‘They treat you like an animal’: Navigating entanglements and productive exclusions within the human/animal boundary in organisations

Abstract

Work and organisations are considered to be predominantly human domains, and the labour of other animals in the service of human needs is often unrecognised and unvalued. The human/animal boundary reflects the anthropocentrism of understandings of work and to be treated ‘like an animal’ usually conjures up images of degradation and mistreatment. However, the human/animal boundary may sometimes provide space to create alternative ways of valuing work and the people and animals who perform it. Drawing on a multispecies ethnography of work between people and horses in forestry and trekking tourism in the UK, we explore the entanglements between humans and equines through these forms of interspecies work. We suggest that through focusing on the productive potential of some of the exclusions inherent in these entanglements that help sustain the human/animal boundary, to be treated ‘like an animal’ can be reconstituted as an aspiration for more humane working practices.

Introduction

The headline to an article on the exploitation of migrant workers on British farms begins with a quote from one such worker: ‘They treat you like an animal’ (Mellino et al., 2023). These words, spoken here to signify the degrading and abusive treatment workers experienced, enacts an ontological boundary that perpetuates all aspects of society, including organisations; that between humans and all other animals. Humans are positioned as fundamentally different to all other species of animal, and organisations are considered to be human entities and work a human practice. Other species clearly exist in organisational spaces, but their roles are deemed peripheral, inconsequential and less valuable than those of human workers. To claim that (human) workers are treated ‘like an animal’ is to reinforce this boundary, betraying the human exceptionalism that positions humans as different, better and more deserving of fair, decent and respectful working lives and revealing the ease with which animals are relegated to the status of less-than-worthy, legitimising mistreatment and exploitation.

Organisational theorists have long argued that boundaries are relational processes that are ‘inter-subjective, negotiated, and set through the decisions and actions of organisational actors’ (Heracleous, 2004: 99). They are recognised to be socially constructed and have material and symbolic dimensions that can be both restrictive and generative (Farchi et al., 2023). Boundaries are intrinsic to organisations and organising (Luhmann, 1995) and are not static but subject to constant construction and reconstruction (Hernes, 2004). However, the human/animal boundary is often taken to reflect some kind of ‘truth’ about the apparent distinctiveness of humans in comparison to all other species (Machan, 2002). Debates about animal sentience and agency (or apparent lack thereof) reflect this, and human manifestations of sentience and agency are taken as the gold standard against which all other species are measured (and often found lacking). This is apparently confirmed within the context of organisations, as it is often only the labour of humans which is deemed to hold value and be recognised as ‘work’ (Shaw, 2018). The study of work and organisations has been slow to acknowledge the multiple ways in which many different species of animals work with and for humans, rarely recognising animals as ‘workers’ and excluding them from serious consideration (Dashper, 2021; Labatut et al., 2016).

Yet animals are not only background extras in many organisations. They are important, if usually unacknowledged, organisational actors, albeit ones with significantly less power than even the most marginalised human workers (Dashper, 2020a; Wadham 2021). Once (nonhuman) animals are recognised as workers and organisational subjects, the human/animal boundary can be repositioned in the same ways as other organisational boundaries – as relational, contingent and open to change and contestation (Hernes, 2004). The human/animal boundary can thus be recognised as a mechanism of power wherein animals are positioned as marginal actors with low status and few rights, arguments which have been used to justify human abuse of other animals in settings such as research laboratories, factory farming and even pet keeping (Hobson-West, 2012).

However, while boundaries can create conditions for exclusion and separation, they can also be productive and foster collaboration within organisations, as different skills and contributions are highlighted (Farchi et al., 2023). The human/animal boundary has been deployed productively to support human interests and argue for universal human rights (Corbey, 2005). It can also work productively for some animals, leading to ethical exclusions that protect some species from human interference, as Ginn (2014) argued in his study of (human) gardeners trying to exclude slugs from their gardens without killing them. Boundaries are thus ambiguous and often paradoxical: they can exclude and protect; they can reinforce and challenge power relations. Within organisations where humans and nonhuman animals labour together, the boundary between human/animal itself is exposed as complex and paradoxical: animals are recognised as collaborative co-workers, yet differentiated as other to humans (Welden, 2023).

In this paper we examine the human/animal boundary within work between humans and horses in order to question whether the ambiguities and exclusions inherent in boundaries may sometimes lead to positive outcomes and protections for relatively powerless organisational actors, like horses. We draw on the concept of entanglement which recognises the messy mutuality between humans and other beings to ‘understand how outsides and insides are constantly constituted across different lifewords’ (Roberts, 2017b: 594). Inter- and intra-actions between humans and horses are deeply embodied, as the size and physical power of horses shape forms of interspecies communication that prioritise nonverbal elements and require both humans and horses to become attuned to the smallest signals of the other, seeming to necessitate entanglement and mutuality over difference and distinction (Dashper, 2017; Keaveney, 2008). In such contexts, it may seem that the boundary between human and horse dissolves through co-dependence and multispecies cooperation. However, drawing on fieldwork conducted with humans and horses working in forestry and trekking centres in the UK, we identify ways in which entanglements between humans and horses also generate exclusions that work to reinforce boundaries. We contend that some of these exclusions can be positive, creating space for alternative ways of working and valuing working practices and people/animals who do that work (Giraud, 2019). We argue that, in some circumstances, boundaries stemming from entanglements can be productive and protective for potentially vulnerable workers, like the horses in our study. Under these conditions, to be treated ‘like an animal’ may instead open up different ways of thinking about work and creating more humane working practices for the benefit of humans and other animals (Coulter, 2017).

