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To outline the multiple ways in which animals are inserted into sporting practices, outline historical and contemporary approaches to studying human–animal sporting practices, and advocate for the centering of sociological problems in human–animal research in sporting contexts and cultures and for considering such problems in relation to environmental issues.

In the first part of the chapter, conceptual differentiation of animals in the animal–sport complex is presented. Subsequently, studies of interspecies sport are reviewed with reference to the “animal turn” in the literature. In the second part, a critique is presented relating to: (1) the privileging of companion animals, especially dogs and horses, which overlooks the multiple ways animals are integrated into (multispecies) sport; (2) micro-sociological and insider ethnographies of companionship displacing of sociological problems in favor of relationship perspectives; and (3) the environment as absent from analysis. The conclusion offers implications for understanding multispecies sport and the environment.

I chart a general shift in emphasis and focus from animals as an “absent presence” in pursuit of sociological knowledge toward a clearly defined focus on interspecies sport as a field of research characterized by investigations of relationships with companion animals through the “animal turn.”

The focus on companion species means other animals (i.e., noncompanions) are understudied, big picture sociological questions are often sidelined, environmental concerns marginalized, and sociological understanding of the environment more generally is either ignored or reduced to a conduit of human–animal interactions.

This study aims to investigate the correlations between latent variables embedded into three clusters (equine agritourism, therapeutic horse riding and equine sports) and entrepreneurial intentions of people interested to invest in equestrian sector.

The authors propose a conceptual framework focused on three latent variables that influence the interest of horse enthusiasts to embrace an entrepreneurial career. Statistical analyses via Pearson’s chi-square tests, analysis of variance (statistical formula used to compare variances across the means (or average) of different groups) and regression analysis have been performed to validate our assumptions.

Findings reveal a high level of interest of from horse enthusiasts to opt for an entrepreneurial career, as funding opportunities in this sector are growing due to European union and national funding available for this endeavour.

Very limited research studies have been explored the entrepreneurial intentions in equine industry. This study proves that sports and therapeutic activities influence to the greatest extent, the entrepreneurial intention in the equestrian sector.

This paper explores the life cycle of a captive bred lion in South Africa, focusing on the distinction between captive bred and wild individuals. Lions are bred in captive breeding facilities across the country to provide cubs and teenagers for ecotourism, and following this, hunting “trophies.” A distinction is made between the “wild” and “captive” lion, a categorization that I argue legitimizes violent and unethical treatment toward those bred specifically to be cuddled and killed. This analysis explores how the lion is remade or modified from wild to commodity and the repercussions this has had throughout the wildlife security assemblage.

The paper is based on ethnographic research carried out in South Africa during 2016 that involved conducting informal and semi-structured interviews with activists, breeders, wildlife security personnel and conservationists drawing out the interspecies relations that influenced the encounters between humans and wildlife.

Dominant conservation narratives continue to understand and interpret wildlife solely as a commodity or profitable resource, which has led to the normalization of unethical and cruel practices that implicate wildlife in their own security and sustenance through their role in ecotourism, hunting and more recently, the lion bone trade. Captive bred lions are treated as products that undergo a series of translations through which they are exposed to violence and exploitation operationalized through practices linked to conservation and ecotourism.

Through posthuman thinking, this paper contributes to debates on the interspecies dimensions of politics through challenging the dominant assumptions that govern conservation and the interspecies encounter.

To discuss our experiences producing a short documentary film focused on a sport-related environmental issue – and reflect on our attempts throughout production to “do” what we are calling “Environmental Sports Journalism” (ESJ).

Following ESJ principles, and in collaboration with Vancouver-based filmmakers, we produced a short documentary entitled, Mount Gariwang: An Olympic Casualty, about the destruction of an ancient forest for a sport mega-event (i.e., the PyeongChang Olympics). We discuss and reflect on our approach and methods for producing the documentary, and identify key issues faced throughout the process – as we attempted to negotiate the intricacies of documentary work and collaboration between academics and media producers, while attending to a set of principles for producing “Environmental Sports Journalism.”

