| Intuitively,"animal welfare" is an ethical statement referring to people’s moral concerns on animals.However,since 1926,"animal welfare" was officially put forward,in the form of scientific terms in the United Kingdom,it has been defined as a scientific attribute strictly different from pure ethical terms such as "animal protection" and "animal rights".It never against the animal using,but it is committed to prevent animals basing on scientific methods from unnecessary pain and suffering during the interaction between human and animals in order to guarantee their good quality of life.It is true that the thought of "anti-cruelty to animals" in the philosophy and religion since ancient Greece was an important basis for the birth of "animal welfare".However,"animalwelfare" was formally proposed as a scientific term because of the conflict between science’s development and people’s moral concerns about animals on the issue of "animal experiments" at the end of the nineteenth century.Since the beginning of modern science,people have a deeper understanding of animal life,form,attributes,and needs,which has laid the foundation of epistemology and methodology for the emergence of animal welfare science.Especially Darwin’s theory of evolution,on the one hand the "human-animal homology" broke the boundary of "the essential difference between humans and animals",on the other hand,it opened the "non-invasive" animal research methods of psychology and ethology.These developed scientific thoughts and methods have provided new evidence for people to care more about animals,and also germinated more humane methods of studying animals in the scientific field.However,the animal protection cause absorbed the ideas of evolution,and further developed into radical animal rights movement whichproposed antivivisection.In the 19th century,the scientific development of the United Kingdom was behind France and Germany because of the anti-vivisection movement.In order to cope with the impact of the "anti-vivisection" on the British scientific field,a group of scientists led by Professor Charles Hume in the United Kingdom in 1926 proposed the scientific term "animal welfare",and in the same year The University Federation of Animal Welfare(UFAW)was established.The purpose of UFAW is to construct a scientific development picture which could embrace the public’s moral concerns to animals,while striving for more experimental autonomy for scientists.In the early days of UFAW’s establishment,in order to consolidate the legitimacy of the organization,the members avoided the impact of controversy between scientists and animal protectors.Inaddition,they improved the methods of trapping and slaughtering of hares and pigs through promoting the introduction of the Slaughter Act of 1933.These achievements and the concept of "animal welfare" have been recognized by both the scientific field and animal protect organizations.Based on early work,in 1942,UFAW formally launched research plan on "the welfare of experimental animals" with the opportunity that scientific community focused on the quality of experimental animals due to biological standardization rules.By 1959,UFAW improved experimental animals’ welfare through advance their breeding environment and management as well as humane operations during the experiment process,and they put forward the important experimental animal welfare 3Rs principles.From the perspective of Actor-Network Theory,the research on experimental animal welfare is a heterogeneous network constructed mainly by UFAW with multiple other scientists from different disciplines and experimental animals.At this stage,UFAW used translation strategy——good science requires good welfare of animals——enroll and motivate the s cientists into the network.From 1960s to 1980s,the controversy over animal problems in intensive farming led scientists to focus their research on farm animals’ welfare.Mandated by the British government,scientists formed the Brambell Commission to investigate the technology of animal welfare in livestock systems and provide scientific advice for improving farm animals’welfare.At this stage,scientists from the Brambell Commission are key actors,and they included more stakeholders,such as producers,consumers,and animal protection organizations,into the "actor-network" of animal welfare research.The committee takes"protecting animal welfare can promote animal production and food safety" as an important translation strategy,and uses the four-step translation path of promblematization,intrestement,Enrolment,and mobilization to coordinate the interests and goals among multiple actors,and finally forms a more general animal welfare research network based on the "Brambles Report" and the "five freedoms" principle of farm animal welfare.After the Bramble Report was published in 1965,research on animal welfare has received substantial support from the government and scientific fields.On this basis,in the 1990s,animal welfare science gradually completed its "institutionalization" and developed into an independent systematic science.First,under the leadership of authoritative scientists such as Fraser and Broom,a unified scientific definition,value implication,research scope and knowledge system of animal welfare have been confirmed.Animal welfare has become a scientific "knowledge normative body" which was