Social Sciences › Geography, Planning and Development

Geographies of human-animal interactions

Works Count: 41276

Wikipedia

Description

This cluster of papers explores the intersection of affect, geography, and multispecies ethnography, delving into the emotional and spatial dimensions of human-animal relations, materiality, and biopolitics. It investigates non-representational approaches to understanding space, ethics, and the impact of the Anthropocene on naturecultures.

Keywords

Affect; Geography; Multispecies Ethnography; Emotion; Space; Materiality; Ethics; Biopolitics; Non-representational; Anthropocene

Animism: respecting the living world

2006-03-01

Graham Harvey

'Animism' is now an accepted term for describing ways in which humans engage with some other-than-human neighbours (e.g. animals, plants, rocks, clouds), on the understanding that the category 'person' includes … 'Animism' is now an accepted term for describing ways in which humans engage with some other-than-human neighbours (e.g. animals, plants, rocks, clouds), on the understanding that the category 'person' includes more than humans. The author concentrates on animism among Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians and eco-Pagans. He discusses these cultures, introduces the reader to their diversity of ways of being animist, and engages with the linguistic, performative, ecological and activist implications of these different animisms.

The sexual politics of meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory

1991-02-01

Carol J. Adams

What does the eating of meat have to do with the women's movement? Is there a cultural correlation between our image of and attitude toward women and the slaughter of … What does the eating of meat have to do with the women's movement? Is there a cultural correlation between our image of and attitude toward women and the slaughter of animals? This study answers these questions by establishing the connections between the women's movement, ecological concerns and our increasing awareness of the environment in the 1990s. In this approach to violence against women and animals, the book uses feminist literary theory to enlighten social practices and develops the thesis that women and animals are linked as absent referents in the context of patriarchal society. It provides the beginnings of a feminist history of vegetarianism from 1790 to the present day, and examines works by women writers that depict a connection between meat eating, male dominance and war. In identifying the cross-mapping of feminism and vegetarianism, the book argues that vegetarianism can act as a sign of autonomous female being, and signals a rejection of male control.

Landscape : politics and perspectives

1993-01-01

Barbara Bender

Contents: Introduction - B. Bender, Landscape: Meaning and Action -J. Thomas, The Politics of Vision and the Archaeologies of Landscape - C. Tilley, Art, Architecture, Landscape [Neolithic Sweden] - S. … Contents: Introduction - B. Bender, Landscape: Meaning and Action -J. Thomas, The Politics of Vision and the Archaeologies of Landscape - C. Tilley, Art, Architecture, Landscape [Neolithic Sweden] - S. Kuechler, Landscape as Memory: The Mapping of Process and its Representation in a Melanesian Society - N. Jarman, Intersecting Belfast - F. Edholm, The view from Below: Paris in the 1880s - B. Bodenhorn, Gendered Spaces, Public Places: Public and Private Revisited on the North Slope of Alaska - H. Morphy, Colonialism, History and the Construction of Place: The Politics of Landscape in Northern Australia - B. Bender, Stonehenge: Contested Landscapes [Medieval to Present Day] - D. Cosgrove, Landscapes and Myths, Gods and Humans - K. Olwig, Sexual Cosmology: Nation and Landscape at the Conceptual Interstices of Nature and Culture. Or What Does Landscape Really Mean?

Emotions and affect in recent human geography

2009-11-06

Steve Pile

This paper seeks to examine both how emotions have been explored in emotional geography and also how affect has been understood in affectual geography. By tracing out the conceptual influences … This paper seeks to examine both how emotions have been explored in emotional geography and also how affect has been understood in affectual geography. By tracing out the conceptual influences underlying emotional and affectual geography, I seek to understand both the similarities and differences between their approaches. I identify three key areas of agreement: a relational ontology that privileges fluidity; a privileging of proximity and intimacy in their accounts; and a favouring of ethnographic methods. Even so, there is a fundamental disagreement, concerning the relationship – or non-relationship – between emotions and affect. Yet, this split raises awkward questions for both approaches, about how emotions and affect are to be understood and also about their geographies. As importantly, mapping the agreements and disagreements within emotional and affectual geography helps with an exploration of the political implications of this work. I draw upon psychoanalytic geography to suggest ways of addressing certain snags in both emotional and affectual geography.

Assemblage and geography

2011-05-18

Ben Anderson , Colin McFarlane

In this introduction to the special section on 'Assemblage and geography', we reflect on the different routes and uses through which 'assemblage' is being put to work in contemporary geographical … In this introduction to the special section on 'Assemblage and geography', we reflect on the different routes and uses through which 'assemblage' is being put to work in contemporary geographical scholarship. The purpose of the collection is not to legislate a particular definition of assemblage, or to prioritise one tradition of assemblage thinking over others, but to reflect on the multiple ways in which assemblage is being encountered and used as a descriptor, an ethos and a concept. We identify a set of tensions and differences in how the term is used in the commentaries and more generally. These revolve around the difference assemblage thinking makes to relational thought in the context of a shared orientation to the composition of social-spatial formations.

The Affective Turn

2007-01-01

Patricia Ticineto Clough , Jean Halley , Hosu Kim +1 more

“The innovative essays in this volume . . . demonstrat[e] the potential of the perspective of the affects in a wide range of fields and with a variety of methodological … “The innovative essays in this volume . . . demonstrat[e] the potential of the perspective of the affects in a wide range of fields and with a variety of methodological approaches. Some of the essays . . . use fieldwork to investigate the functions of affects—among organized sex workers, health care workers, and in the modeling industry. Others employ the discourses of microbiology, thermodynamics, information sciences, and cinema studies to rethink the body and the affects in terms of technology. Still others explore the affects of trauma in the context of immigration and war. And throughout all the essays run serious theoretical reflections on the powers of the affects and the political possibilities they pose for research and practice.”—Michael Hardt, from the foreword In the mid-1990s, scholars turned their attention toward the ways that ongoing political, economic, and cultural transformations were changing the realm of the social, specifically that aspect of it described by the notion of affect: pre-individual bodily forces, linked to autonomic responses, which augment or diminish a body’s capacity to act or engage with others. This “affective turn” and the new configurations of bodies, technology, and matter that it reveals, is the subject of this collection of essays. Scholars based in sociology, cultural studies, science studies, and women’s studies illuminate the movement in thought from a psychoanalytically informed criticism of subject identity, representation, and trauma to an engagement with information and affect; from a privileging of the organic body to an exploration of nonorganic life; and from the presumption of equilibrium-seeking closed systems to an engagement with the complexity of open systems under far-from-equilibrium conditions. Taken together, these essays suggest that attending to the affective turn is necessary to theorizing the social. Contributors . Jamie “Skye” Bianco, Grace M. Cho, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Melissa Ditmore, Ariel Ducey, Deborah Gambs, Karen Wendy Gilbert, Greg Goldberg, Jean Halley, Hosu Kim, David Staples, Craig Willse , Elizabeth Wissinger , Jonathan R. Wynn

Decolonizing posthumanist geographies

2013-04-26

Juanita Sundberg

This paper engages my struggles to craft geo-graphs or earth writings that also further broaden political goals of decolonizing the discipline of geography. To this end, I address a body … This paper engages my struggles to craft geo-graphs or earth writings that also further broaden political goals of decolonizing the discipline of geography. To this end, I address a body of literature roughly termed ‘posthumanism’ because it offers powerful tools to identify and critique dualist constructions of nature and culture that work to uphold Eurocentric knowledge and the colonial present. However, I am discomforted by the ways in which geographical engagements with posthumanism tend to reproduce colonial ways of knowing and being by enacting universalizing claims and, consequently, further subordinating other ontologies. Building from this discomfort, I elaborate a critique of geographical-posthumanist engagements. Taking direction from Indigenous and decolonial theorizing, the paper identifies two Eurocentric performances common in posthumanist geographies and analyzes their implications. I then conclude with some thoughts about steps to decolonize geo-graphs. To this end, I take up learnings offered by the Zapatistas. My goal is to foster geographical engagements open to conversing with and walking alongside other epistemic worlds.

The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

1996-01-01

William Cronon

Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction

2001-09-01

Cindi Katz

A vagabond, as is well known, moves from place to place without a fixed home. However, vagabondage insinuates a little dissolution—an unsettled, irresponsible, and disreputable life, which indeed can be … A vagabond, as is well known, moves from place to place without a fixed home. However, vagabondage insinuates a little dissolution—an unsettled, irresponsible, and disreputable life, which indeed can be said of the globalization of capitalist production. This paper reframes the discussion on globalization through a materialist focus on social reproduction. By looking at the material social practices through which people reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism are renewed—and the havoc wreaked on them by a putatively placeless capitalism—we can better expose both the costs of globalization and the connections between vastly different sites of production. Focusing on social reproduction allows us to address questions of the making, maintenance, and exploitation of a fluidly differentiated labor force, the productions (and destructions) of nature, and the means to create alternative geographies of opposition to globalized capitalism. I will draw on examples from the “First” and “Third Worlds” to argue that any politics that effectively counters capitalism's global imperative must confront the shifts in social reproduction that have accompanied and enabled it. Looking at the political‐economic, political‐ecological, and cultural aspects of social reproduction, I argue that there has been a rescaling of childhood and suggest a practical response that focuses on specific geographies of social reproduction. Reconnecting these geographies with those of production, both translocally and across geographic scale, begins to redress the losses suffered in the realm of social reproduction as a result of globalized capitalist production. The paper develops the notion of “topography” as a means of examining the intersecting effects and material consequences of globalized capitalist production. “Topography” offers a political logic that both recognizes the materiality of cultural and social difference and can help mobilize transnational and internationalist solidarities to counter the imperatives of globalization.

Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect

2004-03-01

Nigel Thrift

This paper attempts to take the politics of affect as not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities are thought of as inhuman or transhuman … This paper attempts to take the politics of affect as not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities are thought of as inhuman or transhuman entities and that politics is understood as a process of community without unity. It is in three main parts. The first part sets out the main approaches to affect that conform with this approach. The second part considers the ways in which the systematic engineering of affect has become central to the political life of Euro‐American cities, and why. The third part then sets out the different kinds of progressive politics that might become possible once affect is taken into account. There are some brief conclusions.

Reading National Geographic

1994-04-01

Lutz , A Catherine

For its millions of readers, the National Geographic has long been a window to the world of exotic peoples and places. In this fascinating account of an American institution, Catherine … For its millions of readers, the National Geographic has long been a window to the world of exotic peoples and places. In this fascinating account of an American institution, Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins explore the possibility that the magazine, in purporting to teach us about distant cultures, actually tells us much more about our own. Lutz and Collins take us inside the National Geographic Society to investigate how its photographers, editors, and designers select images and text to produce representations of Third World cultures. Through interviews with the editors, they describe the process as one of negotiating standards of balance and objectivity, informational content and visual beauty. Then, in a close reading of some six hundred photographs, they examine issues of race, gender, privilege, progress, and modernity through an analysis of the way such things as color, pose, framing, and vantage point are used in representations of non-Western peoples. Finally, through extensive interviews with readers, the authors assess how the cultural narratives of the magazine are received and interpreted, and identify a tension between the desire to know about other peoples and their ways and the wish to validate middle-class American values. The result is a complex portrait of an institution and its role in promoting a kind of conservative humanism that acknowledges universal values and celebrates diversity while it allows readers to relegate non-Western peoples to an earlier stage of progress. We see the magazine and the Society as a key middlebrow arbiter of taste, wealth, and power in America, and we get a telling glimpse into middle-class American culture and all the wishes, assumptions, and fears it brings to bear on our armchair explorations of the world.

