Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes

Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes seeks to ‘bring the animal in’ to the leisure studies domain and contribute to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, interwoven multispecies phenomenon.

The emerging multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies encourages researchers to move beyond narrow focus on human-centric practices and ways of being in the world, and to recognise that human and non-human beings are positioned within shared ecological, social, cultural and political spaces. With some exceptions, leisure studies has been slow to embrace the ‘animal turn’ and consider how leisure actions, experiences and landscapes are shaped through multispecies encounters between humans, other animals, birds and insects, plants and environment. This book begins to address this gap by presenting research that considers leisure as more-than-human experiences. The authors consider leisure with nonhuman others (e.g. dogs, horses), affecting those others (e.g. environmental concerns) and affected by the non-human (e.g. landscape, weather), by exploring the ‘contact zones’ between humans and other species. Thus, this work contributes to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a Special Issue of the Leisure Studies.

Paula Danby is currently a Student and Foundation Liaison Manager within the MDU and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was previously Lecturer in International Tourism Management at Queen Margaret University. Her research focuses on human-animal relations and experiences within leisure and tourism environments, particularly equestrian tourism. Her work explores human-animal interactions for mutual wellbeing.

Katherine Dashper is Reader and Director of Research Degrees at Leeds Beckett University. Her research applies a critical sociological lens to examine practices of work and leisure, particularly focusing on gender issues and interspecies encounters. Her multispecies research focuses mainly on human-horse interactions and she is author of Human-animal relationships in equestrian sport and leisure (Routledge, 2017).

Rebecca Finkel is Reader and School Head of Research at Queen Margaret University and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Main focus of research frames critical events studies within conceptualisations of social justice, equality and diversity, and cultural identity. New research explores the relational wellbeing dimensions of human-animal interactions in events, tourism, and leisure contexts.