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Consumer Behavior.

This case is suitable to be used in advanced undergraduate and MBA/MSc level.

This case illustrates an animal shelter’s challenge pertaining to lack of awareness among individuals with regard to animal adoption and proper treatment toward animals. Brian Teoh, the founder of a local animal shelter “We Care For You (WCFY),” was really worried by observing the situation of the animals’ vulnerability as well as pet owners’ irresponsible behavior. Overpopulation in animal shelters is a common problem. The space of the shelter is limited and not enough to take more animals to take care unless existing animals are being adopted by the pet owners. Adoption is a way to give room for other animals to be taken by animal shelters. However, most of the individuals prefer to buy rather to adopt. Moreover, potential adopters are usually selective of the animal they intend to adopt by having criteria preferences for adoption. Brian was thinking how to make people aware about the animal right and proper treatment with animals and also how to make individuals aware about the necessity to adopt rather than purchasing them. He was drowned in deep thought. Although the situation seemed not so promising, he felt determined to work on this awareness-building issue.

This objective of this case is to:

• highlight the challenges faced by the animal shelters in order to make individuals aware of the importance of adopting animals rather than purchasing them from shops;

• emphasize the importance of using social media in disseminating information nationwide; and

• the necessity to educate people about the right treatment toward animals.

highlight the challenges faced by the animal shelters in order to make individuals aware of the importance of adopting animals rather than purchasing them from shops;

emphasize the importance of using social media in disseminating information nationwide; and

the necessity to educate people about the right treatment toward animals.

National Animal Health Week, usually the last week in May, was instituted by presidential proclamation in 1984. (The related observances Be Kind to Animals Week, sponsored by the American Humane Association, and National Pet Week, sponsored by the Auxiliary to the American Veterinary Medical Association, are usually celebrated during the first full week in May.)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a critical posthumanist orientation to social work as an approach to address the impediments to care experienced by interspecies families. Secondly, it challenges the anthropocentric assumptions that underpin this exclusion of nonhuman family members in human services disciplines such as social work.

This article presents primary data from a qualitative study into social work and other human services practice in the family violence and homelessness sectors in the state of Victoria, Australia.

Social workers undertook companion animal-inclusive practice to counter vulnerability to interspecies families caused by gender- and species-based violence, and by homelessness. Gender- and species-based violence was exacerbated by a lack of refuge options, and contributed to women considering their companion animals to be their children. The vulnerability that homelessness brought upon interspecies families was amplified by stigma within and external to social work and related professions, and the impediment that experiences of homelessness had on being able to provide care for their nonhuman family members. These factors shaped practice with interspecies families. Scope for future practice was also identified.

The research findings can be used to inform policy change that includes consideration of nonhuman family members, as well as critical posthuman program design in social work education.

Companion animal-inclusive practice with interspecies families in social work is an under researched area, and there is little empirical data available on the nature of this work in Australia. This paper addresses this gap by centring social workers' own accounts of practice. This paper has scope to contribute to education in social work and other welfare fields, with the potential to empower students to challenge assumptions about social work being solely focused on human-centred concerns.

Much evidence suggests that animals can serve as therapeutic tools for those working with vulnerable individuals. This exploratory study analysed the accounts of staff and offenders involved in a UK prison-based animal programme. The purpose of this paper was to explore the perceived impact of such a programme with male offenders.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three service users and five staff members. Participants were drawn from a special unit in a category B prison which housed an animal centre.

A thematic analysis identified four salient themes: a sense of responsibility, building trust, enhanced communication, and impact on mood and behaviour. Findings revealed that offenders seemed to gain particular benefit from interacting with the two Labrador dogs which were present on the wing.

The study highlights the therapeutic potential of the presence of animals in prisons. Their implications of this for forensic practice are discussed.

This paper offers an important contribution to the sparse literature about prison-based animal programmes in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief history of the Animal Welfare Act and suggest that librarians and other information professionals can play an active role in helping researchers to comply with the Act.

The author attended workshops directed towards Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) and Biomedical Researchers. As a result of attending these workshops, the author recognized the potential for librarians and information specialists to assist researchers in performing literature searches, a required component of research protocols. The purpose of the literature search is to seek alternatives to the use of animals in experiments and to ensure that the researchers are not unnecessarily duplicating previous experiments. A research guide consisting of proprietary databases, free databases, books, web sites, and tutorials facilitates the literature review mandated by the Act.