Conceptualizing the human/animal boundary

Human relationships with other animals are complex, fraught and contradictory but they are underpinned by a common (human) notion that other animals are different to humans. For example, pets are valued almost as kin, loved and doted upon as family members, yet they are not quite family in the same way as humans are and are easily ostracised should they behave in a way deemed inappropriate by the human family, such as when a dog bites a person (Fox, 2006). Some species of wild animals, such as elephants, are valued by humans for their apparent intelligence and sociability, but easily vilified if that negatively impacts human lives, such as when elephants destroy crops by trampling as they travel to a different location (Barua, 2016). Human-animal relationships are underpinned by ambiguity. As Cassidy (2001: 194) argues, throughout all human-animal encounters, ‘anthropocentrism dominates, however, and seems perfectly capable of absorbing apparent contradictions without any threat to its mantra that human beings are different and better’.

The mantra of human exceptionalism that underpins the ontological boundary between humans and all other animals reflects contemporary Western attitudes to animals. In contrast, some indigenous worldviews are based around a more relational ontology that recognises humans as but one entity amongst many others including the land, the skies, waterways, animals, plants and spirits. No entity is more important than another, and therefore humans are no more or less important than anything else (Martin and Mirraboopa, 2003). Such indigenous perspectives recognise that humans are not separate from nonhuman animals; rather ‘They make us who we are, just as we make them who they are’ (Country et al., 2015: 275).

This perspective of interconnectedness sits at odds with the norms of Western thinking that perpetuate a clear divide between humans and other animals and beings, reflected in academic disciplines like sociology and anthropology that underpin the field of organisation studies (Russell, 2010). However, posthumanist insights, often inspired by the work of Donna Haraway amongst others, have challenged this ontological boundary between humans and ‘nature’ through positioning our relationships and interactions with other animals, plants and things as entanglements. Haraway’s (2003) argument that ‘Through their reaching into each other, through their prehensions or graspings, beings constitute each other and themselves. Beings do not pre-exist their relatings’ (p. 6) has much in common with many indigenous worldviews and represented a paradigmatic shift in thinking about our relations with other animals. Rather than a hard ontological boundary between humans and animals, focus shifted to the ways in which humans are entangled with other species and beings and in exploring the contact zones ‘where lines separating nature from culture have broken down, where encounters between homo sapiens and other beings generate mutual ecologies and coproduced niches’ (Kirksey and Helmreich, 2010: 546).

The concept of entanglement has been important in beginning to decentre human authority and recognise our embeddedness with the rest of the world and its other inhabitants. It also poses a challenge to the human/animal boundary by focusing on connections rather than differentiation (Dale and Latham, 2015). However, Giraud (2019) suggests that, although narratives of entanglement are important for helping us grasp our connections to other animals, plants and technology, they also help obscure things. She argues that focusing on entanglements can sometimes deflect from taking responsibility for the exclusions that are inevitable within entanglements and thus for taking action to try and create space for alternative ways of being to emerge. Giraud (2019) argues that it is important to ‘make exclusions visible, in order to foster meaningful forms of responsibility for and obligation toward them’ (p. 4) and to recognise that ‘purposeful acts of contesting particular relationships are sometimes necessary to create space for alternatives to emerge’ (p. 11). Therefore, it is important to recognise both our entanglements with other animals and the exclusions inherent in and generated by those entanglements in order to take responsibility for our actions and relationships and try to imagine and create more ethical practices.

Entanglements and boundaries are thus intimately connected, implicated within each other. Entanglements occur both within and across boundaries, and the exclusions inherent within entanglements help produce, reinforce and, sometimes, break down boundaries. In her study of a working-class neighbourhood in Mexico City, Roberts (2017b) illustrates the limitations of focusing on either boundaries or entanglements independently of the other. She shows how the concept of entanglement, through revealing uncertainty and contingency, allows us to see how boundaries can restrict our ability to know the world better. However, she also demonstrates how entanglement is unevenly distributed and thus ‘constitutes an extremely imperfect means for understanding unequal lifeworlds’ (p. 596). For many of the people in her study, boundaries – physical, symbolic and social (see Lamont and Molnár, 2002) – actually help protect their communities. Hirth (2021: 237, emphasis in original) recognises the multispecies aspects of these connections, arguing that ‘boundaries are indeed real but they are enacted or become determinate through agential intra-actions, the boundary work done by entangled species’. Entanglements and boundaries can therefore be understood as mutually constituting concepts and practices.

We draw on these insights in our discussion of the ways in which the human/animal boundary is enacted and performed in work between humans and horses. We employ a relational ontology to recognise the ways in which humans and horses are entangled within shared historical, ecological and social networks, implicated in the being and be-coming of each other (Maurstad et al., 2013). We cannot understand these multispecies working practices without recognising the entanglements between equine and human workers. However, we also recognise that although humans and horses are entangled entities and that neither is more important, numerous exclusions operate within these multispecies relationships which occur within the human-defined context of work. This positions humans as relatively powerful in relation to equine workers, and horses have to operate within human-defined rules and norms (Dashper, 2020b). Following Giraud (2019), it then becomes important that humans accept responsibility for the exclusions that stem from including horses as co-workers and that we use the exclusions inherent in our entanglements with horses (and potentially other animal workers) to try and create space for alternative, hopefully more humane, working practices to emerge. These exclusions may highlight various ways in which organisational boundaries can, in some contexts, be productive and protective for even the most vulnerable workers.

