 'Intimacy,' 'Sacrifice,' and 'Exceptionalism' that anchor this work"

Book Synopsis

What kinds of moral challenges arise from encounters between species in laboratory science? Animal Ethos draws on ethnographic engagement with academic labs in which experimental research involving nonhuman species provokes difficult questions involving life and death, scientific progress, and other competing quandaries. Whereas much has been written on core bioethical values that inform regulated behavior in labs, Lesley A. Sharp reveals the importance of attending to lab personnel's quotidian and unscripted responses to animals. Animal Ethos exposes the rich--yet poorly understood--moral dimensions of daily lab life, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox responses are evidence of concerted efforts by researchers, animal technicians, veterinarians, and animal activists to transform animal laboratories into moral scientific worlds.

From the Back Cover

"Animal Ethos is a much-needed intervention in how we think about the ethics of laboratory animals. Focusing on everyday ethics in labs and animal houses across the US and the UK, Lesley A. Sharp unpacks the ambiguities and paradoxes that arise when caring and killing are entangled. What results is a superb analysis of the intimate relations that emerge between laboratory animals, animal technicians, and research scientists--relations that are all too often left, painfully, silent." --Carrie Friese, Professor of Sociology at London School of Economics and Political Science

"Opening the door to animal laboratories with Lesley A. Sharp, we discover a complex and nuanced landscape of moral thinking and experimentation. This superbly written, analytically sharp, and ethnographically rich book recasts common sense understandings of animals, sacrifice, and welfare. Generous to both laboratory animals and the humans who care for them, Animal Ethos is a lively intervention into central debates in moral anthropology, science studies, and animal welfare studies" --Mette N. Svendsen, Professor of Medical Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

"Lesley A. Sharp brings an anthropological approach to ordinary, everyday moral experience as a means of understanding the ethical issues in biomedical laboratory research with animals. Is care of laboratory animals in experiments at all related to care as an ethical category in the way we care, say, for pets? Or for human subjects? What relations of a moral kind do researchers have with their animal subjects in experiments? Balanced, sensitive to ambiguities, and concerned with laboratory life as a moral practice, Sharp opens new ground for anthropological study." --Arthur Kleinman, author of What Really Matters

Review Quotes

"This book will be of clear substantive interest to social science and humanities scholars of experimental science and laboratory animals, while also being of general interest to anthropologists as well as medical sociologists of emotions, invisible work as well as death and dying."-- "Anthropology Book Forum"

"This book is crucial for anyone seeking to understand how researchers and lab technicians think about what they are doing when they work with animals fated to die at the end of their usefulness in producing data."-- "Medical Anthropology Quarterly"

About the Author

Lesley A. Sharp is the Barbara Chamberlain & Helen Chamberlain Josefsberg '30 Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Senior Research Scientist in Sociomedical Sciences at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and Fellow at the Center for Animals and Public Policy of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine of Tufts University. She is the author of several books, including theThe Transplant Imaginary: Mechanical Hearts, Animal Parts, and Moral Thinking in Highly Experimental Science; and Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self, which won the Society for Medical Anthropology's New Millennium Book Award.