We reflect on strategies used and challenges faced when attempting to produce a short film on a sport-related environmental issue. We note our attempt to: (1) include interview segments with definitions of key concepts and how they are relevant to power relations around sport mega-events; (2) value the lives and voices of local and marginalized people – while noting problems we faced providing adequate context; (3) focus on problems of nonhumans as well as humans – and the challenges we faced including nonhuman issues and perspectives, challenges that reflected the limits of our chosen data collection and reporting techniques; (4) offer some form of hope and identify alternatives around an event that we were critical of; and (5) highlight the complexities of prioritizing social and environmental justice (i.e., taking a side) while attempting to offer what we might think of as “balanced” coverage.

This chapter illuminated barriers we faced in our attempts to produce “excellent” coverage, and in going from media critics to critical media producers. Our hope is to inspire reflection on what is possible around the production of “excellent” sport-related environmental journalism, and to contribute to thinking about the pursuit of public sociology through media.

Although involvement in documentary-making as academics is not new, our attempt to apply principles associated with environmental journalism to the study of sport-related environmental and social problems is in some ways novel, and therefore our reflections on our experiences are also in some ways novel.

Society’s relations to animals pose possible blind spots in sociological theory that may be revealed and illuminated by studying systems of human‐animal interaction. By investigating whether and how animals enter into key processes that shape self and society we may determine the ways in which animals might be included in the core subject matter of sociology. An earlier discussion of the role of animals in sociology initiated by Weber is reviewed. Issues that debate raised about the extent of linguistically‐mediated human‐animal intersubjectivity are updated. It is in principle difficult to rule out animal languages, and some animals have acquired human language. But sociology may follow a more fecund empirical route by examining successful human‐animal performances produced by enduring interspecies relationships. Following this route, this paper specifically argues that the human self should be seen to take root in the available mixed species community. To show this, the work of G.H. Mead is revisited and corrected in light of recent work on early human development, and conceptual analyses of language, the body, and the self. The formation of the self is not dependent on only linguistic exchanges; a nonverbal nonhuman other can contribute to the self‐reflective sense of being a human self. Based on this reasoning, examples of studies of humans with wild and domestic animals illustrate the potential for a human‐animal sociology.

Since the establishment of ecocriticism, the traditional Western dualistic categories of spaces and places have become objects of increasing pluralistic refigurations in light of the challenges posed by current environmental crises. More and more scholars have discussed how rooted dichotomies, including country/city and nature/culture, should be reconsidered for better acknowledging the sense of connectedness occurring between humans and the surrounding nonhuman world. Consequences of this approach in literary and cultural studies have been pivotal: new environmentally oriented hermeneutic practices have developed, which allow for reevaluating phenomena linked to old-fashioned understandings of the natural world. Among them, the pastoral, traditionally conceived as the contrast between the rural and the urban, has been reexamined by ecocritics through new concepts, starting from the “post-pastoral” (Gifford, 1999). By stressing the investigation of the relationship between the human and the environment in pastoral representations, the post-pastoral has become a favorable tool (Gifford, 2006) for enhancing ethical considerations in response to the challenges posed by the Anthropocene.

This transdisciplinary chapter is also inspired by “geocriticism,” which reflects on how literary narratives influence spatial practices in the real, material world. Specifically, this chapter discusses how the neologism “cittagna” – blending the Italian terms città (city) and campagna (country) – which first appeared in Stefano Benni's novel Prendiluna (2017), allows critics to reflect on the development of similar combinatory processes in contemporary urban spaces. When considering this process in parallel with the notion of post-pastoral, “cittagna,” becomes a useful concept for observing how, in current cityscapes, the emergence of new spaces and places negotiates the conventional country/city split, while highlighting the sense of intertwining between the two terms. Hence, attention is placed on how two possible examples of rising “cittagnas” – roof gardens and off-leash dog parks – can be read as evidence of the increasing attentiveness toward issues of human-nonhuman relationality in today's urbanism, which becomes a hope on the horizon for facing current environmental concerns.