The walking interview: Methodology, mobility and place

2010-10-28

James Evans , Phil Jones

View PDF Chat

How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

2014-02-19

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani

In ‘How Forests Think’, Eduardo Kohn sets the agenda for an ambitious plan; to develop, an anthropology that could attend not only to the ways in which non-humans act or … In ‘How Forests Think’, Eduardo Kohn sets the agenda for an ambitious plan; to develop, an anthropology that could attend not only to the ways in which non-humans act or react, but also to the ways...

Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid

2003-03-01

Nicholas Blomley

Physical violence, whether realized or implied, is important to the legitimation, foundation, and operation of a Western property regime. Certain spatializations—notably those of the frontier, the survey, and the grid—play … Physical violence, whether realized or implied, is important to the legitimation, foundation, and operation of a Western property regime. Certain spatializations—notably those of the frontier, the survey, and the grid—play a practical and ideological role at all these moments. Both property and space, I argue, are reproduced through various enactments. While those enactments can be symbolic, they must also be acknowledged as practical, material, and corporeal.

Locality and social representation: Space, discourse and alternative definitions of the rural

1993-01-01

Keith Halfacree

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

2007-06-01

Lauren Berlant

Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world

2006-08-20

Sarah Whatmore

This paper surveys the return to materialist concerns in the work of a new generation of cultural geographers informed by their engagements with science and technology studies and performance studies, … This paper surveys the return to materialist concerns in the work of a new generation of cultural geographers informed by their engagements with science and technology studies and performance studies, on the one hand, and by their worldly involvements in the politically charged climate of relations between science and society on the other. It argues that these efforts centre on new ways of approaching the vital nexus between the bio (life) and the geo (earth), or the ‘livingness’ of the world, in a context in which the modality of life is politically and technologically molten. It identifies some of the major innovations in theory, style and application associated with this work and some of the key challenges that it poses for the practice of cultural geography. Thinking is neither a line drawn between subject and object nor a revolving of one around the other. Rather thinking takes place in the relationship of territory and earth... involving a gradual but thorough displacement from text to territory. 1

View PDF Chat

The temporality of the landscape

1993-10-01

Tim Ingold

Abstract Landscape and temporality are the major unifying themes of archaeology and social‐cultural anthropology. This paper attempts to show how the temporality of the landscape may be understood by way … Abstract Landscape and temporality are the major unifying themes of archaeology and social‐cultural anthropology. This paper attempts to show how the temporality of the landscape may be understood by way of a 'dwelling perspective' that sets out from the premise of people's active, perceptual engagement in the world. The meaning of 'landscape' is clarified by contrast to the concepts of land, nature and space. The notion of 'taskscape' is introduced to denote a pattern of dwelling activities, and the intrinsic temporality of the taskscape is shown to lie in its rhythmic interrelations or patterns of resonance. By considering how taskscape relates to landscape, the distinction between them is ultimately dissolved, and the landscape itself is shown to be fundamentally temporal. Some concrete illustrations of these arguments are drawn from a painting by Bruegel, The Harvesters.

Affective spaces, melancholic objects: ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge*

2009-02-05

Yael Navaro‐Yashin

This article critically engages with recent theoretical writings on affect and non‐human agency by way of studying the emotive energies discharged by properties and objects appropriated during war from members … This article critically engages with recent theoretical writings on affect and non‐human agency by way of studying the emotive energies discharged by properties and objects appropriated during war from members of the so‐called ‘enemy’ community. The ethnographic material comes from long‐term fieldwork in Northern Cyprus, focusing on how it feels to live with the objects and within the ruins left behind by the other, now displaced, community. I study Turkish‐Cypriots’ relations to houses, land, and objects that they appropriated from the Greek‐Cypriots during the war of 1974 and the subsequent partition of Cyprus. My ethnographic material leads me to reflect critically on the object‐centred philosophy of Actor Network Theory and on the affective turn in the human sciences after the work of Gilles Deleuze. With the metaphor of ‘ruination’, I study what goes amiss in scholarly declarations of theoretical turns or shifts. Instead, proposing an anthropologically engaged theory of affect through an ethnographic reflection on spatial and material melancholia, I argue that ethnography, in its most productive moments, is trans‐paradigmatic. Retaining what has been ruined as still needful of consideration, I suggest an approach which merges theories of affect and subjectivity as well as of language and materiality. Résumé L'article examine sous un angle critique les écrits théoriques récents sur l'affect et l' agency non humaine pour étudier les énergies émotives libérées par les biens et objets confisqués lors d'un conflit armé aux membres de la communauté dite «ennemie». Le matériel ethnographique provient d'un travail de terrain de longue durée dans le Nord de Chypre, qui portait sur le ressenti de ceux qui vivent avec ces objets, dans les ruines laissées par l'autre communauté désormais déplacée. L'auteure étudie les relations des Chypriotes turcs avec les maisons, les terres et les objets qu'ils se sont appropriés sur les Chypriotes grecs lors de la guerre de 1974 et de la partition de Chypre. Le matériel ethnographique la conduit à une réflexion critique sur la philosophie centrée sur les objets de la théorie de l'acteur‐réseau et sur le tournant affectif des sciences humaines à la suite des travaux de Gilles Deleuze. Par la métaphore de la «ruine», l'auteur sonde ce qui ne va pas dans les proclamations académiques de tournants théoriques et de changements paradigmatiques. En lieu et place, elle propose une théorie de l'affect engagée dans l'anthropologie, par une réflexion ethnographique sur la mélancolie spatiale et matérielle, et affirme que l'ethnographie, dans ses moments les plus productifs, est trans‐paradigmatique. En gardant ce qui est «ruiné» comme digne encore de considération, l'auteure suggère une approche qui concilie les théories de l'affect et de la subjectivité et du langage et de la matérialité.

View PDF Chat

Neoliberalising Nature: The Logics of Deregulation and Reregulation

2007-08-17

Noel Castree

This and a companion paper examine a new and fast-growing geographical research literature about neoliberal approaches to governing human interactions with the physical environment. This literature, authored by critical geographers … This and a companion paper examine a new and fast-growing geographical research literature about neoliberal approaches to governing human interactions with the physical environment. This literature, authored by critical geographers for the most part, is largely case study based and focuses on a range of biophysical phenomena in different parts of the contemporary world. In an attempt to take stock of what has been learnt and what is left to do, the two papers survey the literature theoretically and empirically, cognitively and normatively. They are written for the benefit of readers trying to make some sense of this growing literature and for future researchers of the topic. Specifically, they aim to parse the critical studies of nature's neoliberalisation with a view to answering four key questions posed, variously, in many or most of them: what are the main reasons why all manner of qualitatively different nonhuman phenomena in different parts of the world are being ‘neoliberalised’? what are the principal ways in which nature is neoliberalised in practice? what are the effects of nature's neoliberalisation? and how should these effects be evaluated? Without such an effort of synthesis, this literature could remain a collection of substantively disparate, theoretically informed case studies unified only in name (by virtue of their common focus on ‘neoliberal’ policies). Though all four questions posed are answerable in principle, in practice the existing research literature makes questions two, three, and four difficult to address substantively and coherently between case studies. While the first question can, from one well-established theoretical perspective, be answered with reference to four ‘logics’ at work in diverse contexts (the focus of this paper), the issues of process, effects, and evaluations are currently less tractable (and are the focus of the next paper). Together, the two pieces conclude that critical geographers interrogating nature's neoliberalisation will, in future, need to define their objects of analysis more rigorously and/or explicitly, as well as their evaluative Schemas. If the new research into neoliberalism and the nonhuman world is to realise its full potential in the years to come, then some fundamental cognitive and normative issues must be addressed. These issues are not exclusive to the literature surveyed and speak to the ‘wider’ lessons that can be drawn from any body of case study research that focuses on an ostensibly ‘general’ phenomena like neoliberalism.

If Mobility is Everything Then it is Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of (Im)mobilities

2006-02-15

Peter Adey

This paper is concerned with conceptions of mobility and immobility. Although I argue that practically everything is mobile, for mobility to be analytically useful as a term we must focus … This paper is concerned with conceptions of mobility and immobility. Although I argue that practically everything is mobile, for mobility to be analytically useful as a term we must focus on the contingent relations between movements. Building upon theories of mobility from geography, sociology, cultural studies and, in particular, Urry's ‘mobility/moorings dialectic’, the paper draws these ideas out using examples from the airport terminal.

Towards a Politics of Mobility

2010-01-01

Tim Cresswell

This paper proposes an approach to mobility that takes both historical mobilities and forms of immobility seriously. It is argued that is important for the development of a politics of … This paper proposes an approach to mobility that takes both historical mobilities and forms of immobility seriously. It is argued that is important for the development of a politics of mobility. To do this it suggests that mobility can be thought of as an entanglement of movement, representation, and practice. Following this it argues for a more finely developed politics of mobility that thinks below the level of mobility and immobility in terms of motive force, speed, rhythm, route, experience, and friction. Finally, it outlines a notion of ‘constellations of mobility’ that entails considering the historical existence of fragile senses of movement, meaning, and practice marked by distinct forms of mobile politics and regulation.

Human geography without scale

2005-12-01

Sallie A. Marston , John Paul Jones , Keith Woodward

The concept of scale in human geography has been profoundly transformed over the past 20 years. And yet, despite the insights that both empirical and theoretical research on scale have … The concept of scale in human geography has been profoundly transformed over the past 20 years. And yet, despite the insights that both empirical and theoretical research on scale have generated, there is today no consensus on what is meant by the term or how it should be operationalized. In this paper we critique the dominant – hierarchical – conception of scale, arguing it presents a number of problems that cannot be overcome simply by adding on to or integrating with network theorizing. We thereby propose to eliminate scale as a concept in human geography. In its place we offer a different ontology, one that so flattens scale as to render the concept unnecessary. We conclude by addressing some of the political implications of a human geography without scale.

