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A CLAN for Human-Animal Studies? Opportunities and challenges of establishing the field – Part 3 

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By: Verónica Policarpo

**A versão portuguesa dos 3 posts pode ser consultada aqui.

This is the last post of a series of three in which I proposed myself to reflect upon the main opportunities and challenges implied in the establishment of the field of Human-Animal Studies (HAS) in Portugal, and the role of the HAS-Hub in that process. In the first part, I recollected the strengths of international networks and funding. In the second part, I dived into the powers of connecting in our own mother tongue. Finally, in this third and last post, I will shortly discuss the major threats that, from my point of view, the HAS-Hub may face in the near future, as well as the emerging opportunities.

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A CLAN for Human-Animal Studies? Opportunities and challenges of establishing the field in Portugal – Part 2

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Por: Verónica Policarpo

**A versão portuguesa dos 3 posts pode ser consultada aqui.

For the last four years, the Human-Animal Studies Hub (hereafter, HAS-Hub) has brought together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and institutions, under a common interest: the critical appraisal of the multiple and systemic ways through which humans have exploited nonhuman animals, and an ethical commitment to contribute to diminish their suffering. In this post, I resume the reflection initiated here about this process. In the first part, I leaned over the rising strengths of international networks and collaborations, as well as the angular role of funding to foster research, training and dissemination. In this second part, I wish to highlight – and honour – the power of connecting and working in our mother tongue. Building a HAS network that speaks, not only but also, in Portuguese is a major mission of the HAS-Hub. I will try to show the role of post-graduate education in this process, in particular the post-graduate course Animais e Sociedade. This reflection will not end today, though. In a future third and last part, I will highlight what are, from my point of view, the major threats that the HAS-Hub faces in the near future, as well as emerging opportunities.

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A CLAN for Human-Animal Studies? Opportunities and challenges of establishing the field in Portugal – Part 1

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By: Verónica Policarpo

**A versão portuguesa dos 3 posts pode ser consultada aqui.

Three sociologists meet at a conference in Athens

In September 2017, the congress of the European Sociological Association was held in legendary Athens. It was a very hot day, and as it happens to me often, my presentation was on the very last day of the conference, on the very last time slot, late in the day. Feeling all the tiredness that comes after a long week of one of these big conferences, I headed to the venue early in the morning, after a sleepless night. I had browsed the conference program several times, looking for presentations that had the word “animal”, or any other related, in the title or abstract. I had found only three. One of them was exactly on the very same panel, and the very same day, in which I was going to present my own work. Moreover, it was about a topic very dear to me: death and mourning for a companion animal.

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Co-Produção: A Inteligência Humana ao Serviço das Nossas Cidades

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Por: Diogo Martins

Estamos sempre a falar em cidades mais inteligentes, com sensores, inteligência artificial, com software que irá gerir tudo ao pormenor, com tecnologia que nós, hoje, não conhecemos. Mas em que medida toda esta tecnologia traz benefícios às pessoas que habitam e frequentam as cidades? E estaremos a tirar partido da inteligência dessas pessoas para melhorar as nossas cidades?

A minha proposta é explorarmos formas de voltar às pessoas, sem deixarmos de evoluir e usar tecnologia. A co-produção é ainda pouco utilizada no nosso dia-a-dia e por isso não vemos efeitos práticos disso nas nossas cidades com a frequência que é desejável.

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PilotSTRATEGY Captura e Armazenamento de Carbono em Portugal

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Por: Jussara Rowland, Ana Delicado, Luísa Schmidt

As alterações climáticas são um problema “malvado” (wicked, na terminologia inglesa). Complexo, de difícil resolução, não há uma “bala mágica” que o consiga travar. Da mudança de comportamentos individuais à transformação dos sistemas de produção e consumo globais, muitas são as propostas para prevenir um aumento catastrófico da temperatura no planeta, como múltiplas são as respostas tecnológicas que podem contribuir para isso. Segundo o IPCC e a Comissão Europeia, a captura e armazenamento geológico de carbono é uma das respostas possíveis,  particularmente relevante para mitigar as emissões carbónicas de algumas indústrias cujos processos industriais implicam a produção de CO2. O CO2 é capturado nas grandes fontes emissoras industriais ou de produção de energia, comprimido em estado líquido e transportado por gasoduto, navio ou comboio para ser injetado no subsolo, geralmente a profundidades superiores a 1 km. O armazenamento é feito em formações geológicas como aquíferos salinos profundos, reservatórios esgotados de petróleo ou gás, ou em camadas de carvão não-exploráveis.

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The Roar of Catastrophes: animals and humans in the face of (not-so-natural) disasters

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By: Verónica Policarpo

Breathing in, take one. Inspiring Svetlana.  

How can we attune ourselves to the suffering of those caught by catastrophes? How much wonder can we find in their unimaginable capabilities for recovery?

