Citation

Davis DL, Maurstad A, Dean S. Med. Anthropol. Q. 2014; 29(3): 298-315.

Affiliation

Department of Anthropology, University of South Dakota. ddavis@usd.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, American Anthropological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/maq.12162

PMID

25348804

Abstract

Pink t-shirts that proclaim "My horse is my therapist" are for sale in a wide variety of horse-sport catalogues. Literature on the healing power of human-nonhuman animal encounters and the practice of a variety of animal-assisted therapy programs, such as hippotherapy and equine-facilitated therapy, show dramatic growth over the last 30 years. Less attention is paid to the role that horse-human interactions may play in more popular accountings of well-being and impairment among a sample of everyday riders. Analysis of 50 lifecycle narratives, collected from accomplished but nonprofessional equestriennes, demonstrates the complex and ambiguous ways in which women draw from their experience of human-horse relationships as they challenge and transgress the borderlands between pleasure and impairment. Combining the perspectives of multispecies ethnography and medical anthropology that engages the complexities of well-being, analysis is informed by and contributes to recent controversies concerning the medicalization of normality and pleasure in DSM 5. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Language: en