Automotive Emotions

2004-10-01

Mimí Sheller

Car cultures have social, material and, above all, affective dimensions that are overlooked in current strategies to influence car-driving decisions. Car consumption is never simply about rational economic choices, but … Car cultures have social, material and, above all, affective dimensions that are overlooked in current strategies to influence car-driving decisions. Car consumption is never simply about rational economic choices, but is as much about aesthetic, emotional and sensory responses to driving, as well as patterns of kinship, sociability, habitation and work. Through a close examination of the aesthetic and especially kinaesthetic dimensions of automobility, this article locates car cultures (and their associated feelings) within a broader physical/material relational setting that includes both human bodies and car bodies, and the relations between them and the spaces through which they move (or fail to move). Drawing on both the phenomenology of car use and new approaches in the sociology of emotions, it is argued that everyday car cultures are implicated in a deep context of affective and embodied relations between people, machines and spaces of mobility and dwelling in which emotions and the senses play a key part – the emotional geographies of car use. Feelings for, of and within cars (‘automotive emotions’) come to be socially and culturally generated across three scales involved in the circulations and displacements performed by cars, roads and drivers: embodied sensibilities and kinaesthetic performances; familial and sociable practices of ‘caring’ through car use; and regional and national car cultures that form around particular systems of automobility. By showing how people feel about and in cars, and how the feel of different car cultures generates habitual forms of automobilized life and different dispositions towards driving, it is argued that we will be in a better position to re-evaluate the ethical dimensions of car consumption and the moral economies of car use.

Mobile Methods and the Empirical

2009-02-01

Monika Büscher , John Urry

In this article we argue that the mobilities turn and its studies of the performativity of everyday (im)mobilities enable new forms of sociological inquiry, explanation and engagement. New kinds of … In this article we argue that the mobilities turn and its studies of the performativity of everyday (im)mobilities enable new forms of sociological inquiry, explanation and engagement. New kinds of researchable entities arise, opening up a new or rediscovered realm of the empirical, and new avenues for critique. The mobilities paradigm not only remedies the academic neglect of various movements, of people, objects, information and ideas. It also gathers new empirical sensitivities, analytical orientations, methods and motivations to examine important social and material phenomena and fold social science insight into responses. After an outline of the mobilities paradigm, this article provides a wide-ranging review of emergent `mobile methods' of studying (im)mobilities. We discuss some of the new researchable entities they engender and explore important implications for the relationship between the empirical, theory, critique, and engagement.

Toward an Ecology of Materials

2010-09-27

Tim Ingold

Both material culture studies and ecological anthropology are concerned with the material conditions of social and cultural life. Yet despite advances in each of these fields that have eroded traditional … Both material culture studies and ecological anthropology are concerned with the material conditions of social and cultural life. Yet despite advances in each of these fields that have eroded traditional divisions between humanistic and science-based approaches, their respective practitioners continue to talk past one another in largely incommensurate theoretical languages. This review of recent trends in the study of material culture finds the reasons for this in (a) a conception of the material world and the nonhuman that leaves no space for living organisms, (b) an emphasis on materiality that prioritizes finished artifacts over the properties of materials, and (c) a conflation of things with objects that stops up the flows of energy and circulations of materials on which life depends. To overcome these limitations, the review proposes an ecology of materials that focuses on their enrollment in form-making processes. It concludes with some observations on materials, mind, and time.

Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies

2010-04-09

Ben Anderson

The paper focuses on how futures are anticipated and acted on in relation to a set of events that are taken to threaten liberal democracies. Across different domains of life … The paper focuses on how futures are anticipated and acted on in relation to a set of events that are taken to threaten liberal democracies. Across different domains of life the future is now problematized as a disruption, a surprise. This problematization of the future as indeterminate or uncertain has been met with an extraordinary proliferation of anticipatory action. The paper argues that anticipatory action works through the assembling of: styles through which the form of the future is disclosed and related to; practices that render specific futures present; and logics through which anticipatory action is legitimized, guided and enacted.

A single day's walking: narrating self and landscape on the South West Coast Path

2005-06-01

John Wylie

This paper tells the story of a single day's walking, alone, along the South West Coast Path in North Devon, England. Forms of narrative and descriptive writing are used here … This paper tells the story of a single day's walking, alone, along the South West Coast Path in North Devon, England. Forms of narrative and descriptive writing are used here as creative and critical means of discussing the varied affinities and distanciations of self and landscape emergent within the affective and performative milieu of coastal walking. Discussion of these further enables critical engagement with current conceptualizations of self–landscape and subject–world relations within cultural geography and spatial‐cultural theory more generally. Through attending to a sequence of incidents and experiences, the paper focuses upon the distinctive ways in which coast walking patterns into refracting orderings of subjectivity and spatiality – into for example, sensations of anxiety and immensity, haptic enfolding and attenuation, encounters with others and with the elements, and moments of visual exhilaration and epiphany.

The New Mobilities Paradigm

2006-02-01

Mimí Sheller , John Urry

It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from … It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, migration studies, science and technology studies, tourism and transport studies, and sociology. In this paper we draw out some characteristics, properties, and implications of this emergent paradigm, especially documenting some novel mobile theories and methods. We reflect on how far this paradigm has developed and thereby to extend and develop the ‘mobility turn’ within the social sciences.

Cultural geography: the busyness of being `more-than-representational'

2005-02-01

Hayden Lorimer

© 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132505ph531pr I Parameters, definitions and themes This is the first of three reports I will write covering an emergent area of research in cultural … © 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132505ph531pr I Parameters, definitions and themes This is the first of three reports I will write covering an emergent area of research in cultural geography and its cognate fields. During recent years, ‘non-representational theory’ has become as an umbrella term for diverse work that seeks better to cope with our self-evidently more-than-human, more-than-textual, multisensual worlds. In as much as nonrepresentational work allows it, these reports will sketch out common themes of interest, and assess impacts, critics and potentials, variously conceptual, methodological and empirical. Of late, non-representational theorists have asked difficult and provocative questions of cultural geographers, and many others in the discipline, about what is intended by the conduct of research (Thrift and Dewsbury, 2000). What has been identified as deadening effect – the tendency for cultural analyses to cleave towards a conservative, categorical politics of identity and textual meaning – can, it is contended, be overcome by allowing in much more of the excessive and transient aspects of living. Given the scope and force of the original non-representational arguments, it is unsurprising that this theory has been subject to fulsome response. In fact, non-representational theory has become a particularly effective lightning-rod for disciplinary self-critique. Commentaries have emerged from within cultural, feminist and Marxian traditions and the more recent coalition of critical geography. Notably, and anecdotally, some of the most colourful observations have been saved for bi-partisan conversation in the conference or common room. It is important (not to say appropriate) that the nature of the dialogue – variously confrontational, tribal, dogmatic, peevish and full-bodied – goes on record early. Published versions have been concerned predominantly with the theoretical conditions for disciplinary succession or progression that the term ‘non-representational’ would seem to imply and how, in relation, the concept of performance should be understood by geographers. These articles are variously structured as manifesto, critical review, restated challenge, revanchist programme and proposed reconciliation (Thrift, 1996; 1997; 2000; Nelson, 1999; Thrift and Dewsbury, 2000; Nash, 2000; Harrison, 2000; Gregson and Rose, 2000; Crouch, 2001; Dewsbury et al., 2002; Whatmore, 2002; Cresswell, 2002; Smith, 2003; Jacobs and Nash, 2003; Latham, 2003a; Castree and MacMillan, 2004).1 In this report, I would like to treat the flourishing theoretical debate as a significant Cultural geography: the busyness of being ‘more-than-representational’

Becoming and Being Hopeful: Towards a Theory of Affect

2006-10-01

Ben Anderson

In this paper I describe how hope takes place, in order to outline an explicit theory of the more-than-rational or less-than rational in the context of the recent attunement to … In this paper I describe how hope takes place, in order to outline an explicit theory of the more-than-rational or less-than rational in the context of the recent attunement to issues of the affectual and emotional in social and cultural geography. In the first part of the paper I outline an expansion of the more-than-rational or less-than-rational into three modalities: affect, feeling, and emotion. From this basis I question an assumption in the literature on affect that the emergence and movement of affect enable the multiplication of forms of life because they takes place ‘in excess’. In the second part of the paper I exemplify an alternative, more melancholy account through a description of the emergence of hope and hopefulness in two cases in which recorded music is used by individuals to ‘feel better’. Emergent from disruptions in various forms of diminishment, hopefulness moves bodies into contact with an ‘outside’. Becoming and being hopeful raise a set of issues for a theory of affect because of, rather than despite, the sense of tragedy that is intimate with how hope heralds the affective and emotive as always ‘not-yet become’. The conclusion, therefore, draws the two parts of the paper together by reflecting on the implications of thinking from hope for both a theory of affect and an affective cultural politics.

Modernity and Hybridity: Nature,Regeneracionismo,and the Production of the Spanish Waterscape, 1890–1930

1999-09-01

E Swyngedouw

Spain is arguably the European country where the water crisis has become most acute in recent years. The political and ecological importance of water is not, however, only a recent … Spain is arguably the European country where the water crisis has become most acute in recent years. The political and ecological importance of water is not, however, only a recent development in Spain. Throughout this century, water politics, economics, culture, and engineering have infused and embodied the myriad tensions and conflicts that drove and still drive Spanish society. And although the significance of water on the Iberian peninsula has attracted considerable scholarly and other attention, the central role of water politics, water culture, and water engineering in shaping Spanish society on the one hand, and the contemporary water geography and ecology of Spain as the product of centuries of socioecological interaction on the other, have remained largely unexplored. The hybrid character of the water landscape, or “waterscape,” comes to the fore in Spain in a clear and unambiguous manner. The socionatural production of Spanish society can be illustrated by excavating the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization process. In the first part of the paper, I develop a theoretical and methodological perspective that is explicitly critical of traditional approaches in water-resources studies, which tend to separate various aspects of the hydrological cycle into discrete and independent objects of study. My perspective, broadly situated within the political ecology tradition, draws critically from recent work by ecological historians, cultural critics, sociologists of science, critical social theorists, and political economists. My main objective is to bring together what has been severed for too long by insisting that nature and society are deeply intertwined. In the second part of the paper, I excavate the origins of Spain's early-twentieth-century modernization process (1890–1930) as expressed in debates and actions around the hydrological condition. The conceptual framework presented in the first part helps structure a narrative that weaves water through the network of socionatural relations in ways that permit the recasting of modernity as a deeply geographical, although by no means coherent, homogeneous, total, or uncontested project. In sum, I seek to document how the socionatural is historically produced to generate a particular, but inherently dynamic, geographical configuration.

“Animism” Revisited

1999-02-01

Nurit Bird‐David

“Animism” is projected in the literature as simple religion and a failed epistemology, to a large extent because it has hitherto been viewed from modernist perspectives. In this paper previous … “Animism” is projected in the literature as simple religion and a failed epistemology, to a large extent because it has hitherto been viewed from modernist perspectives. In this paper previous theories, from classical to recent, are critiqued. An ethnographic example of a hunter‐gatherer people is given to explore how animistic ideas operate within the context of social practices, with attention to local constructions of a relational personhood and to its relationship with ecological perceptions of the environment. A reformulation of their animism as a relational epistemology is offered.

