Accounting, accountability, and animal flourishing

Editors

  • Lisa Powell, Monash University
  • Eija Vinnari, Tampere University
  • Niina Ylönen, Tampere University

Description

This special issue examines how accounting and accountability frameworks can address animal flourishing, extending beyond traditional focuses on organisational profitability and human welfare. Drawing on the Capabilities Approach, which emphasises innate freedoms and opportunities for creatures to exercise agency through movement, autonomy, sensory experience, and social relations, the issue explores how accounting might enable these conditions across different animal contexts: domesticated animals in human-controlled spaces, liminal animals occupying boundaries between wild and domestic, and wild animals in conservation settings.

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Potential topics

  • How could accounting help shape conditions for animal flourishing?
  • How could we account for or enable the flourishing of individual animals, including those with preferences diverging from species-specific capabilities?
  • How would we account for animal flourishing and what forms would these accounts take?
  • Where could we find existing examples of accounts of flourishing beyond sanctuaries for rescued animals?
  • What opportunities exist for accounting and what does flourishing mean for animals across domestic, liminal, and wild spaces?
  • How could multispecies justice inform alternative forms of accounting that recognise agricultural animals beyond inputs and production units?
  • What accounting practices could address better justice for domesticated and liminal animals?
  • To what extent is flourishing possible for domesticated animals in asymmetrical dependency relationships or liminal animals considered pests?
  • How could accounting contribute to conservation efforts recognising individual wild animals alongside ecological collectives?
  • How could accounting navigate ethical tensions when working towards simultaneous flourishing of individual animals and ecological collectives?
  • What should organisations be accountable for in terms of animal flourishing?
  • To what extent are organisations accountable for animal flourishing and how could they demonstrate this accountability?
  • What collaborative opportunities exist between companies and other organisations regarding animal flourishing?
  • How could accountability approaches resist the human/nature binary and enhance understanding of reciprocal human-nonhuman relations?
  • What responsibilities do organisations have in supporting wild animal flourishing and what form could interventions take?