I am pleased to announce the acceptance of my doctoral thesis into the University of the Sunshine Coast Research Bank. The thesis is available for download at: http://research.usc.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/usc:13419
Title: Geographies of the Liminal Dolphin: toward an understanding of the contested spaces of Dolphin-Assisted Therapy Abstract: Dolphin-Assisted Therapy (DAT) is a field of therapies that have been developed to enable humans with disabilities to achieve improved lives. DAT occurs in a range of places and environments, is theorised in various ways, and is both criticised and supported in a polarised discourse. Its various geographic situations and debates make a socio-spatial understanding of DAT problematic. Previous research on animal-human interactions, and in particular in the scholarship of animal geographies, explores similar challenges from the perspectives of ‘the contact zone’, re-imagining zoos and geo-ethics, but have not explored how interspecies work in therapies can be of significant mutual benefit, and in particular in relation to DAT. This research explores the socio-spatial constructions of DAT to reveal how they affect the therapies and human-animal relations more broadly. Using a social-constructionist onto-epistemological paradigm, and drawing on nonrepresentational theory, Actor Network Theory, and Foucault-inspired analysis, three methods of analysis were used to categorise the data: a genealogy of DAT’s history and development, a discourse analysis of academic and non-academic texts, and a case study of a DAT facility. Data were gathered by means of interviews, textual analysis, and personal observation. The findings showed that socio-spatial understandings of DAT are problematised by: varied degrees of proximity between humans and dolphins and the different regimes of knowledge produced by them; environments and their effects on relations between humans and dolphins; noninclusive ethical theories; and a lack of theorising about mutual effects. Keywords: dolphin; Dolphin-Assisted Therapy; animal geographies; proxemics; mutualism; animal-assisted therapy; interspecies ethics C. Scott Taylor, BSocSc (Hons); PhD Queensland, Australia _______________________________________________ MARMAM mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam