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin

2015-05-01

Donna Haraway

There is no question that anthropogenic processes have had planetary effects, in inter/intraaction with other processes and species, for as long as our species can be identified (a few tens … There is no question that anthropogenic processes have had planetary effects, in inter/intraaction with other processes and species, for as long as our species can be identified (a few tens of thousand years); and agriculture has been huge (a few thousand years). Of course, from the start the greatest planetary terraformers (and reformers) of all have been and still are bacteria and their kin, also in inter/intra-action of myriad kinds (including with people and their practices, technological and otherwise). 1 The spread of seed-dispersing plants millions of years before human agriculture was a planet-changing development, and so were many other revolutionary evolutionary ecological developmental historical events. People joined the bumptious fray early and dynamically, even before they/we were critters who were later named Homo sapiens. But I think the issues about naming relevant to the Anthropocene, Plantationocene, or Capitalocene have to do with scale, rate/speed, synchronicity, and complexity. The constant question when considering systemic phenomena has to be, when do changes in degree become changes in kind, and what are the effects of bioculturally, biotechnically, biopolitically, historically situated people (not Man) relative to, and combined with, the effects of other species assemblages and other biotic/abiotic forces? No species, not even our own arrogant one pretending to be good individuals in so-called modern Western scripts, acts alone; assemblages of organic species and of abiotic actors make history, the evolutionary kind and the other kinds too. But, is there an inflection point of consequence that changes the name of the “game” of life on earth for everybody and everything? It's more than climate change; it's also extraordinary burdens of toxic chemistry, mining, depletion of lakes and rivers under and above ground, ecosystem simplification, vast genocides of people and other critters, etc, etc, in systemically linked patterns that threaten major system collapse after major system collapse after major system collapse. Recursion can be a drag. Anna Tsing in a recent paper called “Feral Biologies” suggests that the inflection point between the Holocene and the Anthropocene might be the wiping out of most of the refugia from which diverse species assemblages (with or without people) can be reconstituted after major events (like desertification, or clear cutting, or, or, …). 2 This is kin to the World-Ecology

View PDF Chat

Dark matters: on the surveillance of blackness

2016-03-15

Racquel M. Gonzales

In Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Simone Browne re-imagines the theoretical framework undergirding the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies: “how is the frame necessaril... In Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Simone Browne re-imagines the theoretical framework undergirding the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies: “how is the frame necessaril...

On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene

2017-12-20

Heather Davis , Zoe Todd

This article argues for the importance of including Indigenous knowledges into contemporary discussions of the Anthropocene. We argue that a start date coincident with colonization of the Americas would more … This article argues for the importance of including Indigenous knowledges into contemporary discussions of the Anthropocene. We argue that a start date coincident with colonization of the Americas would more adequately open up these conversations. In this, we draw upon multiple Indigenous scholars who argue that the Anthropocene is not a new event, but is rather the continuation of practices of dispossession and genocide, coupled with a literal transformation of the environment, that have been at work for the last five hundred years. Further, the Anthropocene continues a logic of the universal which is structured to sever the relations between mind, body, and land. In dating the Anthropocene from the time of colonialization, the historical and ideological links between the events would become obvious, providing a basis for the possibility of decolonization within this framework.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

2015-01-01

Anna Tsing

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to … Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world’s most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.

Atmospheric Attunements

2010-09-30

Kathleen Stewart

This paper proposes an analytic attention to the charged atmospheres of everyday life. It asks how circulating forces are generated as atmospheres per se, how they spawn worlds, animate forms … This paper proposes an analytic attention to the charged atmospheres of everyday life. It asks how circulating forces are generated as atmospheres per se, how they spawn worlds, animate forms of attachment and detachment, and become the live background of living in and living through things. Writing through several small cases selected out of countless potentially describable moments and scenes in which the sense of something happening becomes tactile, I try to open a proliferative list of questions about how forces come to reside in experiences, conditions, things, dreams, landscapes, imaginaries, and lived sensory moments. How do people dwelling in them become attuned to the sense of something coming into existence or something waning, sagging, dissipating, enduring, or resonating with what is lost or promising? I suggest that atmospheric attunements are palpable and sensory yet imaginary and uncontained, material yet abstract. They have rhythms, valences, moods, sensations, tempos, and lifespans. They can pull the senses into alert or incite distraction or denial.

Affective atmospheres

2009-09-20

Ben Anderson

Religions in Extractive Zones: Methods, Imaginaries, Solidarities

2025-06-23

Terra Schwerin Rowe , Christiana Zenner , Lisa H. Sideris | Religions

This essay serves as an expansive, conceptual anchor and scholarly argument that demonstrates the modality of “reflexive extractivist” religious studies and also orients the Special Issue on Religion in Extractive … This essay serves as an expansive, conceptual anchor and scholarly argument that demonstrates the modality of “reflexive extractivist” religious studies and also orients the Special Issue on Religion in Extractive Zones. We demonstrate that critical religious and theological scholarship have existing tools and methods for deepening the study of extraction in the environmental humanities and related discourses. We make two interconnected arguments: that religion has been and continues to be produced out of extractive zones in the conflicts, negotiations, and strategic alliances of contact zones and that the complex production of sacred and secular in these zones can be fruitfully analyzed as imaginaries and counter-imaginaries of extraction. We present these arguments through a dialogical and critically integrative methodology, in which arguments from theorists across several disciplines are put into conversation and from which our insights emerge. This methodology leads to a final section of the essay that sets a framework for, and invites further dialogical and integrative scholarship on, the practical ethics of non- or counter-extractive academic research, scholarship, and publishing. Offering theoretical, methodological, and practical suggestions, we call for a turn toward reflexive extractivist religious studies, articulate the specific conceptual and methodological approaches linking religion and extraction, and thus set the framework and tone for the Special Issue.

Liquid Racism and Road Culture(s)

2025-06-23

Nathan Kerrigan , Damian Breen , Yusef Bakkali | Bristol University Press eBooks

The Form, Function, and Fallibilities of AI-Driven Surveillance

2025-06-23

Pete Fussey , Daragh Murray | Oxford University Press eBooks

Abstract Chapter 2 explores the form, function, and impact of facial recognition technology (FRT) in more detail. Emphasizing the complex interplay of technical and human-social elements, the chapter assesses the … Abstract Chapter 2 explores the form, function, and impact of facial recognition technology (FRT) in more detail. Emphasizing the complex interplay of technical and human-social elements, the chapter assesses the evidence typically presented to legitimate FRT and, in doing so, exposes a fragility in many technologically deterministic narratives that accompany the adoption of this and other advanced surveillance technologies. Particular attention is paid to one of the most controversial issues surrounding the public use of this technology, that of algorithmic bias with particular respect to race and gender. The chapter further examines how, despite specific limitations in efficacy, FRT can be seen in other ways as a step change in surveillance practice. In particular, remote biometric measurement has significantly altered the ways individuals have become understood and managed. These profound shifts in surveillance practice are considered through three modalities: the ways the bodies and intentions of urban citizens have been apprehended and, separately, the specific forms of knowledge that arise from computational processes and how these become valorized and instituted into policing practice. These dramatic shifts in the form, function, and scope of surveillance underpin the analysis of the implications for human rights that follows.

Menaces to Society: A Posthhumanist Rethinking of Canine Capital Punishment in Ontario

2025-06-23

Daniel Dylan | Alberta Law Review

This article presents a critical analysis of Ontario’s Dog Owners’ Liability Act (DOLA), focusing on its ethical and legal shortcomings. First, it highlights that DOLA permits courts to order the … This article presents a critical analysis of Ontario’s Dog Owners’ Liability Act (DOLA), focusing on its ethical and legal shortcomings. First, it highlights that DOLA permits courts to order the destruction of dogs deemed dangerous, a practice compared to capital punishment — which is something that has been abolished for humans in Canada. Second, it contends that dogs are often punished for actions that stem from human negligence, lack of training, or provocation, yet receive no legal representation or procedural fairness. Third, the critique underscores the speciesism inherent in the law, which treats dogs as property rather than as sentient beings. Finally, it proposes reform through alternatives such as provincially funded rehabilitation sanctuaries, aiming to promote a more compassionate and just legal framework.

What’s Wrong with Orangutan Kickboxing Shows? Scrutinizing Wildlife Tourism as a Form of Visual Consumption

2025-06-23

Judith Benz-Schwarzburg , Georgette Leah Burns | Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

Data under siege : Making cattle flows (il)legible in the Brazilian Amazon

2025-06-22

Pierre-Louis Choquet | Environment and Planning E Nature and Space

In recent years, intense fires in the Amazon have put the spotlight on the deep intertwining between Brazil's beef industry and rainforest destruction. As increasing evidence suggested that cattle raised … In recent years, intense fires in the Amazon have put the spotlight on the deep intertwining between Brazil's beef industry and rainforest destruction. As increasing evidence suggested that cattle raised in illegally cleared lands routinely fed the slaughterhouses owned by major meatpacking companies (JBS, Marfrig, Minerva), these have faced unprecedented criticism. In this context, an already-existing data infrastructure known as the GTA (‘Gûia de Transito Animal’) has become a bone of contention. Developed since the late 1990s by Brazilian veterinary authorities, the GTA keeps track of all cattle movements occurring within national borders : although it was initially designed to allow a rapid reconstruction of contagion chains in case of epizootic disease – a function that it still fulfils –, from 2018 onwards civil society actors started to use it as a proxy to detect deforestation and illegal cattle farming in the supply chain of slaughterhouses. This sudden, unexpected enlargement of the GTA's scope – i.e., from animal health to environmental traceability – quickly sparked tensions, with big meatpackers, farmers unions, journalists, environmental NGOs, scientists and state administrations defending contradictory agendas. In this article, I aim to reconstruct the socio-historical trajectory of this controversy, and to map out the manifold consequences of this twisted use of animal transit data. Exploring the ecologies of the GTA (the way it is designed, produced, maintenanced, circulated) will allow to show how digital technologies can become loci of intense power struggles in a time of environmental devastation.

Finding Lived Experiences in Historic Zooarchaeological Museum Collections: A Brief Case Study from Jamestown, Virginia

2025-06-21

Magen Grayce Hodapp | Collections A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals

Zooarchaeological collections are found commonly in archaeological and historic institutions, but they often have varying levels of analysis from museum to museum. This paper seeks to reflect on the power … Zooarchaeological collections are found commonly in archaeological and historic institutions, but they often have varying levels of analysis from museum to museum. This paper seeks to reflect on the power of analyzing zooarchaeological collections to better understand lived experiences of the past through a case study from Jamestown Rediscovery. The faunal analysis of the First Well, a feature dating to a period of extreme dietary stress for the colonists, has uncovered a new species of animal that provides more insight into the lives and interests of the colonists on their way to and at Jamestown. I argue that the analysis of zooarchaeological remains from museum collections is a viable options for historic sites and institutions to better understand the lives of past peoples and restore agency and memory.

