The Human-Animal Relationship as a Subject of Citizenship Education

The aim of this book is to explore the human-animal relationship as a new subject of political education and to make it accessible for critical reflection. A guiding thesis is that society’s relationship with animals is both political and problematic, as it is shaped by power structures and rarely recognized as an issue due to its status as an unexamined norm. To explore this topic, the model of didactic reconstruction is employed. A problem-centered interview study is used to reconstruct students’ everyday conceptions of animals, humans, and their (political) relationship. These conceptions are then compared with academic perspectives—particularly from Human-Animal Studies—in order to uncover contradictions and taken-for-granted assumptions, and to identify exemplary, didactically fruitful approaches to the subject. The author concludes that future engagement with the human-animal relationship in the context of political education should be critically oriented toward power structures. This would enable reflective and multi-perspective political judgment on the human-animal relationship—making the invisible visible.