Interspecies Modes of Relating

Abstract Relational perspectives in Human-Animal Studies remain generally within a consecutive order, following a comparative approach from which insights about the relationship are then deduced in a successive step. The Special Issue turns to relationality instead as a specifically inter-subjective dynamic in the formation and transition of collective and individualized identities and the analysis of social relations. The introduction argues for applying the concept of modes on a meta-analytical level to the study of relationality to address relationality’s challenges as an analytical lens. In response, the contributions to the Issue explore concrete forms of relations and their practical execution as a lens to explore how interspecies relations are structured, mediated, and complicated through lived encounters. The Special Issue thus advances relational approaches to the study of animal-human collectives by making processes of relating the primary focus of and gateway into the study of animal-human relations without undermining their polarities of independence and self-determination.