Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

John Oberg will be our Keynote speaker.

Attendees can learn more about John on his website: https://www.johnoberg.org/

To attend John's Keynote, click here.

Email: lercier.marine@gmail.com

Institutional affiliation: Faculty of Law, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.

Keywords: racehorse welfare; ethics of the racing industry; animal-athletes; equine law.

Abstract:

The horse holds a special place in Western societies where horse racing takes place. As concern about the welfare of animals used for profit and in sports increases, better guarantees concerning their proper treatment are expected. Ethics and the law have a role to play to bring about positive changes for horses in the racing industry, based on scientific evidence from animal welfare science.

This paper will examine the legal protection of racehorses in France and racehorse welfare standards in the French trotting industry. This implies to start from the international dimension of the regulation and guidelines that are endorsed by racing federations and veterinarians. Then, this involves a review of the existing literature in animal ethics, racehorse welfare, and equine law; and of the French legislation on animal protection and horse welfare, as well as racing codes and voluntary racehorse welfare standards in force, from a critical perspective.

Equine welfare science and animal ethics must inform the decisions made on behalf of the individuals to achieve better levels of health and welfare and ensure that their fundamental interests are respected. During the career of racehorses, current issues include doping, medication, the use of the whip and of painful devices, racing immature horses, and the living and working conditions of these animal-athletes. Racing societies, professionals from the sector and veterinarians must play a greater role in racehorse welfare to ensure the continued acceptance of this sport, sometimes considered cruel. To this end, practices that are dangerous or detrimental to horse welfare should be avoided.

References:

Bergmann, I. (2019) He Loves to Race – or Does He? Ethics and Welfare in Racing. In Equine Cultures in Transition: Ethical Questions, 1st edition, eds. by Bornemark, J., Andersson, P., Ekström von Essen, U., Routledge, pp. 117-133.

Campbell, M.L.H. (2013). Ethical analysis of the use of animals in sport. In Veterinary and Animal Ethics: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Veterinary and Animal Ethics, eds. by Wathes, C., Corr, S., May, S.A., McCulloch, S.P., Whiting, M. UFAW, Oxford, pp. 201-215.

Charte pour le Bien-Être Équin, Paris, 4 mars 2016. https://www.lafranceagricole.fr/r/Publie/FA/p1/Infographies/Web/2016-03-07/CharteEquins.pdf

France Galop, Code des Courses au Galop, 2021. https://www.france-galop.com/sites/default/files/code_janvier_2021.pdf

International Federation of Horse Racing Authorities (2020) Minimum Horse Welfare Standards. https://ifhaonline.org/resources/IFHA_Minimum_Welfare_Standards.PDF.

Règlement de la SECF formant le Code des Courses au Trot 2020. https://pro.letrot.com/siteletrotws-LMeiJS3SZYjkmC1qpyBvHCsYjfwGkj/publication?type=CODECOURSE

Jason Holt, Acadia University

jason.holt@acadiau.ca

Title: Are Horses Players in Equine Sports?

Keywords: consent, equine sports, games, interspecies relationships

Abstract:

Though animal ethics in sport applies most urgently to cases of animals at mortal risk

(as in hunting or bullfighting) or as objects of artificial manipulation (as with doping or

breeding), less hazardous domains bear scrutiny as well. Here I examine whether we

can strictly take not just riders but horses to be players in equine sports.

Just as the phrase ‘equestrian sport’ might seem to overemphasize the rider’s role in

competition, so too might the phrase ‘equine sport’ be seen to lay too much stress on

the horse. We sometimes speak of horse and rider partnerships or teams, but maybe

this is a mere façon de parler. After all, there is an apparent tension in the concept of

horsepersonship, which is a blend of skills and attitudes, between regarding the horse

as a subject of persuasion or collaboration and treating it rather as an object of control.

Still, as animal studies continue to evolve, it becomes increasingly clear that the scope

of animal intelligence and agency are far wider than we formerly presumed.

In this light, and following Suits’s definition (2013) of playing a game as “the voluntary

attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles” (p. 25), I argue that we can indeed make

sense of horses sometimes consenting and sometimes refusing to play equine sports.

Drawing on recent theoretical accounts of horse-rider partnership (e.g., Dashper 2017,

Ford 2019), and drawing on my own competitive experience, I conclude by outlining a

utopian sketch of what equine sports could be.

Key citations:

• Dashper, K. (2017): ‘Listening to Horses: Developing Attentive Interspecies Relationships

Through Sport and Leisure’, Society and Animals 25 (3), pp. 207–224.

• Ford, A. (2019): ‘Sport Horse Leisure and the Phenomenology of Interspecies Embodiment’,

Leisure Studies 38 (3), pp. 329–340.

• Suits, B. (2013): ‘The Elements of Sport’, in J. Holt (ed.) Philosophy of Sport: Core Readings

(Peterborough: Broadview), pp. 19–33.