The extractive loops of biocapital: Venom procurement and antivenom production in India

2025-06-20

Mathieu Quet | Social Studies of Science

A growing body of research and scholarship has examined the exploitation of animals by the biopharmaceutical industry, framing it variously in terms of labour, commodification, or hybrid processes. This article … A growing body of research and scholarship has examined the exploitation of animals by the biopharmaceutical industry, framing it variously in terms of labour, commodification, or hybrid processes. This article adds to the discussion through an ethnography of antivenom manufacturing in India. It introduces the concept of ‘extractive loops’ embedding species, locations, and work practices. Extractive loops form a continuum through which non-human life contributes to the manufacturing of resources (raw materials and finished products). The argument relies on a description of the operations required by the production of antivenom, involving: (a) several animal species (mostly snakes, horses, and rodents), (b) connections between a multiplicity of locations, from outdoor fields to industrial sites, (c) a wide range of professional practices, some of them strictly formalized whereas others are mainly informal (such as snake catching), and (d) heterogeneous exploitation of non-human life and products. Extractive loops highlight a key feature of animal exploitation: a recurring series of extractive practices contributing to the continuous fabrication of natural resources.

Chronotopes, International Law, and the Botanic Gardensof Empire and Colony

2025-06-20

Jessie Hohmann | German Yearbook of International Law

Savages under suspicion: (Mis)trust and civilization processes among wild boar hunters in Uruguay

2025-06-20

Juan Martín Dabezies | Journal of Rural Studies

Finn Arne Jørgensen and Dolly Jørgensen (eds.), Sharing Spaces: Technology, Mediation, and Human–Animal Relationships Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024. Pp. 366. ISBN 978-0-8229-4830-8. $65.00 (hardcover).

2025-06-19

Jules Skotnes-Brown | The British Journal for the History of Science

Animals, Intellectual History, and Ideas about Nature

2025-06-19

Mieke Roscher | Environmental History

Over the past few decades, the study of animals in intellectual history has emerged as a vibrant, interdisciplinary field rooted in both human-animal studies and environmental history. Scholars have increasingly … Over the past few decades, the study of animals in intellectual history has emerged as a vibrant, interdisciplinary field rooted in both human-animal studies and environmental history. Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to how animals have shaped the development of scientific knowledge, religious beliefs, ethical systems, and cultural practices, moving beyond purely human-centered narratives of the past. This “animal turn” challenges older historiographical approaches that treated nonhuman creatures solely as backdrops or passive resources for human use. Instead, it views animals as active agents that co-constitute societies, landscapes, and epistemologies. At the heart of this scholarship lies a concern with how humans perceive, represent, and interact with other species, as well as how those relationships reflect broader ideas about nature. Crucially, “nature” itself is not a fixed or self-evident category, but rather a historically constructed discourse that has played a central role in shaping Western thought, structuring notions of civilization, hierarchy, and the human-animal divide. Intellectual historians have traced changing attitudes toward animals—ranging from medieval bestiaries to Enlightenment classifications and contemporary conservation movements—revealing how theories of animality intersect with debates about rationality, morality, and the boundaries of the human. Likewise, environmental historians have examined the dynamic role of animals in ecological transformations, documenting how agricultural expansion, urban growth, and colonial projects depended on (and profoundly altered) multispecies relationships, which has led to the creation of a new field: animal history. Within this growing corpus, scholars draw on an array of methodologies. They investigate archival records for clues to animals’ lived experiences, employ ethological insights to interpret historical accounts of animal behavior, and use mapping tools to reconstruct changing environments that animals and humans co-inhabited. The result is an ever-expanding set of questions: How do categories of race, gender, and class shape human-animal relations? In what ways does the colonial enterprise hinge on controlling and classifying nonhuman life? What happens when we view animals not simply as symbols or metaphors but as participants in historical events? By foregrounding animals, new avenues for understanding the past have opened. Contemporary theoretical frameworks—from postcolonial studies to intersectionality—further sharpen our awareness of how conceptions of “nature” can reinforce social hierarchies or challenge them. This entry underscores the significance of approaching animals as central to human history and as key protagonists in the ongoing story of ideas about nature.

Medieval and Early Modern Animals

2025-06-19

Anna Taylor | Environmental History

In medieval Europe and Early Modern Europe (roughly 700–1800 ce), human lives were entangled with those of non-human animals (which, for simplicity, I will henceforth call “animals”). Humans exploited other … In medieval Europe and Early Modern Europe (roughly 700–1800 ce), human lives were entangled with those of non-human animals (which, for simplicity, I will henceforth call “animals”). Humans exploited other terrestrial animals for commodities (including meat, milk, eggs, honey, tallow, manure, leather, parchment, bone, and fur) and used them for agricultural labor, transport, war, entertainment, companionship, and status. Animals also featured as the objects of theological and scientific inquiry. This history is haunted by the often contested and unclear boundary between human and animal. Real and symbolic animals are conscripted into the work of maintaining the myth of human separateness, a myth which enables and requires the violent oppression and exploitation of individuals categorized as non-human. Until recently, the history of non-human animals has largely been a history of their representations. Scholars have focused on the depictions of animals, especially their allegorical and moral meanings. They have looked at how people used animals to talk about human uniqueness (in discussions of whether animals possessed souls, language, and reason) and how they used them to construct human social status, gender, and sanctity. A second strand of scholarship, informed by archaeology, has examined the practical uses humans made of animals. These works have largely treated animals as commodities and objects. Since the interdisciplinary activist-informed “Animal Turn” of the late twentieth century, scholars have centered animals, acknowledging their experiences and agency as political actors, as workers, and as collaborators who shaped history. Throughout the scholarship, historians locate the origins of modern preoccupations (notably the increasing sympathy with the natural world and the contestation of the animal-human boundary) in the specific era they study, whether it is the twelfth century or the eighteenth. The scholarship remains largely Anglophone and western-Eurocentric, and it focuses on birds and mammals, especially charismatic megafauna.

Carceral Ecologies

2025-06-19

Nicholas Shapiro , Abril Guanes , Rachel Smith +1 more | Environmental History

Carceral ecologies is a subfield emerging at the intersection of geography, environmental politics, critical criminal justice studies, history, environmental science, and community engaged environmental justice research practices. Carceral refers to … Carceral ecologies is a subfield emerging at the intersection of geography, environmental politics, critical criminal justice studies, history, environmental science, and community engaged environmental justice research practices. Carceral refers to infrastructures and technologies that function to surveil, coerce, confine, and punish. Bringing multidisciplinary environmental studies into researching carcerality both extends long-standing traditions of researching environmental justice and conceptually expands where and how that research should be undertaken. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country; thus, a great amount of research in this nascent subfield is allied with American Studies. Still, carceral institutions and policies often lie at the core of contemporary statecraft globally. In the United States, incarcerated populations amount to the fifth largest city in the nation and yet are afforded no concerted environmental health oversight. As a result, historians, ethnographers, environmental and health scientists, and community groups have banded together to empirically document how the tens of thousands of carceral facilities scattered across the planet are conditioning life for those held captive and the landscapes adjacent to prisons, jails, and detention centers. Research in carceral ecologies is currently expanding beyond an exclusive focus on the specific locations where people are incarcerated to look both farther upstream—researching how stress is broadcast by public safety officers in hyper-surveilled neighborhoods—and downstream—detailing how those released from prison struggle with reentry into the free world. In this way the “ecology” of carceral ecologies is both traditional—thinking about air, water, and soil exposures related to detention—and more expansive—thinking about how certain social arrangements yield social and health impacts beyond the bars. Research within this domain leverages a wide variety of methods, including from archival historical research to remote sensing data science. The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020 catalyzed both widespread scale reflection on the relationship between structural racism and criminal justice institutions and a great deal of work in carceral ecologies and related fields. This proliferation of research is now stabilizing into novel collaborations across disciplines and policy changes driven by carceral ecology researchers.

Columbian (Faunal) Exchanges and Ecological Imperialism: Animals, Empires, and the Anthropocene

2025-06-19

Abel A. Alves | Environmental History

The Columbian Exchange in fauna was a pivotal moment in the millennia-long history of Homo sapiens’ interaction, and occasional coevolution, with other animals. Intrinsically linked to European imperial expansion after … The Columbian Exchange in fauna was a pivotal moment in the millennia-long history of Homo sapiens’ interaction, and occasional coevolution, with other animals. Intrinsically linked to European imperial expansion after Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage, it is a tale of unequal expressions of agency in the midst of efforts to dominate. While the Columbian Exchange also incorporates the exchange of plants and microorganisms, including pathogens, and it is usually written about in the context of the four continents of the Atlantic World, a focus on nonhuman animals expands our intellectual inquiries in such a way that the rebellions of wild mustangs in North America, the introduction of horses to the Māori in New Zealand, the presence of the western hemisphere’s turkey on all inhabited continents in the twenty-first century, and the failed efforts to grow llama and alpaca herding in 19th-century Australia must also all be taken into account. Rather than industrialization or the detonation of nuclear weapons, it may be that the Columbian Exchange gave rise to what many today now call the Anthropocene in recognition of humanity’s tragic capacity to reshape the entire planet. It certainly gave rise to the zoological park, that microcosmic reflection of the earth becoming our homogenized human household. Today, explorations of Columbian faunal exchanges take two tacks that are not mutually exclusive. There is a cultural studies approach and the scientific work of geneticists in analyzing the DNA genealogies of animals including dogs, cattle, and chickens, sometimes in comparison to DNA extracted from Pre-Columbian conspecifics. There are also important syntheses developed from what culturally based studies and the natural sciences both have to offer, even as Alfred Crosby’s classic on the topic was subtitled “biological and cultural consequences of 1492.”

Monkey memoirs: wild life in an Amazon wilderness, Thomas R. Defler

2025-06-19

Pedro Américo D. Dias | Primates

Beyond Culture/Nature Divides: New Approaches and Tools for a Cultural Integrated Landscape Management

2025-06-19

Luíz Oosterbeek | Diversity

In this article, we revisit the core concepts of nature and of landscape assessment and sustainability, based on which we propose an approach to natural resource management and diversity preservation … In this article, we revisit the core concepts of nature and of landscape assessment and sustainability, based on which we propose an approach to natural resource management and diversity preservation from the perspective of cultural landscapes. We build on past and contemporary debates on the notion of nature and its relation to “Non-Nature”, attempting to systematize the main variables of the study of past societies as a methodological framework for the analysis of contemporary contexts; this is based on bibliographic references and case studies using such methodological approaches. Landscapes are structured through human activity, which relates to the technological and logistic drivers of historical studies, and are the domain of humans (anthropic nature), as opposed to non-anthropic nature (or wilderness). Sustainable resource management, focused on the preservation of biodiversity and cultural diversity as part of it, needs to overcome the divide between nature and culture, framing debates and conflicts as part of a cultural landscape of discussions served by an established methodological framework, in which education is the main driver and museum-related structures (libraries, etc.) form the flexible institutional backbone. The introduction sets the context for the argument, revisiting some of the theoretical approaches to the notions of nature and landscapes from the late 19th century in Europe, while also referring to reflections in antiquity and traditional and indigenous understandings. A section on materials and methods explains the methodological framework and data used by the author, situating it within a systematization of the humanities’ assessment of the past. A third section explores the interplay between materialities and perceptions, including the relevance of time- and space-driven approaches that shape different perceived landscapes; it proposes a definition of cultural landscape structured through these interplays. The fourth section discusses the dimension of perceived nature as a cultural landscape and characterizes its main drivers, offering two contemporary case studies as examples. A final section of conclusions discusses the role of humanities and of structures like museums, pointing to the new UNESCO program BRIDGES as a useful tool for pursuing landscape transformations.

