Returning to Wild?

Four Lions’ Journey from Circus to “Sanctuary”

Author(s)

  • Elizabeth Vander Meer Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9507

Abstract

Four lions, Skinny, Little, Sid and Sammy, have been subjected to dramatic changes as a result of a shifting political landscape. Each experienced a life of performance in a travelling French circus until authorities seized them in Belgium after the country enacted a ban on use of wild animals in circuses in 2014. The lions then spent almost two years in temporary rescue in Belgium awaiting transport to a permanent home at a UK zoo. These lions as individuals and their movement from circus to “sanctuary” with a conception that they are being returned to a more “wild life” are the subject of this multi-species, multi-sited ethnography. The temporary rescue context is considered in terms of animal viewing, lion-human interactions and particular physical spaces of captivity, while findings in circus and zoo sites serve as comparison and contrast.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

  • Elizabeth Vander Meer

    Elizabeth Vander Meer has a PhD in Environmental Policy and Ethics from Lancaster University in the UK, an Anthrozoology MA from the University of Exeter, and is now in the second year of a PhD in Anthrozoology at Exeter. Her research is multidisciplinary, drawing on anthropology, compassionate conservation, performance studies, philosophy and social theory. She combines interests in biodiversity conservation with human-animal studies, conducting multispecies ethnographic studies that focus on human-wildlife conflict and co-existence and captive wild animals in circuses, rescue centers and zoos.

Downloads

Published

2019-02-07

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2019): Special Issue: Decolonizing Human–Animal Studies

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Vander Meer, Elizabeth. 2019. “Returning to Wild? Four Lions’ Journey from Circus to ‘Sanctuary’”. Humanimalia 10 (2): 180-202. https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9507.