Email: SeanSOneil@texashealth.org

Institutional affiliation: Sport and Religion Research Alliance, University of Tennessee (Affiliated Scholar)

Keywords: e.g., surfing, bronco riding, bull riding, disability, social ethics, ethics of risk, Christianity

Abstract:

On October 31, 2003, a thirteen-year-old surfer named Bethany Hamilton was relaxing on her board off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii when a fifteen-foot tiger shark bit off her left arm. On April 1, 2016, a Lakota cowboy named Brady Jandreau was in a rodeo competition when a bronco bucked off the twenty-year-old and stomped on his head. Hamilton “lost over half her volume in blood,” and had life-saving surgery.[1] Jandreau went into a coma and received a titanium plate for his skull fracture. The athletically precocious Hamilton had been surfing since she was five. Jandreau could “actually ride and control a horse before [he] was potty-trained.”[2] Hamilton’s multi-mediated story includes a biographical movie starring AnnaSophia Robb and a more recent documentary called Unstoppable (2018). Jandreau plays a fictionized version of himself in The Rider (2017), a film that blurs the boundaries between both genres.

Their traumatic injuries prompted Hamilton and Jandreau to reevaluate the ethics of risk in sports involving animals. In Jandreau’s Lakota cowboy culture, animals are integral to sports; in Hamilton’s evangelical surfing culture, they play more peripheral and accidental roles. In both cases, however, Jandreau and Hamilton champion a divine-human relationship mediated through non-human nature. What is more, human interdependence is a striking feature in each of their stories. These case studies thus contribute to an integrated vision of Christian social ethics, which considers athletic and spiritual connections both across species and between people of varying dis/abilities.

Key citations: 1-3 key references for the paper (any citation format)

Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

Anna Peterson, Everyday Ethics and Social Change: The Education of Desire. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

Robert L. Simon, Cesar R. Torres, and Peter Hagar: Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport. (Routledge; 4th edition, 2014)

[1] Aaron Lieber, Unstoppable, 2018, DVD.

[2] Chloe Zhao, The Rider, 2018, DVD.

Dr. Connor Heffernan, University of Texas at Austin

Email: Conor.Heffernan@austin.utexas.edu

Title: 'Oh Oh Rodeo': Tex Austin and Ireland's First Rodeo

Keywords: Ireland, Rodeo, Bulls, Horses, Transnationalism, American History

Abstract:

In 1924 Tex Austin, an American showman, brought his world travelling Rodeo to Croke Park in Dublin. Coming at a time of significant social and political upheaval in Ireland, Austin’s rodeo promised an entirely new kind of spectacle which was free from imperial or British connotations. Austin’s rodeo, and cowboy paraphernalia in general, seemed largely immune from cultural suspicions despite the fact that few citizens knew what a rodeo actually entailed. The purpose of the present presentation is twofold. First it provides a detailed examination of Tex Austin’s Dublin Rodeo, an event previously alluded to but never fully discussed. Second, it uses Austin’s Rodeo and its aftermath, to discuss the intersection between Irish and American animal cultures. As will be shown, Austin’s rodeo came with substantial criticism from animal rights groups but, despite this resistance, mastery over the animals nevertheless came with a great deal of societal kudos. While this interest has been discussed in the past, the importance of the cowboy and American frontier culture in Ireland often been overlooked.

Key citations:

Elizabeth Russell, ‘Holy Crosses, guns and roses: themes in popular reading material,’ in Joost Augusteijn (ed.), Ireland in the 1930s: new perspectives (Dublin, 1999), pp. 11-28.

Patrick Mahoney, ‘Buffalo Bill Cody or Bufló Bill Códai? Irish Nationalist Invocations of an American Icon,’ New Hibernia Review, 23: 2 (2019), 31–51.

Gail Hughbanks Woerner, Cowboy Up!: The History of Bull Riding (Austin, 2001)

Email: lgrandy@unb.ca

Institutional Affiliation: University of New Brunswick, UNB Libraries (Archives & Special Collections)

Keywords: industrialization, professionalism, horses, anti-cruelty, gambling

Abstract:

The activity surrounding the sport of harness racing in the Maritime Provinces during the nineteenth century revolved around moral discussions that were central to society and sport at that time. A utilitarian rhetoric was often employed in harness racing, lauding the sport as a way of improving the quality of working and agricultural horses, although harness racing was largely an urban, leisure sport. The popularity of harness racing in North America arose in parallel with the anti-cruelty movement and harness racing horses were often anthropomorphized, an approach also used by proponents of anti-cruelty. As well, drivers in the sport frequently held up their amateur ethics at a time when professionalization of sport was emerging, but professional trainers were regularly employed in the region to prepare horses.

Gambling was an activity with dubious morality connected to the sport of harness racing, as evidenced by an abundance of newspaper columns and stories from local presses which track the progress of certain horses with the obvious purpose of allowing bettors to make educated decisions. Gambling, however, was not actively and openly promoted as part of race meets, although its practice increased the performance pressure placed upon horses and drivers.

Harness racing was venue in which played out the moral discussions of professionalism, treatment of animals, efficiency, gambling, and commercialization which were central to the industrializing society.

Key citations:

Grandy, Leah. The Era of the Urban Horse, Saint John, New Brunswick, 1871-1901. MA Thesis. University of New Brunswick, 2004.

___________. Rounding the Turn for Home: Harness Racing in New Brunswick and Maine, 1889-1901. PhD diss. University of New Brunswick, 2010.