Transitional Justice and Nature

2025-06-19

Rachel Killean , Lauren Dempster | Routledge eBooks

Climate Crises and Postapocalyptic Futures

2025-06-18

Ana Mariella Bacigalupo | Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture

Northern Peruvian shamans’ anti-anthropocentric eschatological narratives infused with scientific climate change discourses rewrite the climate change debate from a nonhuman point of view. By engaging in ethnographic research in Northern … Northern Peruvian shamans’ anti-anthropocentric eschatological narratives infused with scientific climate change discourses rewrite the climate change debate from a nonhuman point of view. By engaging in ethnographic research in Northern Peru through an indigenous decolonizing framework, I show how shamanic engagements with ancestor landscapes can restore a sense of belonging to the earth to meet the challenge of predatory capitalism and catastrophic climate crises. The goal of shamanic practices is to heal the epistemic fractures we have inherited between humans and ecosystems, between time and place, and between the geopolitical and the ecological. Shamans also offer a collective vision of humanity's future as climate change ravages the world. By decentering the human and gaining awareness of the inevitable end of the spice-time of modern industrial civilization and humanity—and of a world that will continue to exist without us—shamans inspire us to respond to the climate crisis. When we accept that humanity will ultimately be destroyed by climate change events, shamans reason, we might mitigate our suffering by engaging in ethical, reciprocal, multispecies relationships to postpone the end of humanity, and to reimagine our existence in a post-human world.

Thinking Through Seawater: An (Auto)ethnographic Exploration of Different Waters in Brazil

2025-06-18

Emilian Franco | Journal of Intercultural Communication Research

Distress and Suffering: On t he Nature of the Extremes of Unpleasant Experience

2025-06-18

Franklin D. McMillan | CABI eBooks

Multispecies placemaking: Tibetan pastoralist perceptions of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 pandemic

2025-06-18

Tsering Bum , Shuling Cheng | Area

Abstract This ethnographic study examines Tibetan pastoralists' perceptions of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Pema Rito, Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China, during the initial outbreak in 2020. Framed through … Abstract This ethnographic study examines Tibetan pastoralists' perceptions of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Pema Rito, Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China, during the initial outbreak in 2020. Framed through the lens of multispecies placemaking, an approach that highlights the dynamic, co‐creative processes by which humans and non‐human beings (animals, plants, microorganisms, and viruses) collectively shape place, the study challenges traditional anthropocentric theories of space. Drawing on remote and in‐person interviews, the research reveals that pastoralists understood the pandemic not merely as a public health crisis but as an ecological and moral reconfiguration of place. For Pema Rito communities, COVID‐19 represented an anthropause that compelled them to renegotiate their relationships with the pastoral landscape, viruses, wildlife, and livestock. They interpreted the pandemic as karmic retribution for human exploitation of nature, reinforcing their commitment to wildlife conservation while advocating for physical distancing from wild species. Amid the crisis, pastoralists positioned their traditional lifeways as an optimal response to zoonotic and ecological disruptions. By analysing the pandemic through multispecies placemaking, this study demonstrates how crises reconfigure human–nonhuman entanglements, offering critical insights into resilience, ecological ethics, and post‐pandemic placemaking.

Field Notes from ‘Hell on Earth’ – Nature and German Mass Crimes in the Szpęgawsk Forest, Poland

2025-06-17

Dawid Kobiałka , Alfredo González‐Ruibal | Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites

Wordsworth’s “Logos of Home”: Geological Ethics of Care and Communal Becoming in The Excursion

2025-06-17

Ting Zhang | The European Legacy

Reflecting on the restless volumetric place (re)naming race

2025-06-17

Sergei Basik | Area

Abstract Drawing on the critical toponymic approaches that theorised place naming as an instrument for contested spatial politics of interaction between power, people, and places, and the emerging volumetric geopolitics … Abstract Drawing on the critical toponymic approaches that theorised place naming as an instrument for contested spatial politics of interaction between power, people, and places, and the emerging volumetric geopolitics scholarship which considers the political processes in three dimensions, rather than flat two‐dimensional space, this short commentary analyses the volumetric (geo)political motivations and potential consequences for the symbolic landscapes of the recent notable (re)naming events worldwide. The paper concludes that, in the current volatile geopolitical processes, the powerful actors (state leaders, politicians, or oligarchs) use toponyms as one of the most easily accessible, relatively inexpensive, and comprehensible tools for the general public to transmit ideas of nationalistic domination through volumetric territorialisation and transformation of symbolic landscapes.

Liquid Racism and Road Culture(s)

2025-06-17

| Bristol University Press eBooks

'You Cannot Own an Animal!'

2025-06-17

Malena Janson | Linköping electronic conference proceedings

Multispecies wit(h)nessing with children and animals: Living and dying well together

