One Welfare World Conference 2023

Description

Reframing One Welfare: Ways of Knowing and Seeing how Human and Other-Than-Human Animals Fare with John Berger and Jean Mohr

John Berger writes in his 1972 book Ways of Seeing that “the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled”. As One Welfare and One Health emerge as transdisciplinary projects that seek to explore the interconnections between human, other-than-human-animal and environmental health, we find ourselves challenged to find correctives for the human gaze. This gaze is egocentric and anthropocentric rather than biocentric or ecocentric. It is a colonising force that has given rise to the domination system that has brought us to the brink of the sixth mass extinction, climate collapse and a plethora of inter-related planetary crises. This is the male gaze that John Berger’s life work has been warning us about. In this presentation, we explore the significance of Berger’s work on Ways of Seeing and how this informs how we know ourselves and our wider relationships with and exploitation of workers, animals and of nature itself. Drawing on his classic works, including Confabulations and What is an Animal?, and his photographic essays with the WHO photographer Jean Mohr on country doctors, immigrant workers and photographic practice, this presentation explores Berger’s relevance to One Welfare and to how we understand the meaning and significance of photographs. Berger’s essays and books on the photograph grapple with the political ambiguity of an image’s meaning in an image and emphasise how essential it is that photographs be accompanied by a narrative of some sort; one that helps us to relate to and make sense of the image.

Period	10 Oct 2023 → 11 Oct 2023
Event type	Conference
Location	Burgos, SpainShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International