Otherkin in Academia

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've recently become aware of a spate of academic articles about otherkin.  I managed to get my hands on the first of them, "Othering among Otherkin: The discursive negotiation of the face-threat of exclusionary othering in a demarginalizing internet community" by Melanie Getzler.  I've skimmed it and it looks really great, but unfotunately I haven't had time yet to sit down and read it in depth.  It's much longer than other articles on the subject, as it is a Master's thesis - 82 pages.  One thing I will note is that it does not suffer from the same weakness that so many academic articles on otherkin and therians have in the past - that of being based on self-selected survey responses or interviews with a fairly small sampling of the community.  Ms. Getzler employed a different methodology to try to get a truly representative sampling and while I'd still like to see a broader study done I must say hers is the best attempt to date of which I am currently aware.

For those interested, I've saved a copy of the thesis here.

Apparently Ms. Getzler also wrote an undergraduate thesis on our community entitled "Here There Be Dragons: The Effect of Online Communities of 'Otherkin' on Philosophical Construction of Self-Identity".  I'm still looking for a copy of that, it is not available from ProQuest.

Another recent academic work is "Some People Aren’t People on the Inside: Online Connectivity and Otherkin Subjectivities" by Margaret Shane.  I don't have a copy of that one yet either, but I do know where it can be purchased.  I'm just leery of spending $30 on a 15 page paper.

Last but not least there's another article by Venetia Robertson focusing on the therian community: "The Beast Within: Anthrozoomorphic Identity and Alternative Spirituality in the Online Therianthropy Movement".  This paper may be downloaded for free from academia.edu, and I have backed it up here.

Comments

[frameacloud]

Thank you, Jarandhel.

[arethinn]

This is all really cool. I suppose it depends at least partly on Patreon (heh), but is this sort of stuff going to make its way into the bibliography? (I have a section on my website that includes some references to scholarly papers, but your work is a lot more comprehensive in this regard.)

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

If not, it'll definitely be added to the media category of AnOtherWiki (http://anotherwiki.org/wiki/Category:Media) as I have time. My priority's been on meetups and communities, but I am keeping a list of articles to be added to that section as well. (And others are welcome to help - it is a wiki after all.) Most of the academic articles fall under the journal articles subcategory, though I might have to make a whole new section for theses.

[frameacloud]

It should end up in my bibliography the next time I update it, yes.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I have a mild objection to the "Some People" title, as I regard humans as only one kind of people. That said, I'm glad to know that the topic of otherkin is being addressed academically.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

I have a strong objection to the rejection of personhood implicit in the title, myself, but I understand that it stems from modern otherkin culture particularly as exemplified on tumblr where "person" and "people" have been viewed as offensive terms with implications of humanity and a preference for "beings" as an alternate term has been expressed.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Sounds like we need to start a reclaiming movement to stop the insult to "people" and use it as animists: we are all people, including stones, animals, plants, worlds, stars, and spirits. That older inclusion captures for me the essence of personhood: a person is not "that human over there" but rather "that being with whom I have a relationship".