In December 2024, Motlatsi Khosi, Kala Bopape, and I organized an international animal ethics conference, Humans and Other Animals: Rattling the Paradigm, with the aim of creating a space where students and early career practitioners, particularly from the Global South, could meet and explore the complex relationship between humans and other animals.
After the conclusion of the conference, the presenters were invited to work their presentations into publishable papers. The result is a special issue of the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics, which has just been published and is available here. It contains the following articles, all of which are open access:
- Rainer Ebert, Motlatsi Khosi & Kala Bopape: Editorial: Humans and Other Animals: Rattling the Paradigm
- Jubayer Hossain: Culture and Spirituality as Pathways for Promoting Animal Ethics: A Study of the Principles of Hinduism and Buddhism in Bengal
- Terkura Thomas Mchia: Interrogating the Ontologies of Animal Totems (Dogs and the Green Snake) in Tiv Culture: A Pathway for African Animal Ethics
- Luvuyo Bomela: Illegal dog-fighting and animal crime prevention in South Africa: A desktop study of the Cape of Good Hope SPCA’s anti-dog-fighting community outreach programme in Cape Town
- Sarah Israth & Syed Arman Hossain: Social Media and the Shifting Dynamics of Human-Animal Relationships in Dhaka
- Mary Shannon Johnstone: Roadside Zoo: Challenging Anthropocentrism Through Photography
- Morufu Omigbule & Sherifdeen Olafimihan: The Disposability of Ritual Animals: Raising the Animal Rights Question around Yoruba Rituals
Short biographies of the authors as well as the conference program are available at sites.google.com/view/humansandotheranimals and here.
Many thanks to the Culture and Animals Foundation (CAF) and the Animals and Society Institute, without whose generous support the conference and hence this special issue would not have been possible. If you are a scholar or artist interested in the human–animal relationship, I encourage you to consider applying for one of the CAF’s annual grants, which are open to applicants from all countries.
I hope you will enjoy reading through this very special issue of the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics!
Rainer Ebert 