2025-06-16

Cory Jobb | The Journal of Environmental Education

Techno-legal geographies: consumer drone misuse and harms

2025-06-16

Anna Jackman , Louise Hooper | Gender Place & Culture

Foregrounding

2025-06-16

Frank Hakemulder , Amir Harash , Giulia Scapin | Routledge eBooks

Mycelial Mutations

2025-06-16

Rhiannon Rumble | M/C Journal

Introduction Over the last decade, fungi have increasingly appeared in popular culture. Non-fiction texts, such as Melvin Sheldrake’s Entangled Lives (2020) and Doug Bierend’s Mycotopia (2021), illuminate some of the … Introduction Over the last decade, fungi have increasingly appeared in popular culture. Non-fiction texts, such as Melvin Sheldrake’s Entangled Lives (2020) and Doug Bierend’s Mycotopia (2021), illuminate some of the hidden lives of fungi and explore how we could utilise fungi, from sustainable myco-culture to building materials, and models of fungal communities. In turn, this emerging mycological knowledge inspires fiction exploring intersections of human and fungi, including M.R. Carey’s The Girl with all the Gifts (2014) and David Koepp’s Cold Storage (2019). Heightened interest in the potential for fiction to become reality spawns (spores) further investigation. In many of these fungal fictions, the core premise is that a mutation has enabled fungi to infiltrate and control humans. Fungal eruptions warp the form of the human body, and the human becomes food. The fungal mutant demonstrates agency, the capacity to set goals, and learn from its errors. The agentic nonhuman is a terrifying prospect. As the human adapts to this infiltration, both species evolve to survive in the fungal future through further mutation and hybridity. Many of these narratives explore, or leave space for the possibility of, a generation of symbiotic fungal-human beings, a multispecies assemblage best adapted for the post-mutation world. The fungal-human mutant is a challenge to our concept of the human as a separate, bounded individual, and signals future possibilities of adaptation and hybridity. In this article, I consider examples of fungal mutation and the transformation into a human-fungal symbiote. I draw on an ecoGothic framework to consider why fungus is a recurring subject of mutation and how mutated nature might interact with the human. The ecoGothic in Brief An ecoGothic approach orients us to “the more disturbing and unsettling aspects of our interactions with nonhuman ecologies” (Keetley and Sivils 7). It draws our attention to transgression of boundaries, fear of Nature, and the potential horrors arising from human (ab)use of our environments. Beyond this fear of Nature is what Simon Estok terms ‘ecophobia’, an “irrational and groundless hatred of the natural world” (“Ecocriticism and Ecophobia” 208). Estok identifies that ecophobia stems from a sense of human particularity and a desire to dominate and control the natural world. Ecophobia is the response to a loss of control and the perceived threat of a natural world filled with “unpredictable and uncontrolled nonhuman agency” (“Theorising the EcoGothic” 46). As Stacy Alaimo also notes, “the environment, which is too often imagined as inert, empty space or as a resource for human use, is, in fact, a world of fleshy beings with their own needs, claims, and actions” (2). A central concern of the ecoGothic is the interchange between the human and nonhuman worlds. Fungal mutations, and the mutant beings that result, draw together Julia Kristeva’s ‘abjection’ and Alaimo’s ‘trans-corporeality’. Kristeva theorises that, to maintain our sense of bounded self, we must throw off (abject) “what disturbs identity, system, order” (4). Bodily waste and the corpse are examples of objects that encroach on that boundary, threatening the “collapse of the border between inside and outside” (53) and thus a source of horror and fascination. Alaimo uses trans-corporeality to describe the recognition that, despite our efforts to separate human and nonhuman entirely, “we are permeable, emergent beings” and our bodies are in constant, productive interchange with the ‘more-than-human’ world (156). Though still a niche area within the ecoGothic, the emergence of fungi across texts has drawn increased critical attention in recent years. Ashley Kniss recognises this “Gothic mycology” as a mode mapping “the mysterious behaviour of fungi onto literary plots” (22). Kniss identifies that the “decay-filled endings” of these fungal plots simultaneously offer new beginnings, spaces that have the potential to “reimagine humanity’s interconnectedness with the more-than-human”, a reframing that “goes beyond mere human-fungal hybridity and proposes instead a novel becoming” (23). The fungal ability to infiltrate and control the human, and the resulting hybridity, overwhelms apparently clear boundaries. This fungal infiltration dissolves the boundary of the ‘self’ and reminds us of our own materiality; the natural environment is intimately entangled with our bodies. Additionally, fungi themselves, as organisms of darkness and decay, thresholds and excess, are uniquely Gothic entities. It is worth noting some of their ecoGothic peculiarities before considering how these are transformed in fiction. The Mutability of Fungi There has always been something of the unknown, the strange, the mutant about fungi. Even as we try to pin down fungal properties, whether in popular fungal nonfiction or as objects of scientific study, fungi seem to be continually transforming. Depending on the health and life cycle of the fungus and its host, the same fungus can be an uncanny combination of symbiotic and parasitic and necrotrophic (Frost 591). Fungi disrupt classifications, refusing binaries in a state of existence that seems to be and/and rather than either/or. What we learn about fungi resists easy categorisation, with any identifying characteristics uneasily qualified by ‘may, can, some, most’. Fungi are “uncannily situated somewhere between animal and plant” (Bierend 249), possessing “a mixture of qualities common to both” (Kaishian and Djoulakian 10). Though mushrooms might appear plant-like, fungi rely on a kind of enzymatic ‘digestion’ like animals. They appear to sense, respond to, and communicate about their environment (Boddy 39, 42) and show complex, even intelligent, behaviours (Sheldrake 65-66). The fungal ability to transform dead matter into succulent growth is horrifying as the visible intermingling of “what should be the ultimate opposites: life and death” (Hogle 108). In many ways, fungi embody the abject; they are “what disturbs identity, system, order, [the] in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (Kristeva 4). We are inextricably connected with fungi in ways that we are still uncovering. Fungi have evolved to become essential components in unexpected systems, from mycorrhizal networks (the contested ‘Wood-Wide Web’ theory) to our own mycobiomes. Fungi are a dynamic and responsive network, repeatedly demonstrating their “capacity for planning and problem-solving” (Sheldrake 41). They are a reminder that the material and natural world “are complex, interconnected and surprising networks of things, each with its own agency, always liable to interact with human plans in surprising and disconcerting ways” (Clark 114). Fungi elude human control. The agency of fungi is a source of ecoGothic possibilities and a challenge to our current way of understanding the world. Although generally unseen, fungi are ubiquitous. Consisting of hyphae, thread-like cells, that network and tangle into mycelium, fungi are highly adaptable to environmental stimuli and able to change their shapes and behaviours for ecological advantage; “fungal forms are other — indeterminate” (Harley 151). What we do see of fungi is usually the fruiting body, which is formed when hyphae swell and push out into the world. In reproduction, too, fungi are happy to mutate by fusing hyphae, creating spores, or asexual duplication. Fungal fruiting bodies take on bizarre shapes and features that can evoke intrigue, horror, and desire. Their names evoke Gothic themes – ‘Dead Man’s Fingers’, ‘Witch’s Butter’, the Tooths, and the Stinkhorns (genus Phallus; BMS, English Names for Fungi). The Cordyceps genus has particularly captured the imagination, bringing about the end of human society as we know it across popular culture, including The Last of Us (video game 2013, TV series 2023-2025), The Girl with All the Gifts (2014, film adaptation 2016), and Cold Storage (2019). Depictions of mutated fungal threats are all the more unsettling for being threaded through with real-life fungal characteristics. Part of this fascination is the unnerving potential of Cordyceps. Currently, each species of Cordyceps is adapted to one insect species. Cordyceps infect the host, manipulate behaviours to fulfill certain conditions, then use the body as sustenance and a site to mature, before fruiting and releasing spores to begin the cycle anew. New forms of Cordyceps are not beyond the realm of possibility considering most fungal species remain “unknown unknowns” (Boddy 24-25). A Cordyceps specialising in humans is a horrifying proposition. Fungal Mutation Rapidly changing environmental conditions and climate crises in the actual world hold an ecoGothic threat by increasing the potential of mutations. On the one hand, mutation can damage the organism and cause its destruction. On the other, a mutation can become an adaptation useful for survival. Similarly to the monsters and superheroes of pulp-fiction, fictional fungal mutations are often an unintended consequence of unmonitored pollution and scientific experimentation. Initially, the mutations turn the fungus into a threat, and the human into food. The mutations can manifest as fungal agency. There is an inherent tension to exploring nonhuman agency. We can only understand our world and concepts of agency on our own terms. Fungal mutations offer a way to explore this tension, the human subsumed into part of an agentic nonhuman and mutated into a new form. Fungal fictions destabilise our conceptions of humans at the top of the evolutionary ladder. In Cold Storage, by David Koepp, an unlikely human crew are pitted against a “highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction”. Rather than a post-apocalyptic fungal future, the novel is set in March 2019, with the Prologue identifying Armillaria solidipes in Oregon (the humongous fungus) as one mutation away from ending all life on earth. Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the threat to human supremacy results from scientific hubris awakening unexpectedly intelligent life that objects to its imprisonment. Researchers take a Cordyceps novus fungus with “peculiar growth properties” into space “to see how it was affected” (14). When the fungus returned to earth, “it was reawakened and found itself in a hot, safe, protein-rich, pro-growth environment. And something caused its higher-level genetic structure to change” (15-16). This mutation makes the fungus faster to adapt to new situations and new prey. The precipitating event to this particular fungus’s escape is the failure of the cooling system restricting its growth. The cooling system relied on a natural spring fed by the Missouri River, which “had spent most of the twenty-first century warming up, along with the rest of the planet” (165). When the mutated fungus invades human hosts, not only does it gain nutrients and a warm place to reproduce, it digests the host’s knowledge. The intangible fundamentals of being human – memories, behaviours, relationships – are digestible matter able to be cut out and consumed as easily as flesh. In a parody of Hollywood creature-features, “Cordyceps novus had tasted humans, and it wanted more” (166). The fungus evolves by using humans as nutrients and incubators. The fungus learns, it has strategies, and its colonies reflect the success of its choices. It is attentive to potential problems and is “an excellent student” (221). At various points in the novel, the “grateful fungus” (46) becomes the narrative focaliser. The shifting focalisation, through fungus, human and, at one point, a deer, manipulates reader empathy. Despite the fungus being an explicit threat, there is a dark humour to the fungus’s reflections on its life and the potential offered by humans, “as if God had drawn these creatures up specifically to make life easy for the fungus” (166). Though narrative is inherently anthropocentric, shifting focalisation highlights the essential difference of fungus: “though it can’t think in those terms, or think at all, per se, a fungus knows what works and what doesn’t, and it pursues the former as vigorously and completely as it disregards the latter” (282). There is an ecoGothic unsettling dichotomy in the fungus “joyfully increasing its biomass” (263), while the humans it consumes suffer a grotesque death. The focus, on whichever being is trying to thrive in adverse circumstances, destabilises anthropocentric points of view. By destabilising expectations of character and narration, readers are forced to think of themselves as food; humans are one mutation away from losing their assumed supremacy. If intelligence, agency, and a capacity to learn can be a result of random mutation, an adaptive strategy for survival, then it is only chance that separates human from nonhuman. It is possible that agency is not an exclusively human attribute, only that humans fail to recognise it in nonhuman beings. Hybrids and Symbiosis Like Cold Storage, in The Girl with All the Gifts (Carey 2014) a mutated Cordyceps variant uses humans as food and fertiliser. Set twenty years after the first infection, the fungal plague has transformed most of the population of England into ‘hungries’, zombie-like beings driven to consume humans at all costs. The protagonist, Melanie, is an intellectually gifted young girl living in a military outpost. She is also a new generation of fungal hybrid, “a child who’s neither, or both” (377). The transformation of the fungal-human can be viewed as a series of cascading mutations and mutual adaptation. The initial mutation allows the fungus to use humans, as its real-world counterpart uses insects. In the first wave of the mutation, the fungus consumes the body from the inside out. Hungries are commanded entirely by the fungus, which hijacks the host’s living brain “making it do what the parasite needs it to do” (377). Before the process of co-adaptation, the fungus “utterly wrecks the brain of a first-generation hungry” (379). By the second generation, “the fungus is spread evenly throughout the brain… it doesn’t feed on the brain… It’s become a true symbiote rather than a parasite” (379). These fungal-children are capable of planning and adapting in search of prey. Unknowable agency coupled with an apparently human form places the reactions of many of the human characters in the realm of abjection. The hungries in Girl are “death infecting life” (Kristeva 4). This second generation is an example of the ambiguous and composite that threatens the boundaries of self (Kristeva 4-5). In this process of generational transformation, it is notable that, unlike the zombies of the first mutation, the second-generation has more than a hint of the vampiric: “a face out of nightmare… Dark-eyed, pale-skinned… Its wide mouth hangs open to display slender pointed teeth like the teeth of a piranha… reacting to the light with instant, murderous rage” (384). These traditional Gothic monsters are liminal beings, a semblance of life and nearly-human forms. Coupled with the fungus, these interstitial creatures further destabilise the boundaries of human/nonhuman: “they exist across multiple categories of being and conform cleanly to none of them” (Hurley 24). Their monstrousness is a discomforting illustration of the natural world overwhelming porous human boundaries. Considering these beings as ecoGothic monsters, their propensity to shift and function as “the harbinger of category crisis” (Cohen 40) means they could be productively read through Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender” (37). Fungi and fungal mutations challenge us to “reevaluate our cultural assumptions” (Cohen 52). Fungal life is networked and rhizomatic, rather than hierarchical. Kingdom Fungi encompasses a plurality of forms, adaptations, methods of reproduction, and ways of being. As well as continually evading human control, both in fiction and real life, fungi raise questions about agency as a distinctly human quality. Certainly, this new generation of fungal-human beings are an ecoGothic example of monsters that “stand at the threshold” of becoming (Cohen 52). As well as the almost-human monsters, The Girl with All the Gifts features entirely human ones. Dr. Caldwell is the human expert on this (fictional) version of the Cordyceps fungus. Her dissections of the fungal-children reveal mycelial threads and fungal matter are dispersed throughout their bodies. Though she repeatedly deems these deaths necessary for scientific understanding, at her final dissection she acknowledges “the extent (close to a hundred per cent) to which her own labours over these past seven years have been a waste of time” (371). Caldwell’s monstrosity is her refusal to acknowledge the capacities of the nonhuman, or its value as a lifeform. Her response is ecophobic. She sees Melanie and the other fungal-children only in terms of how they can be used for human survival rather than the next step in the process of adaptation. For Caldwell, they are not worthy of attention because “the subject presents as a child but is actually a fungal colony animating a child’s body” (112). Caldwell’s theories of fungal behaviour are modelled on her own willingness to ignore anything that does not serve her, assuming the fungus would shut down “all behaviours that didn’t serve the parasite’s agenda” (378). Early in the novel, Caldwell explains that the fungus hasn’t spored, and determines that it can only reproduce “asexually, in a nutrient solution. Ideally, human blood” (52). However, on the journey to find another safehold she sees hungries behaving in ways that demonstrate “the survival of other human drives and emotions” (379). Her assumption that the fungus would not have needed the sex drive or motherly instinct leads her to make the false assumption that the children were immune, a different type of infection, rather than a posthuman form adapted for survival in symbiosis with the fungus. By not entirely destroying elements of its human host, the fungus benefits from human methods of reproduction in a world where fresh prey is running low and the original hungries have deteriorated beyond use. This implies fungal agency even before the co-mutation and symbiosis with the human; the fungus was able to make decisions based on possible futures, then mutate again to ensure its survival. Caldwell’s attempts to classify the fungal-children misses that they have already grown beyond the human. Caldwell’s single-mindedness might serve to warn us that, though we privilege human agency and cognition, we are “constantly influenced and altered” by nonhuman organisms (Tidwell “Ecohorror” 542). One of Caldwell’s final observations is that “the world is winding down” (377). She continues to identify Melanie as ‘merely a hungry’, nothing more than a body “infected with a fungus” (377). And yet, Melanie is the “the messenger sent by providence” (380) to hear the summation of Caldwell’s labours. This irony challenges the reader to consider whose world is winding down and how we can reimagine the world that comes next. Johan Höglund’s analysis of the text suggests that human extinction is “certainly not as tragic as the alternative future of constant killing and destruction that Melanie envisages” and that “something is gained by making room for tentacular multispecies being and becoming… The novel makes it possible to envisage the hybrid children forming communities very different from current human society” (261). It is in the hybridity, the symbiosis between fungi and human, that a being emerges that can survive in the world after the fungi finally spores. By adapting our approach to connections and partnerships with the nonhuman, it is possible that a new generation will emerge that can thrive in a hybrid future. Conclusion In fungal fictions, human responses to fungal mutations range from ecophobic attempts to destroy or control through to acceptance of a new normal, even at the cost of human individuality. These unsettling scenarios show the positive potential for hybridity and symbiosis, where decentring the human perhaps “leaves room for other species to live and flourish’ (Tidwell “Monstrous Natures” 543). Reframing existing human structures as non-hierarchical and rhizomatic opens the possibility that we adopt “a collective, mycelial way of thinking about ourselves and the ecologies outside of the self” and that “we must also reimagine the possibility of agency and subjectivity” in nonhuman and fungal life” (Kniss 24). Ultimately, whether they emerge due to random chance or a result of human action, fungal mutations are an ecoGothic confrontation with the limits of our own control. By troubling anthropocentric borders of body and mind, mycological texts challenge readers to confront “their own tangible, embodied and emplaced selves as material beings, interconnected with substances and the world” (Kuznetski and Alaimo 140). These fictions allow us to conceptualise and experiment with other types of agency and ways of being. They are also a response to the anxiety about what might come about if humanity continues to cause ever greater ecological shifts. Fungal fiction offers the potential for adapting alongside the nonhuman rather than fighting it. As Kniss notes, to survive the Anthropocene will require “sacrifice of human identity and way of life” and “a posthuman reimagining of our place in ecological hierarchies” (25). The possibilities of mutation and adaptation are, like fungi, more of an and/and than either/or. Amidst the horror of change, where established structures are upended, there remains the potential for better, deeper connections with the natural environment and opportunities to work in partnership with the nonhuman world, rather than by fear or dominance. In the end, it is mutation that might save us after all. References Alaimo, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana UP, 2010. Bierend, Doug. In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021. Boddy, Lynne, and Ali Ashby. Fungi: Discover the Science and Secrets behind the World of Mushrooms. Dorling Kindersley, 2024. Carey, M.R. The Girl with All the Gifts. Orbit, 2014. Clark, Timothy. The Value of Ecocriticism. Cambridge UP, 2019. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” The Monster Theory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. U of Minnesota P, 2020. 37–56. Estok, Simon C. “Theorising the EcoGothic.” Gothic Nature 1 (2019): 34–53. <https://gothicnaturejournal.com/issue-1-view-online/>. ———. “Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 16.2 (2009): 203–25. <https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isp010>. Fitzpatrick, Teresa. “The Rise in Ecohorror and Ecogothic Criticism.” The Evolution of Horror in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Simon Bacon. Lexington Books, 2023. 259–74. Frost, Peter. “Are Fungal Pathogens Manipulating Human Behavior?” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 63.4 (2020): 591–601. <https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2020.0059>. Harley, Alexis. “Writing the Lives of Fungi at the End of the World.” A/b: Auto/Biography Studies 35.1 (2020): 145–59. <https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2020.1720184>. Hogle, Jerrold E. “Abjection as Gothic and Gothic as Abjection.” The Gothic and Theory: An Edinburgh Companion, eds. Jerrold E. Hogle and Robert Miles. Edinburgh UP, 2019. 108–26. <https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427777.003.0006>. Höglund, Johan. “The Anthropocene Within: Love and Extinction in M.R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts and The Boy on the Bridge.” Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene, eds. Justin D. Edwards et al. U of Minnesota P, 2022. 253–69. Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge UP, 1996. British Mycological Society. “Identification.” 1 Apr. 2025 <https://www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/identification.html>. Kaishian, Patricia, and Hasmik Djoulakian. “The Science Underground: Mycology as a Queer Discipline.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 6.2 (2020). <https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v6i2.33523>. Keetley, Dawn, and Matthew Wynn Sivils. “Introduction: Approaches to EcoGothic.” EcoGothic in Nineteenth Century American Literature, eds. Dawn Keetley and Matthew Wynn Sivils. Taylor & Francis, 2018. 1–20. Kniss, Ashley. “Gothic Mycology and Posthuman Ethics in Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.” Poe Studies 57 (2024): 21–44. <https://doi.org/10.1353/poe.2024.a938997>. Koepp, David. Cold Storage. Ecco, 2019. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia UP, 1982. Kuznetski, Julia, and Stacy Alaimo. “Transcorporeality: An Interview with Stacy Alaimo.” Ecozon@ 11.2 (2020): 137–46. <https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2020.11.2.3478>. Pinder, Morgan. “Mouldy Matriarchs and Dangerous Daughters: An Ecofeminist Look at Resident Evil Antagonists.” M/C Journal 25.5 (2021). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2832>. Sheldrake, Merlin. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Random House, 2020. Tidwell, Christy. “Ecohorror.” Posthuman Glossary, eds. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 115–17. ———. “Monstrous Natures Within: Posthuman and New Materialist Ecohorror in Mira Grant’s Parasite.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 21.3 (2014): 538–49. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/26430361>.

