This research seminar is co-organized by the teams of the LRA Laboratory of the National School of Architecture of Toulouse, the LaSUR Laboratory of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, the Biccoca University of Milan and the ETI Chair of IAE Paris Sorbonne Business School.
Join us for a monthly meeting with an expert to cross the eyes of researchers and the public on the theme of new proximities: https://www.youtube.com/@chaireeti9402/streams
Laurent Bègue-Shankland, professor at the University of Grenoble Alpes and honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France dissects the very ambivalent affective relationships that we have with animals, whether they are simple freshwater fish, laboratory rats or loyal pet doggies.
By drawing on the historical sources of the relationship between humans and animals, diverging from one civilization to another, he analyzes the cultural and psychological mechanisms that cause the needle to spin on the dial of empathy. The table is very well furnished, with a host of ethical questions on the menu, from the consumption of meat to the particular case of fish – the evil endowed with compassion –, the parallel between our interhuman and animal relationships, including violent ones, the mechanisms psychological aspects of animal abuse, the impact of great thinkers like Descartes, categorizations or even cultural influences.
Crowned with all these reflective ingredients, the main course remains the reproduction of Milgram’s famous experiment (on obedience to authority), this time transposed to a laboratory animal. A host of lessons and analyzes are drawn from it (gathered together in the book Face aux Animaux, nos emotions, nos prejudices, nos ambivalences, Odile Jacob, 2022), making it possible to establish the profiles and conditions in the context of which our empathy tends to wither.