While serving on his institution's Animal Care and Use Committee, the author was charged with reviewing research protocols involving the use of live, vertebrate animals. These protocols call for a literature review to determine if there are acceptable alternatives to the use of animals, or to methods that cause pain and distress to the animals. The author found that the majority of the searches that were performed needed improvement, with many failing to meet the minimum requirements of the Animal Welfare Act. Through his participation in relevant workshops, the author also found that many researchers were unaware of the requirements of this search for alternatives, and that they lacked familiarity with the resources available to them.

The author performed a search in Library and Information Science Abstracts and Library/Information Sciences & Technology Abstracts using the keywords “alternatives” and “animals” and received only four relevant results, dated 1990, 2001, 2004, and 2007.

This paper introduces more-than-human perspective in information behaviour and information experience studies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understandings of the concept of multispecies families by exploring their significant dimensions related to information phenomena involving multiple contexts, situations, spaces, actors, species, and activities.

Based on previous research in human information behaviour and human-animal studies, our ideas around information experience of multispecies families are developed conceptually. The paper builds both on previous empirical findings about human information behaviour and the new domain of information experience.

The paper proposes a holistic approach both to information phenomena in everyday living with companion animals including embodied, affective, cognitive, social, digital, and objectual information that shapes pet care and management practices, and to the context of study, including work, domestic, and leisure aspects of multispecies family.

This study broadens our understanding of information phenomena in multispecies families, and so contributes to the field of information experience. It also provides insights for animal welfare scientists to help them understand the information behaviour of humans who are responsible for keeping and caring for animals.

Bioethics and environmental ethics have been largely separated, in principle. However, the two types of ethics do overlap when dealing with significant issues such as human embryos, animal experimentation, and responsibility to future generations. In this paper, the possibility of synthesizing these two ethics through the concept of care is considered. Accordingly, the range of the object of the concept of care is similarly broadened. Moreover, after considering the serious defects of care-based theory, a care-based position, which regards human rights or their substitute as a complement to care, is advanced. This position can be said to be a Japanese approach to bioethics.

The purpose of this paper is to map the field of sociological animal studies through some examples of critical and mainstream approaches and considers their relation to advocacy. It makes the argument that while all these initiatives have made important contributions to the project of “animalising sociology” and suggest a need for change in species relations, the link between analysis and political strategy is uncertain.

The paper develops its argument by using secondary sources, reviewing sociological positions and offering illustrations of possible interventions.

Sociological interventions in the field of animal studies have been informed by critical perspectives, such as feminism and Marxism, or taken less critical routes deploying actor-network theory and symbolic interactionism. Whilst those working in critical traditions may appear to have a more certain political agenda, an analysis of “how things are” does not always lead to a clear position on “what is to be done” in terms of social movement agendas or policy intervention. In addition, concepts deployed in advocacy such as “liberation”, “quality of life” or “care” are problematic when applied beyond the human. Despite this, there are possibilities for coalition and solidarity around certain claims for change.

If the central argument of the paper were taken seriously by general sociologists, then sociology may be more open to “animal studies”. In implications for exisitng sociological animal studies scholarship is to trouble some of the certainties around advocacy.

If the central argument of the paper were taken seriously by advocacy groups, then the hiatus between “welfarism” and “liberation” might be overcome.

There have been recent attempts to map the field of scholarship in animal studies, but surprisingly little consideration of how different emergent positions inform questions of advocacy and the possibilities for political intervention.

In recent decades, our knowledge and perceptions of animals have changed considerably. An increasing number of scholars are interested in exploring animals and their roles in the context of tourism, hospitality and leisure. Recent studies have covered both practical and theoretical aspects of this topic, sometimes including considerations of animal ethics. This chapter argues that it is time to reflect on the research ethics and methodological implications of such emerging perspectives. The chapter presents a literature review addressing the shift in tourism, hospitality and leisure studies from a human/animal dualism and anthropocentrism focus to a recognition and inclusion of animals' perspectives. It develops a set of guidelines for a methodology intended to underpin research about and involving animals, inspired by the ecofeminist care tradition and elaborated on in light of the reviewed literature and the author's personal experience. Three main approaches are identified: fictional, multispecies ethnography, and multispecies technology-based approaches.