Research context and methods

Horses, humans and work

In this study we investigated the ways in which the human/animal boundary is enacted, and the entanglements and exclusions inherent therein, within the context of work between humans and horses. As critiqued above, the concept of the ‘human/animal boundary’ reveals the human exceptionalism of seeing humans as ontologically distinct from all other species, but it also reflects a further problematic aspect of this boundary in that all other species than humans are included under the category ‘animal’. This erases the specificity of species experiences, capacities and, importantly in this context, relations with humans. Species matter, and so our decision to focus on horses has implications for our argument and our methods.

Horses and humans have a long history of entanglement and exclusions. Archaeological evidence suggests that domestication of horses had taken place by approximately 6000 years ago, and there is evidence to suggest that humans were riding horses 5000 years ago (PBS News, 2023). The practices of domestication mean that horses have co-evolved with humans over generations, being selectively bred to suit human needs and requirements. Human societies also developed and were shaped through entanglements with horses as horse-riding enabled humans to travel far further and faster than they could have otherwise, and horses’ ability and willingness to pull heavy loads facilitated advances in agriculture and warfare. It is impossible to imagine what the history of human societies would have been like without entanglement with horses. Indeed, as Rossdale (1999) notes, although dogs may commonly be described as (hu)man’s best friend, horses can be described as ‘[hu]man’s most willing animal companion’ (p. 4).

Relationships between humans and horses underwent radical transformation from the mid-20th century as mechanisation of transportation, warfare and agriculture meant that the ‘uses’ for which horse labour was once essential became defunct in many societies. In countries like the UK, the context for our fieldwork, human-horse relationships shifted towards human practices of sport and leisure and with this came a feminisation of equestrianism and a lowering of the status of horses and the associated expertise of those humans who interact and work with them (Dashper, 2016). Recognition of horses’ labour as work also reduced, dismissed readily as the less socially valued practice of leisure, although the extent to which being ridden by humans can be described as leisure for horses is highly questionable (Dashper, 2020a). We argue that this is work for horses, even when it is leisure for humans. However, for clarity within this study we chose to focus on settings where humans and horses were working together in the human context of (paid) labour and organisational settings.

The embodied capacities and corporeality of horses (and humans) matter in working relationships and are informative about the practices of both entanglement and boundary making. Keaveney (2008: 444) describes horses as ‘gentle goliaths’ – they are big, heavy, strong, powerful, move quickly and have highly developed prey instincts which can make them unpredictable to be around and handle. This can make it dangerous for humans to interact closely with horses and necessitates awareness of bodily and sensory boundaries between species so that humans do not become complacent in their interactions and forget the physical power and sometimes erratic behaviours of horses. However, close interactions with horses – particularly but not only through riding – necessitates a mindful form of embodied knowing from both humans and horses (Dashper, 2017). As Birke et al. (2004: 175) explain, ‘riders seem to carry within their bodies subtle knowledge of how horses react – as do horses of human riders’, suggestive of close and intimate entanglements that hint at permeability of the human/horse boundary. However, as Game (2001) points out, although riding and being around horses involves attunement and mutuality between species, ‘to live relationally with horses is to know and respect their otherness and difference’ (p. 10). Work between humans and horses thus provides ample opportunity to explore how entanglements and boundaries co-constitute each other and can work productively to protect and support all workers.

Cases

We selected two cases in which humans and horses work closely together to accomplish tasks they could not do separately: forestry and trekking tourism. These settings were chosen as they offer examples of different forms of embodied encounter between human and equine worker. In forestry, humans and horses work together on the ground, communicating through the voice, reins and body language to accomplish a shared task (moving heavy logs). In trekking tourism, human workers and paying clients ride the horses, communicating primarily through body-to-body contact, as well as the voice. These differing embodied working encounters enabled focus on varying forms of human-horse work and entanglements in the UK. These two contexts also provided opportunity to explore some of the exclusions inherent in the human/horse boundary that might be productive in identifying avenues for creating more humane, meaningful and respectful working lives for all.

Our research was conducted in the UK, where there has been a move to reintroduce horses into forestry work, as they are often cheaper and more effective in logging and woodland management, reducing environmental damage and degradation (Bray et al., 2016; Magagnotti and Spinelli, 2011). Horses work individually, in pairs or small teams, in harnesses, communicating with human handlers through long reins, body language and the voice. This requires close human-horse collaboration to shift heavy logs in often dense and difficult to navigate woodland environments and relies upon the horses’ unique capacities to pull heavy loads with agility, and to understand and work with humans to achieve the tasks. In trekking tourism, our other research site, horses usually work with human handlers to provide a service (a trail ride) to a paying client. In this working relationship, horses are trained by and remain in communication with human co-workers (the guides) but are in close body-to-body contact, through riding, with a human customer with whom they often have no prior relationship and who may have limited experience or ability in riding and communicating with horses. In trekking tourism, the horse has to operate as a successful service provider at least partly independently from the human service worker (Dashper, 2020b). This requires horses to trust and respond to the human worker, but also carry the human client safely. In both cases horses are workers, as are humans, in a multispecies context in which the human/animal boundary is both very obvious (horses and humans perform different roles and tasks, for example) but also deeply entangled, as each relies on the other to perform those tasks.

