Understanding the development of animal welfare science – what can we learn from an actor-network-theory approach?

Since the Brambell Committee formulated the Five Freedoms, animal welfare received considerable attention in science and society. Animal welfare developed into an independent, but interdisciplinary science that combines natural and life sciences with philosophical assumptions. This development into an academic discipline has been influenced by non-scientific factors such as governmental laws and regulations and the ongoing public debates on animal welfare. A better understanding of the dynamic relation between scientific disciplines and the governmental and public dimensions can give us relevant information about the development of animal welfare science and changes in the human-animal relationship. However, due to its complexity, it is not easy to get grip on this development. In this paper, we aim to approach this challenge to get more grip on the development of animal welfare science by exploring whether the application of the Actor-Network-Theory can help. For this step, we have three arguments. First, Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) provides a frame that enables us to deal with the interaction between humans and animals. The ANT recognizes the distinction between ‘human actors’ and ‘non-human actants’, but allows to include animals in the theory. Second, the ANT provides a frame to analyse the complexity and dynamics of animal welfare science, for instance by relating it to developments in science and society. Third, ANT addresses science from a scope that includes social dimensions that seem relevant in the case of animal welfare science. The hypothesis is that elaborating these three aspects can contribute to a better understanding of the development of animal welfare science.