Human-animal connections: Expanding and cross-worlding relational approaches to resilience

Relationships are a major theme within resilience research. Little attention, however, has been given to human-animal relationships – except in the narrow and anthropocentric sense of how they support human wellbeing and help to reduce human trauma. This interdisciplinary article takes a completely different approach. Its core aim is to demonstrate that human-animal relationships are significant for how we think about resilience – and about relationality itself. Ultimately, it underscores the importance of analysing resilience and relationships within multispecies and posthumanist frameworks that respect and reflect crucial connectivities, entanglements and mutualities between human and more-than-human worlds (cross-worlding). The article uses two original case studies to develop its core arguments. The first focuses on the ongoing war in Ukraine and human relationships with companion animals. The second centres on the work of the Mama Tembos in northern Kenya and human relations with wild animals (elephants).