Methods

We drew on the practice of multispecies ethnography to explore the contact zones between nature (represented in this study by the horses) and culture (represented by the humans; Kirksey and Helmreich, 2010) and include those normally excluded from consideration in organisation studies, including animals (Taylor and Fraser, 2019). Ogden et al. (2013: 16–17) argue that multispecies ethnography is ‘a mode of attunement to the power of nonhuman subjects to shape the world and to the ways in which the human becomes through relations with other beings’. Multispecies ethnography attempts to combine more traditional ethnographic methods with sensory approaches that may align better with the lived realities of other species, drawing on insight from ethology and animal behaviour as appropriate (Fijn and Kavesh, 2021). Madden (2014) encourages multispecies ethnographers to use their whole body and all their senses during fieldwork and to recognise that many animals have ‘a rich non-linguistic intersubjective exchange with humans’ (p. 282) that the ethnographer needs to engage with if we are to take seriously the task of trying to represent a practice or experience at least partly on the terms of the animal(s) participant(s). It is certainly the case that horses have developed a rich and complex form of non-linguistic communication with humans that enables nuanced communication across species boundaries, for example through riding (Dashper, 2017), which we attempted to engage with during our ethnographic fieldwork. As Coulter (2020: 39) argues, ‘Animals will communicate about their physical and psychological state in deliberate and unintentional ways, and humans have an ethical responsibility to not only be attuned to animals’ mode of communication, but to take what they are saying seriously’. We thus tried to pay attention to the horses we met and observed, and asked their human coworkers numerous questions about the horses’ work and non-work lives, their distinct personalities, preferences and experiences.

In practice, this involved observations, casual conversations and more formal interviews with human workers, interactions with horses whilst they were at rest or engaged in a task, participation as a ‘tourist’ at horse trekking centres, and analysis of related websites and social media sites. We tried to engage our bodies in the practice, deliberately focusing on smell, non-verbal sounds, movement, touch and, occasionally, taste. We drew on our lifelong experiences of engaging, living and working with horses, as well as a background in equine science, to try to identify equine responses and experiences. Combined with our experience as ethnographers, this provided a way of beginning to combine anthropological, sociological and ethological insights to begin to explore the contact zones between human and equine workers, the entanglements between them, and some of the exclusions that stem from these entanglements (Giraud, 2019; Hartigan, 2021).

Over the course of 1 year, we attended forestry displays and training days, went to numerous trekking centres as observers and sometimes customers, and noted observations in fieldnotes, photographs, videos and audio files. These multiple forms of data and subsequent analysis inevitably focus more on words – a uniquely human thing – as this is the currency of research and academia, and this in turn means that our insights focus more on the human than the animal side of this organisational boundary (Dashper, 2017; Taylor and Fraser, 2019). However, as Clancy et al. (2022) note, although this may seem to prioritise the human over the nonhuman, speaking to the humans who work and interact closely with nonhuman animals is an important way of focusing also on animals’ experiences as ‘interviews create a space to reflect on the affective and emotional relationships between humans and animals, and on the agency of how animals co-produce encounters’ (p. 6).

Analysis involved an iterative process of moving back and forth between the data and the concepts introduced in previous sections. We were concerned to explore how the entanglements inherent in the working practices between humans and horses at our field sites exposed some of the uncertainties and ambiguities inherent in the human/animal boundary that can restrict our ability to know and understand better the world of work and interspecies labour (Roberts, 2017b). We sought to identify ways in which some of the entanglements inherent in these practices also bring about exclusions which reinforce boundaries in productive ways that can open up possibilities for rethinking work and organisational practices to be more humane for all workers, human and animal (Coulter, 2017). In so doing, we question whether to be treated ‘like an animal’ may, in some circumstances, enable alternative forms of valuing work and workers to emerge from some of the exclusions inherent in entanglements implicit within the human/animal boundary (Giraud, 2019).

Findings: Entanglements and boundaries in human-horse work

The boundary between humans and animals is enacted within the working practices of both forestry and trekking tourism. Humans and horses have different embodied capabilities, perform different tasks, are positioned in different roles and therefore awarded different status, experience the work differently and respond in different species-specific ways. Humans and horses are entangled within these working practices. These entanglements can position horses as vulnerable to human dominance and exploitation within the human-defined contexts of work in trekking tourism and forestry, restricting their agency to exercise control and make decisions about things that affect them during their working lives (Dashper, 2020b; Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2016). Yet the exclusions inherent in the entanglements between humans and horses can also be productive in many ways as the positioning of horses as ‘different’ to humans also opens up space for developing more humane attitudes and working practices. We use four other organisational boundaries – work/hobby; in work/out of work; work/retirement and work/non-work – to explore how some of the entanglements between humans and horses in and through work can result in exclusions within those boundaries through which alternative ways of being, living and valuing work and workers may emerge (Giraud, 2019: 11).

Boundary one: Work/hobby

Notions of work are normative, underpinned by value judgements about what work is, who can be considered to be working, and what counts as credible and ‘real’ work. Working with animals is often seen as a vocation, or an extension of a passion or hobby, and thus may not be considered ‘real work’, contributing to the low status accorded to humans who work closely with other animals and the reluctance to recognise animals as workers.

