Animal Sanctuaries

Animal sanctuaries are human-created spaces for the protection and care of animals rescued from conditions of violence, exploitation, neglect, or abuse by other humans. The contemporary institution of the animal sanctuary originated with the first sanctuaries established in the United States by animal protection activists in the early 1980s. Since then, activists have established hundreds more throughout the world. Individual sanctuaries typically focus their efforts on specific kinds of animals corresponding to the ways in which they are used or commodified by humans, such as farmed animals, companion animals, or wild animals used in entertainment and biomedical research, although others may focus on a specific species of animal, such as chimpanzees, horses, wolves, or elephants. Animal sanctuaries are a novel subject of ethnographic inquiry in anthropology and related social sciences, so “sanctuary studies” is currently a nascent but growing topical area of research. Despite the relatively small body of literature focused on animal sanctuaries, anthropologists and other social scientists investigating sanctuaries and related endeavors, such as wildlife rehabilitation centers, have already provided valuable insights into why and how humans have chosen to care for rescued or endangered animals and the new kinds of institutions and political ecological relationships that are generated by these practices, highlighting the varied and, at times, conflicting ideas about care, ethics, value, species difference, and animal subjectivity and agency that inform sanctuary work. This pioneering literature forms a rich foundation for future research.