These were the questions that inspired me when I first read Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices of Chernobyl, and then all her other books, as it usually happens when I get obsessively caught by an author that speaks to my deepest soul. What is it that triggers a line of restless enquiry that clings to our mind, as much as to our heart, to the point that it seems to have a life of its own? Here, I wish to reflect briefly upon what draws me to the study of catastrophes, and in particular to the experiences and suffering of nonhuman animals caught therein. I depart from Svetlana’s words, which was precisely what triggered my interest in the topic. Her books on human-made catastrophes – nuclear incidents, wars – are mainly about humans. But it strikes me how, in her narratives, she weaves the human accounts of disaster together with the non-human. May it be the forests of Ukraine or Belarus, caught in a radioactive peaceful mortal beauty. Or the innumerable animals caught in between the cruelty of such human excesses. At some point, in the preface of one of her books, she poignantly states (in much more beautiful words than those I can now recollect): one day, someone should make the History of all the animals killed in these disasters.

Like all important ideas, its simplicity hit me as fire. How come we have for so long disregarded what happens to animals in catastrophes? I am not an historian. But I am a social scientist and a human-animal studies scholar. And part of what I do is exactly to explore how to bring the non-human animals into our knowledge of social phenomena, including them as legitimate subjects of research, full co-producers of knowledge, accounting for their perspectives and interests. How could I, then, make a contribution?

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Stranger Thesis: Chicken, Uncertainty and Sisyphus

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By Mónica Ribau

Henry IV of France (1553-1610) promised that, if God helped him, each peasant would have a chicken on his plate every Sunday. After another thirty years of life, he was able to read “Meditations” (1640) by Descartes, who is considered to be the father of the scientific revolution. Agriculture and livestock rearing would ensure more chicken production and more people alive than was ever possible.

Right now, I write this post calmly, myself a privileged product of science, with a full fridge and singing birds around me – the kind of bird which we do not eat. However, Henry IV’s promise remains unfulfilled. There have never been so many chickens globally, but they were never as concentrated in so few mouths. Eradicating hunger is the second Sustainable Development Goal, and poverty is the first (plus 20’s issues).

After all, the God of Henry IV, who became “Science” in the Scientific Society, is in crisis. Certainty is expected from scientific knowledge, when it has always thriven on scepticism. Neither science nor democracy work like religion, rather taking reality as having shades of grey instead of a reduced black-or-white dichotomy. Complex dynamics, like the Changing Climate or the Coronavirus, enhance perceptions of uncertainty and, with that, the freedom of choice between extremes. Complex dynamics show that science is not about giving just one single number to problems clearly not reducible to such, as that provides a false sense of certainty and security in an entropic world where we cannot control everything.

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A reinvenção da roda

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Por: Ana Delicado

Vivemos tempos sem precedentes. Ou talvez não. Esta não é a primeira pandemia global. Nem a segunda. Temos é a memória curta. Da centenária gripe espanhola à mais recente e ainda por resolver pandemia do VIH-SIDA, passando pela gripe asiática do final dos anos 1950 ou pela cólera dos anos 1970, o mundo vai sendo assolado por microrganismos que se aproveitam da nossa tendência para convivermos em proximidade e de viajarmos pelo globo.

Não faltará material às ciências sociais nas próximas décadas para analisar a cascata de fenómenos sociais que esta pandemia provocou. Das transformações no trabalho às dinâmicas familiares intergeracionais, do lazer ao luto, das fragilidades do tecido económico postas a nu pela crise do turismo à problemática da mobilidade urbana, são incontáveis os trabalhos que se publicarão sobre esta pandemia. Já para nem falar dos múltiplos ângulos da sociologia e antropologia da saúde pelos quais se pode examinar a pandemia.

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A crescente importância do vetor ambiental para a segurança e defesa nacionais em Portugal

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Por João Estevens*

Faz sentido pensar o ambiente do ponto de vista da segurança nacional? Qual tem sido o tratamento das questões ambientais na narrativa securitária? Estas duas questões dão o mote para este texto e continuidade a investigações recentes desenvolvidas no ICS-ULisboa.

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Vírus expôs falha sistémica e agrava divergência na UE

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Por Paulo Miguel Madeira*

Devido à pandemia da Covid-19, entre o final do inverno e o início da primavera de 2020, centenas de milhões de europeus ficaram com as suas vidas suspensas, sujeitos a regimes mais ou menos coercivos de permanência nas suas residências, com as saídas limitadas a situações específicas determinadas pelas autoridades. A estratégia de diminuição drástica do contacto social adotada durante estes meses foi necessária para conter a disseminação do vírus e salvar muitas vidas, porventura dezenas de milhares em Portugal e centenas de milhares ou mesmo milhões por toda a Europa. Estão em maior risco pessoas com problemas de saúde específicos e pessoas idosas em geral – e os europeus são uma população muito envelhecida.

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