Forestry is hard, heavy and often dirty work, for both horses and people. In our observations we could see the physical exertion of both, hear the occasional grunts and sighs as they worked with a particularly heavy log, smell the sweat which we could see glistening on human skin and dampening horsehair, hear the panting of human and equine worker when they paused for a short break after depositing each log in the appropriate place. Yet foresters told us that often their work was deemed to be unserious, ‘it’s not just playing around with ponies, you know!’ Many of our participants worked as foresters with machinery before getting involved with horses for this work, and they explained that the value of mechanised forestry was never questioned and was recognised as difficult, skilful and valuable work whereas horse-powered forestry was often dismissed as hobby-like. Although forestry with horses is a form of paid employment and is highly skilled it is still undervalued and not recognised by many as ‘real’ work. It is the entanglements with horses that lead to this type of work being readily dismissed as leisure, disavowing the hard work of both human and equine participants and undermining their status as valued workers.

However, although the forestry workers in our study were keen to ensure we acknowledged this labour as ‘real work’, it was clear that they really enjoyed it, and this seemed apparent for both humans and horses. Cochrane (2020: 49) argues that some work can be good for some animals as ‘it provides pleasure, including through affording opportunities to use and develop skills; it allows for the exercise of animals’ agency; and it provides a context in which animals can be esteemed as valuable workers and members of the communities in which they labour’. All these aspects were apparent in our observations of horses and humans working together in forestry.

For example, we attended a demonstration day in which a group of horse forestry teams were clearing logs at a country estate on a weekend day, partially as an attraction for visitors to watch. Although the physical task of clearing logs was not the primary purpose of this day, which was more about educating and entertaining the public, it was clear that some of the human-horse teams were much more interested in in the physical than public-facing tasks. One such case was Mick and his horse Rupert, who we observed moving with speed and dexterity through a heavily wooded area. After depositing a log almost the size of Rupert on the waiting pile, the pair stopped for a short break. Mick sat down on the log, catching his breath from the exertion. Rupert also took a few moments to steady his breathing, eyes fixed on Mick’s back. Rupert soon stopped panting and instead started pawing the ground, indicative of impatience and a desire to get moving again. Mick took a deep drink from his water bottle. Rupert’s patience ran out and he came up behind Mick and gave him a playful nudge with his nose, spilling water down Mick’s chin. Temporarily unbalanced, Mick laughed and turned round to scratch Rupert’s face. Rupert nudged him again and Mick got to his feet, stretched and picked up the reins. As they walked off to start work again, Rupert’s body language indicated alertness and a desire to get back to the task – his ears were pricked, his eyes were bright and he had a swing in his step. We suggest that this is indicative of Rupert’s enjoyment of the work, which provided him with opportunity to use and develop his embodied skills, working closely with his human partner with whom he clearly had a close relationship.

The entanglements between humans and horses are evident in this form of interspecies work where human and horse work in partnership, each contributing different skills and abilities to get the task done. But within these entangled interactions, exclusions emerge between what can be counted as ‘real’ work and what is dismissed as ‘playing around with ponies’ and thus not worthy of the same respect and status as forestry work entailing collaboration between humans and machinery, enacting the boundary between humans and horses and relegating this interspecies labour to the less prestigious category of a hobby.

Boundary two: In work/out of work

Work is seen as a moral imperative, and those who do not work (due to illness or long-term unemployment) are seen as unworthy and morally repugnant. The language of ‘scroungers’, ‘benefit cheats’ and ‘shirkers’ demonises whole groups of humans as abject, juxtaposed against ideas of the ‘worthy poor’ (Garthwaite, 2011; Roberts, 2017a). Humans who are unable to work, temporarily or permanently, are labelled as problematic, lazy and a burden on the rest of society, illustrating a lack of compassion towards people who, for whatever reason, are not working and thus seen to not be contributing anything of value.

This same logic is not applied to equine workers. Although those who prove to be unsuitable for the role (whether through temperament or physical limitations) are usually sold on, reflective of the relative power of human ‘owners’ who can treat equine workers as their property and similar to inanimate tools (Dashper, 2014), horses who cannot work through sickness or injury are often treated with a degree of care and compassion rarely afforded to human workers.

At one of the trekking centres, we were introduced to Bert, a 22-year-old horse who was grazing in a field. Bert had been at the trekking centre for 18 years and was introduced as a valued member of the team, beloved by staff and clients alike. However, Bert was described as currently ‘out of work’ due to lameness and was spending the summer resting. We saw him grazing contentedly in a field with some other horses, the sun on his back. The centre owner, Gail, spoke about plans to slowly rehabilitate him and bring him back into work with great care and compassion:

He’s had a couple of months off now because of the lameness. The vet said it’s just soft tissue damage but will take a bit longer to get better because he’s getting old. So, he’s out of work at the moment, and we just want to make sure he recovers properly. We want him to recover in a very gentle way so he doesn’t end up injuring himself again. We’ll take it slowly.

The phrase ‘out of work’ is widely used in the equestrian world to describe horses with illness or injury but, as with Bert, this phrase does not carry the same moral condemnation when applied to horses as it does for humans. Gail’s concern for Bert’s wellbeing and long-term recovery meant that she was in no hurry to rush his rehabilitation so that he could be brought back into work more quickly and thus once again be contributing to the economic functioning of the organisation. Care was prioritised over profit. In this example, the treatment of an ill/injured horse contrasts sharply with the treatment of incapacitated humans. Compassion is extended to the equine worker unable to work, suggesting that such compassion could/should be extended to all (including humans) unable to work. Here, the entanglements inherent in the human/horse boundary highlight the lack of compassion often shown to human workers in contemporary organisations. The otherness of horses excludes them from the moral condemnation that is applied to human workers who are ‘out of work’ for prolonged periods, and illustrates that more caring and humane approaches to the sick, elderly and otherwise marginalised are possible, challenging the vilifying discourse that positions humans who are ‘out of work’ as worthless, burdensome and morally reprehensible

