Encountering nonhuman charisma: caring for research pigs

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the pig as a research animal and consider how a species-specific focus adds complexity to the inextricability of care and harm in the laboratory. Laboratory animal science is an ethically charged space where care and killing are inseparable, yet little attention has been paid to how this paradox is complicated by the particular identities and relational qualities of different species. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with animal technicians (ATs) in two UK facilities, I trace the ways in which pig charisma is actively engineered and mobilised across their lives in research. Distributed practices position charisma as a tool for shaping the ‘ideal laboratory pig’ while further entangling care with harm. At the same time, the same traits that engender close interspecies intimacies with pigs and ATs also make their deaths ethically and emotionally fraught. By following charisma across breeding, laboratory care, and potential afterlives beyond the laboratory, I extend debates on cultures of care and more-than-human ethics, while prompting reflection on the porous boundaries between laboratory subject, farmed animal, and companion species.

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