It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken: Taking Care of a Small Farm In Ontario

Abstract

Small-scale animal agriculture is a fruitful site for examining the relationships among humans, animals, and the land. This thesis endeavours to show what practices are constitutive of these relationships and, moreover, that establishing the “right” relationships between them are ethical concerns with both analytical and ecological import. Basing myself on fieldwork consisting of participant observation, informal interviews, and filmmaking on a small farm in Ontario, I argue that: dominion is the position from which the farm is cared for; that maintaining the farm is both reproductive and generative of the ethical subject; and that the indeterminacies involved in this maintenance might be resolved or unresolved depending on one’s position in regard to the local farming tradition.