Boundary three: Work/retirement

Inherent within the concept of ‘work’ is that one day that work will end – hopefully through retirement. For humans, retirement is seen as a detachment from the labour market and the associated public sphere. For some people, this is much enjoyed and can be an opportunity to do things they could not whilst working, due to limitations of time and money. For many, however, retirement can be a challenge as social connections are limited and a sense of purpose and usefulness may be lost, with men seemingly at higher risk of social isolation (Patulny, 2009). Planning and experience of retirement in relation to equine workers indicates how this can be handled with care and compassion to manage potential loss of purpose and connection that may otherwise lead to physical and mental decline. Forester James explained:

My old teacher said the worst thing you can ever do with a horse that’s worked all its life and gets too stiff in the joints is to turn it away in a paddock on its own. Because then they’ve lost all the social connection in what they do and they pine away to nothing.

James’ response was to carefully manage a horse’s retirement so that they still have some purpose and engagement:

If you’ve got an old horse you can maybe once a week just give it half an hour, just to do a light job, just to let them feel that they are still part of it all. It’s like with people when they retire from being a vital individual and suddenly they’re cut down to nothing. All their purpose is gone and they’re often dead within a year. Horses are creatures of routine and habit and once they’re into that routine of coming in, getting dressed up for the job and going to work, that’s what they do. They love it, provided it’s done properly and humanely.

In the context of the human/horse boundary the human has responsibility for the equine worker’s care and wellbeing. This does sometimes lead to abuses of this responsibility and mistreatment. However, as James expresses, it can also lead to a caring and thoughtful approach that recognises that work can become part of an individual’s sense of self and identity – including for animals. Humans and animals often thrive on routine and get purpose and meaning from their work. Any scaling back of that work – for humans and for animals – needs to be managed in a caring and compassionate way to try and reduce any sense of lost identity, purpose and social connection that may be detrimental to wellbeing.

The entangled nature of human-horse relationships and associated emotional ties may sometimes make it difficult for humans to recognise and accept when a horse is ready to retire. In such cases they may rely on the advice of others with knowledge of horses to guide them, as forester Jessica explained:

Suffolk punches are big horses so they might not be able to keep on working as long as some of the others. The first horse we had was fine until he was about 14. But then he suddenly didn’t want to work. We had the vet to look at him, see what was wrong, we asked everyone. In the end I was desperate, so we brought in a horse whisperer to see him and before she even got out of the car she saw him and said “he just wants to retire”. I don’t know how she knew, but she knew, and that that was that. We retired him straight away.

In this example, Jessica’s close relationship with this horse and reliance on him and his labour made it difficult for her to accept that he was ready for retirement, especially as, at 14, he was not particularly old. However, she was quick to accept the judgement of the horse whisperer and stepped the horse down from his job. He went on to live many years just grazing in the field, content in his ‘retirement’ and not seeking the occasional engagement with work activities that James recognised as important for his horse. In such ways, the humans in our study recognised the individuality of the horses they work with and care for.

In the cases we examined, humans were responsible for horses’ well-being, health, daily needs and work schedules. They were closely entangled in their lives and often reliant on the horses for their incomes. They are thus also responsible for managing the horses’ retirement and end of life care and this can be emotionally challenging and difficult to identify as horses cannot tell their human partner when they have had enough. Input from other equine professionals – be that vets or even horse whisperers – can help overcome these communicative and emotional difficulties inherent in the human/horse boundary and can lead to compassionate and caring responses that help manage retirement in ways that suit the individual. Humans are responsible for the horses in their care, and in many ways this excludes horses from making choices for themselves about their working lives and retirement. A horse cannot choose when to stop working, or plan for an easier, less active future in the ways that some humans can. However, this exclusion can be productive when the humans who have responsibility for horses’ care and well-being approach this with compassion, and demonstrates that planning and experiences of retirement may – probably should – be different for different individuals in order to try and sustain well-being into older age.

Boundary four: Work/non-work

For humans, the majority of our waking time during our working lives is spent at/on work, and often people spend more time with colleagues than with family and friends. This can lead to a blurring of boundaries and relationships. This can be exacerbated further when ‘work’ and ‘home’ occur in the same location. Growth in homeworking as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic increased tensions for many workers (particularly women) in maintaining distinctions between work and non-work, with spatial and temporal boundaries blurring and sometimes disappearing (Otonkorpi-Lehtoranta et al., 2022). Many of the human workers in our study live on the same premises as their equine colleagues, increasing the risk of this blurred boundary. Horses require daily care (e.g. feeding, shelter, foot care) so in many ways there can be no ‘day off’, as even when not officially working in the trekking centre or on a forestry job, the human workers still have responsibility for horse care. Equestrianism is often described as a way of life, due in part to these ongoing care requirements in human-horse relationships (Dashper, 2017; Wadham et al., 2023). There is therefore a real risk that ‘work’ and ‘home’ blur for the humans working in these multispecies organisations, making it difficult to maintain spatial and temporal boundaries that may be important for work-life balance.

