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Animals : an open access journal from MDPI2025; 15(2); 194; doi: 10.3390/ani15020194

Remediating Cambridge: Human and Horse Co-Relationality in a Culture of Mis-Re-Presentation.

Abstract: This case study aims to problematise concepts of equine and human co-relational agency in the context of 'mis-re-presentations' in the Australian media of harms experienced by the Anglo Arab stallion, Cambridge, following his development of laminitis and his consequent confinement at a leading national Equestrian centre. Autoethnographic narrative is used to retrospectively and selectively narrate the evolving relationship between Cambridge and his owners, farrier, and treating veterinarians within the dominant housing and veterinary practices and welfare paradigms in equestrian culture of 1990's Australia. Structured author/owner autoethnographic vignettes are framed by newspaper and internet reportage to highlight a productive tension between the public mediation of the case, and what it means to be fully embodied in relationship with an equine companion agent within a particular, racialised, gendered, and biopoliticised location. Adopting a phenomenologically informed intersectional feminist ethics of care perspective, a counternarrative to the gendered, racialised and essentialising rights-based judgements about Cambridge's illness and eventual death that dominated the popular media is provided. Crucially, the autoethnographic vignettes are chosen to capture the corporeal reciprocity and rapport of forces that produced a co-created agentivity that characterised the horse's birth, training, and treatment. The embodied interspecies knowledge that informs the training and care of equines (and all animal species) is always historically situated within permeable, dynamic worlds of self and other that are fluid, contextual, and always in relation. It is suggested that the case of Cambridge illustrates how competing stakeholder investments in animal welfare can play out in the public mediation of particular cases in ways that exclude their historical and interspecies situatedness and serve to reinforce dominant ideologies governing human and animal relationships.
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Publication Date: 2025-01-13 PubMed ID: 39858194PubMed Central: PMC11759155DOI: 10.3390/ani15020194Google Scholar: Lookup
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Summary

This research summary has been generated with artificial intelligence and may contain errors and omissions. Refer to the original study to confirm details provided. Submit correction.

Overview

  • This study examines the complex relationship between a horse named Cambridge and humans, focusing on how media representations misrepresent the harm Cambridge experienced due to illness and confinement.
  • It highlights the contrast between public portrayals and the lived, embodied experiences of those caring for Cambridge, framed through an intersectional feminist ethics of care perspective.

Context and Purpose

  • The research addresses how Australian media misrepresented the harms suffered by Cambridge, an Anglo Arab stallion, after developing laminitis, a painful hoof disease.
  • The case unfolds within the equestrian culture of 1990s Australia, particularly examining dominant veterinary and welfare practices applied to horses.
  • The study problematizes concepts of co-relational agency, meaning the mutual influence and relationship between humans and horses.

Methodology: Autoethnographic Narrative

  • The author employs autoethnography, a qualitative research method where personal experience is used to explore wider cultural, social, and political meanings.
  • This approach includes retrospective and selective narration of the evolving relationships among Cambridge, his owners, farrier, and veterinarians.
  • These narratives are presented as structured vignettes, juxtaposed with media reports to show tensions between lived experience and public representation.

Theoretical Framework

  • The study draws on phenomenology, focusing on embodied, lived experience between humans and horses.
  • It adopts an intersectional feminist ethics of care, which considers multiple overlapping factors such as race, gender, and biopolitics in care relationships.
  • This framework critiques reductive, rights-based judgments prevalent in media reporting that often essentialize the horse’s experience and illness.

Key Findings and Arguments

  • There is a productive tension between how Cambridge’s case was publicly mediated (often in an essentialized, gendered, and racialized manner) and the complex, embodied interspecies relationships observed by those closest to him.
  • Autoethnographic vignettes reveal a reciprocal, co-created agency between Cambridge and humans, showing how his birth, training, illness, and treatment were entangled with embodied, interspecies knowledge and care.
  • The care practices and relationships are contextually and historically situated, highlighting the fluid, dynamic interaction between self and other, human and animal.
  • The study argues that dominant animal welfare narratives in the media often exclude this interspecies situatedness, reinforcing ideologies that govern and limit human-animal relationships.

Implications

  • The case illustrates how media and other public stakeholders’ differing investments in animal welfare can obscure the complexities of equine care and agency.
  • It calls for more nuanced, ethically informed representations that recognize interspecies co-agency and the embodied, contextual reality of care relationships.
  • This approach challenges simplistic categories of harm and welfare, advocating for more relational and situated understandings in animal-human studies and equestrian culture.

Cite This Article

APA
Brady FA, McDonell J. (2025). Remediating Cambridge: Human and Horse Co-Relationality in a Culture of Mis-Re-Presentation. Animals (Basel), 15(2), 194. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani15020194

Publication

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI
ISSN: 2076-2615
NlmUniqueID: 101635614
Country: Switzerland
Language: English
Volume: 15
Issue: 2
PII: 194

Researcher Affiliations

Brady, Francesca A
  • English Literary Studies, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia.
McDonell, Jennifer
  • English Literary Studies, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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