led by scientific research programmes,and this means animal welfare science got its "meta paradigm".Second,since 1986,animal welfare has been included in the university education system as a professional curriculum.By the 1990s,professional academic journals such as Animal Welfare and Applied Animal Behavior Science emerged as the times require.In addition to UFAW,international Scientific communities such as the Society for Animal Behavior(ISAE),EurSafe,and other animal welfare missions have begun to appear frequently,which reflects that animal welfare science has been recognized by academic organizations,social fields,and even political institutions.Which determines its "independent identity" by "institutionalization",that is,the"sociological paradigm" of animal welfare science.Third,along with the transdisciplinary research method of natural sciences and social sciences reflected in more animal welfare research projects,the "structural paradigm" of animal welfare science has been clarified.Although these three types of paradigms belong to different categories,they are closely related to each other and present "comprehensive".Its connotation includes several basic aspects:"meta paradigm" provides theoretical promise to "sociology paradigm" through basic concepts of "animal welfare";"sociological paradigm" is a response to the above commitments,which is manifested by the successful results of the "meta paradigm" in specific scientific knowledge and its social organization;then,the characteristics of the science on which this success depends are reflected in the "construct paradigm" of this science;finally,"transdisciplinary",the nature of the "construction paradigm" Will provide practical materials for the basic concepts of "animal welfare".The enhancement of each type of paradigm depends on the competition of scientific forces in its field.The latter has promoted the development of this science and also met the requirements for its institutionalization.From the perspective of ANT,at this stage,scientists use various "translation" strategies to enroll more actors in the scientific and social fields,thereby gaining independence and legitimacy of animal welfare science,and then developing its theory and technology.This keeps the network of animal welfare science active and developmental,and constitutes a dynamic mechanism for the endless development of animal welfare.From this view,the development of animal welfare science is to solve the conflicts and contradictions between science and ethics in the interaction between humans and animals,which clearly reflects its applicability,comprehensive and interdisciplinary research spirit.Animal welfare is different from traditional science’s insistence on "value neutrality".From both theory and at the practice,it reflects an attitude of eliminating barriers and boundaries between science and value,nature and society,human and non-human.This feature is in line with the thought of scientific practical philosophy,especially Latour’s view of modern science,which fully reflects the characteristics of "hybrid ontology".Latour is the main representative of the philosophy of scientific practice,and his actornetwork theory has constituted the main methodological tool in the field of Science and Social Studies.Latour believes that modern science is the "quasi-objects" in the middle of the natural and social poles,and it is widely and profoundly integrated with the two sides.Therefore,to study modern science in a social science way,it is necessary to break through the original binary separation and explain the mechanism of its generation and development from the perspective of general symmetry.In modern society,when we form the concept of nature,on one hand,science use "translation" to conduct cognitive activities in the entangled state of nature and society,human beings and non-human beings,and on the other hand,science uses "purification" to form concept and theory which abandon social factors."Translation" and "purification",as two kinds of practice in modern world,play a role together:"purification" helps us form the purpose and conclusion of scientific understanding,and "translation" helps us reveal the historical process of scientific understanding.Therefore,when we look back at the history of science,we must be alert to the one-sided fallacy that"purification" brings to us,and return to the "translation" methodology to explore the constructive practice of science by multiple actors and their relationships.Only in-depth description of the history and development mechanism of science.Therefore,as a typical modern science,when we reveal animal welfare science’s dynamic mechanism,we must use the "translation" methodology of the actor network theory.On the basis of studying the history of the rise of animal welfare science,this paper chooses the "Actor Network Theory" as a method to further analyze the dynamic mechanism of its rise to help us understand the characteristics and essence of this science in more depth.It is necessary for us to extensively absorb international experience and further develop the transdisciplinary research on animal welfare science in a way that is more in line with its historical characteristics.Obviously,this is a topic with important theoretical value and practical significance. |
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