However, none of our participants explained this ongoing care, or the close proximity of living and working with horses, in terms of blurred boundaries and tended to accept these interspecies entanglements as a necessary, often enjoyable, aspect of working with horses. Although horses and humans often live on the same site, this did not seem to lead to work/home blurring as ‘horse space’ and ‘human space’ were clearly delineated, with the horses in fields or sometimes stables, and the human home nearby but separate. The human/animal boundary helped sustain the work/non-work boundary, as human workers recognise that both they and the horses need time and space to themselves. This was often achieved by reinforcing, rather than trying to minimise, the human/animal boundary. Recognising the differentness of humans and horses at times helped maintain other boundaries that are important to wellbeing, as the human/animal boundary was reimagined as one of care and respect based on acceptance of species differences. As forester Paul explained:

The horse is not just my working animal, it’s also my friend if you know what I mean. I don’t want to anthropomorphise, but I take great joy from just being next to them. Especially when they put in a really big effort for you, you really want to make a fuss of them and let them have a good rest after that.

Care and compassion run through Paul’s relationships with his horses and their mutual working lives:

I love my horses. The horses have been staying at a livery yard for my last job and some of the people there, well, they were saying that I don’t care about my horses, they’re just what I work with, but my point is that actually my horses pay my mortgage, if I don’t take care of my horses, I don’t eat! So actually, I care about them more than a pet person. But you treat them like a horse.

Paul explained the co-dependency between him and his horses as manifest through their working relationships, illustrative of their entanglements as co-workers and friends, but also was keen to stress the importance of recognising the differences between people and horses in these working relationships. In this way, he reframes the human/animal boundary as an important mechanism for interspecies collaboration, based around respect and recognition of differences. It is the very otherness of horses compared to humans that contributes to this.

The human/animal boundary can also become a useful mechanism for maintaining separations between ‘colleagues’ and ‘family’ which are becoming increasingly blurred in contemporary management discourse. The organisation-as-family discourse can be positive and motivating, but it can also lead to toxic relationships, burnout and unethical behaviours to protect the ‘family’ (Luna, 2021). One of the trekking centres in our study is run by a (human) family – mother and two adult daughters. The mother’s home is the site of the centre, where the horses also live. In this context it would be very easy to see co-workers (human and equine) as family and the business as an extension of the family unit. However, the humans in this organisation were very keen to highlight the boundary between work and home, between colleagues (the horses) and family, as Sarah explained:

They’re not family, very much not. We do care for them, we love them, of course we do. But they’re not family. They’re horses and it’s important to respect that and give everyone a bit of separation.

Relationships between Sarah and the horses she works with were visibly close – some of them had been working together on a daily basis for over 20 years. Yet she explained that it was important to maintain a separation between human family and equine co-workers as this enables Sarah to switch off from work, value other relationships and not see work as all-consuming. Sarah also saw this as important to the horses, as she explained when we went to bring some of them in from the large field they live in when not working:

This is their home, these fields. This is their space. They need to be here, to be horses, be together, switch off and relax. We need to do that, so do they. It helps everyone stay sane and healthy.

The human/animal boundary can be productive in protecting other boundaries that are important to mental health and well-being, delineating between work (and associated working relationships) and non-work in ways that help to counter increasingly permeable work/home and colleague/family boundaries. Horses are excluded from the category of ‘family’, but this does not imply a lack of care and even love. Rather, this interspecies exclusion enacts the boundary between work and home in ways that can be productive and protective for both horses and humans. In such ways, in situations of entanglement where close relationships lead to respect and care for co-workers, boundaries can sometimes be productive through the practices of exclusion (Giraud, 2019).

Discussion and conclusions

In this paper we have positioned the human/animal boundary as fluid, relational, open to reshaping and contestation, and never fixed or absolute (Hernes, 2004). Through examples drawn from ethnographic research with multispecies communities working in forestry and trekking tourism, we have drawn on posthumanist and indigenous insights which show that humans are entangled with the nonhuman world in all practices and relationships, including work (Martin and Mirraboopa, 2003). Humans are no more or less important than any other entity in these settings (Country et al., 2015), but the contexts of these workspaces position humans and horses differently, shaped as they are by human-centric power relations and human-defined priorities in relation to work and value (Dashper, 2020b). Consequently, it is not enough to simply recognise the relationality and entanglements between humans and horses in these settings, or to try to minimise the human/animal boundary and associated hierarchies in working practices and relationships, as this fails to account for the exclusions inherent in these encounters and excuses humans from taking responsibility for these exclusions and who bears the heaviest burdens of them (often, the animals; Giraud, 2019). In recognising the paradoxical nature of the human/animal boundary as one which both enables and restricts, includes and excludes, humans can take more responsibility for the animals we enrol in our organisations and value them less as resources to be used and exploited for human gain and more as collaborators in multispecies communities (Welden, 2023).

Our argument rests on recognition of the interplay between entanglements and boundaries. The examples of humans and horses working together in forestry and trekking tourism provide clear depictions of the ways in which humans are entangled with other species and beings, in work as in other areas of life. In our examples, humans and horses are necessarily entangled through their working practices and their non-work lives, as humans are caretakers for horses outside of working hours and horses help sustain human livelihoods through their labour. This often leads to deep emotional ties and more complex forms of entanglement based on relational and caring connections. However, despite – maybe even because of – the depth and messiness of these interspecies entanglements, boundaries between humans and horses remain. The examples presented in this paper illustrate some of the ways in which entanglement leads to exclusion, whether that be through different sensorial capacities, different social needs or different life expectancies, for example. Exclusions are commonly perceived as negative, leading to marginalising and subordinating those who are excluded (Tryggvadóttir and Skaptadóttir, 2018). Boundaries are based on exclusion (and inclusion) and thus often related to symbolic and material practices that reinforce inequalities in and beyond organisations (Dobusch, 2021). Our contribution in this paper is to demonstrate ways in which exclusions can also be productive, setting or reinforcing boundaries that can operate to protect the marginalised and vulnerable, which in this case is the horses in these multispecies working practices.

By exploring the co-constitutive nature of boundaries and entanglements we contribute to wider critical discussions around the study of boundaries in and beyond organisations that recognise the varied ways in which boundaries can operate to both enable and constrain (Langley et al., 2019). By starting from the proposition that all beings are necessarily entangled, we challenge traditional views of boundaries as sites of exclusion and instead position them as (potentially) productive and enabling. Boundaries emerge from entanglements, and the exclusions inherent therein, both reinforcing the entangled and mutual relations upon which they are built and bringing difference and demarcation to the fore.

Boundaries and entanglements are thus not opposite forms of relating in organisations but rather intimately connected and mutually constituting. In their discussion of boundaryless organisations, Hirschhorn and Gilmore (1992) argued that boundaries do not disappear, but rather new forms emerge and are enacted, enabling workers to understand their roles, responsibilities and relationships with their coworkers beyond formal hierarchy. We argue that it is the entanglements that underpin relationships within and beyond organisations that contribute to the emergence of these boundaries and open up the possibilities of using boundaries to imagine more humane working practices and relationships. The human/animal boundary provides a fruitful starting point for exploring the ways in which entanglements and boundaries co-constitute each other and make space for alternative ways of organising and relating to emerge. Our entanglements as humans with different species enable our ways of living and being, but also make some of the boundaries between humans and other creatures visible and impossible to ignore. It is in this space between difference and co-dependency that, we suggest, possibilities emerge for rethinking entrenched organisational practices and working relationships in ways that may ultimately benefit human and animal workers. In our study, it is the very otherness of horses – their shorter lifespan, their needs for grazing, space and time with others horses, for example – that enable their human coworkers and caretakers to rethink how these workers are valued, what reasonable provisions for rest and recuperation may be, what constitutes a good life, during and beyond the working day. It is through the entanglements between humans and horses – through work, but also through care and everyday living together – that this reassessment may also be extended to humans to prompt re-evaluation of the centrality of work in our lives, of how we care for and value each other, and how we make space for different needs and capacities to work, or to recover from sickness or injury. This could be transformative for both individual workers – in reshaping how we work, how we value what we and others do for/at work, and how we integrate work with other aspects of our lives – and for organisations – in challenging the ways we design work and supporting systems to recognise the needs of workers for rest and recuperation, which will likely benefit organisations in the long term through increased productivity, lower levels of sick leave, greater motivation and improved staff retention (Campbell, 2024; Chinenye Prisca and Onuoha, 2022).

This paper represents a first attempt to explore some of these interrelationships and more research is needed to examine the interconnectedness between boundaries and entanglements between humans and other species of animals who we enlist to work in service of human needs. Such research might also explore some of the less productive exclusions that emerge from the entanglements between humans and other species and contribute to speciesist boundaries that deprioritise nonhuman work and workers. Our focus here has been on work between humans and horses, and we encourage other researchers to also explore other multispecies work involving other species that have different entangled histories and embodied experiences with humans than do horses. This empirical work could centre on the many other ways animals are involved in or impacted by organisational activity – from laboratory research, therapy, agriculture and conservation, to corporate branding and governance structures. The paper thus invites further exploration of how human–animal boundaries operate across a range of organizational contexts – both where animals are actively enrolled in work and where their presence is more symbolic or indirect. This in turn might open up new conceptual possibilities. Specifically, future scholarship could centre on developing a more systematic agenda for examining how boundaries around species are constructed, maintained and challenged in different forms of organisational life, and how these processes intersect with other kinds of boundary-making such as those based on race, class, gender and (dis)ability. Such an agenda would not only contribute to the emerging field of Animal Organization Studies (AOS) but also provide further critical reflection on the varied ways in which boundaries are inseparable from the entanglements that sustain all forms of social relationships in and beyond organisations.

To conclude, we argue that, in some circumstances like those presented within this paper, to be treated ‘like an animal’ may not always be the degrading and alienating experience expressed by the migrant worker quoted in the article in the introduction. Sometimes we may in fact treat animals with more care, compassion and respect than we do our fellow humans. There is thus much to learn from interspecies work and the ways in which the human/animal boundary can enable deeper examination of what and who matters in organisations, and if/how organisational practices can become more humane and compassionate. This may enable re-evaluation of the status of work in human lives, of how we make time and space for rest and recuperation, how we plan for retirement in ways that suit the individual, of how we value life beyond work and recognise our human need for a ‘field day’ – time spent just being with others, or on our own, prioritising pleasure and enjoyment, taking things slowly and addressing some of our personal and species-specific needs (Wadham and Dashper, 2025). Coulter (2017) advocates for humane jobs that are good for people and for animals, jobs that prioritise experiential and material well-being, and that are about helping rather than harming. Our analysis in this paper provides examples of humane jobs, where humans and horses work together in ways that foreground the wellbeing of both human and equine workers and that are based on an underpinning of respect – for the species differences that sustain the human/animal boundary, but also for the shared ecology and entanglements of humans and other animals within which organisations are situated. Under situations of care, compassion and interspecies respect, to be treated ‘like an animal’ could therefore become an aspiration for imagining more humane jobs and working practices that celebrate the messiness of human entanglements in our multispecies world.