Chapter III: Ambivalent Narrative: Affirming (Posthuman?) Monstrosity

2025-06-15

| V&R unipress eBooks

Chapter II: Eco-Hunter in Defence of Exploited Nature

2025-06-15

| V&R unipress eBooks

A meaningful performative experience: using Forum Theatre as an ethical method in sustainability science

2025-06-14

María Mancilla García , Lena Bertemes Lalia , Marlino Eugénio Mubai +7 more | Sustainability Science

Abstract Sustainability scientists have engaged in extensive discussions on ethical ways of doing research and argued on the importance of co-production approaches to counter knowledge extractivism. The specific issue of … Abstract Sustainability scientists have engaged in extensive discussions on ethical ways of doing research and argued on the importance of co-production approaches to counter knowledge extractivism. The specific issue of research fatigue, often associated with knowledge extractivism, and the possible methods to counter it, have however received less attention. This paper seeks to contribute to discussions on ethical ways of doing research by focusing on our experience of using theatre, specifically, Forum Theatre, to investigate divergent perceptions of environmental change and related tensions among selected coastal communities in Kenya and Mozambique. We argue that Forum Theatre constitutes an ethical method for sustainability scientists for four reasons: (i) it allows to co-produce knowledge with participants; (ii) it facilitates horizontal exchange; (iii) it creates joyful moments; and (iv) it enables the transmission of skills that remain with participants beyond project durations. The paper engages with these four themes, first theoretically and then proposing a reflection based on our project experience. In the last section, we warn against some of the limitations of the approach.

From fledging to independence: Post-fledging movements and space use of the Crested Ibis

2025-06-14

Lei Yu , Xianglong Xu , Yuanxing Ye +6 more | Avian Research

Handmade relief models as matters of concern: Maintaining, restoring, and repairing mountains?

2025-06-14

Alain Mueller | Social Studies of Science

Through a case study of what are known as ‘relief models’—for example of areas of landscapes—this article approaches representational objects in and as practice. Such an approach implies following the … Through a case study of what are known as ‘relief models’—for example of areas of landscapes—this article approaches representational objects in and as practice. Such an approach implies following the multiplicity of practices that are gathered in representational objects to bring them into and maintain their existence, especially those that often remain unacknowledged by analytical attention. Most discussions of representational objects focus on their representational capacities and properties, paying less attention to the activities that ensure their ontological security as objects. Those activities concern not only the manufacture of representational objects, but also their maintenance—which is placed at the heart of this discussion. The maintenance of relief models manifests itself as a semiotic-material ecology. Entangled here are the ontological tact of the craftsperson, the affordances, resistances, and responsiveness of the materials, and the meaning-makings and stories that articulate and guide maintenance and repair. The practice of maintaining such objects, however, diverges from their production. Their production essentially accommodates metric distance since representation involves transporting a ‘thing’ through chains of reference. On the contrary, their maintenance aims to accommodate multiple temporalities. This involves not only the ways of being in time that are specific to each material that composes the object but also the idealized past of an unused object, its worn present, and its anticipated (repaired) future. By playing with the double meaning of the word ‘representing’, this article speculatively questions the extent to which practices of maintenance of, and care for, representational objects can inform a re-vision and rethinking of the relationships to what they are meant to re-present —that is, to what counts as nature.

Etin Cinsel Politikası ve David Mitchell’ın Bulut Atlası Romanında Hayvanlaştırılan Kadın Klonlar

2025-06-14

Adem Balcı | Deleted Journal

Vegan-feminist eleştirmen Carol J. Adams’ın aynı adlı kitabında ortaya attığı “etin cinsel politikası” kuramından yola çıkan bu makale, ataerkil toplumlarda cinsel şiddet ve et yeme arasında sıkı bir bağ olduğunu … Vegan-feminist eleştirmen Carol J. Adams’ın aynı adlı kitabında ortaya attığı “etin cinsel politikası” kuramından yola çıkan bu makale, ataerkil toplumlarda cinsel şiddet ve et yeme arasında sıkı bir bağ olduğunu iddia etmektedir. Nitekim ataerkinin kadınlara ve hayvanlara yönelttiği, cinselleştirilmiş bir eril şiddettir. Teorik ve pratik olmak üzere iki bölümden oluşan makalenin kuramsal bölümü, ataerkinin çıkış noktası ve Batı düşünce sisteminin temellerini oluşturan ikili karşıtlıkları incelemeyle başlamaktadır. “İnsan-hayvan” ve “erkek-kadın” ikiliklerinin temelde “insan=erkek-kadın=hayvan” şeklinde tek bir ikilik olduğunun ileri sürüldüğü bu bölümde özne pozisyonundaki erkeğin, ikinci konuma itilen kadını ve hayvanı nesneleştirerek sömürdüğü tartışılmaktadır. Kuramsal bölümün ikinci kısmı, Adams’ın vegan-feminist kuramı ışığında şiddete uğrayan kadınların hayvanlaştırılmasını ve ete dönüştürülen hayvanların cinselleştirilip dişilleştirilmesini ele almaktadır. Bu kısım özellikle Adams’ın aynı kitapta tartıştığı “kayıp gönderge” kavramı üzerinden ilerlemektedir; çünkü ataerki, kayıp gönderge sistemi vasıtasıyla kadınlara ve hayvanlara uyguladığı benzer şiddetleri ötekinin maruz kaldığı muameleyi akıllara getirerek maskelemekte ve kuvvetlendirmektedir. Uygulama bölümüyse İngiliz yazar David Mitchell’ın Bulut Atlası (2004) adlı romanının “Sonmi~451’in Niyazı” başlıklı distopik anlatısında kesilerek ete dönüştürülen kadın klonlar üzerinden etin cinsel politikasını incelemektedir. Kadın klonların, Papa Song isimli kapitalist işletmecinin mezbahasında ete dönüştürüldükten sonra zincir restoranlarında servis edilmeleri kayıp gönderge kavramıyla ele alınmakta ve gördükleri bu muamelenin hayvanlaştırılmalarından kaynaklandığı ileri sürülmektedir.

Relationality, Immanence, Hierarchy: The Nature and Culture of Being(s) at Göbekli Tepe

2025-06-13

Marc Verhoeven | Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Abstract This paper deals with symbolic and ontological human–animal relationships at the Early Neolithic (PPNA) site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Here a series of megalithic round stone buildings, … Abstract This paper deals with symbolic and ontological human–animal relationships at the Early Neolithic (PPNA) site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Here a series of megalithic round stone buildings, built by hunter-gatherers, were embellished by large stone pillars with depictions of animals, particularly predators. On the basis of an analysis of the pillar iconography and of recent anthropological and archaeological insights about alterity and perceptions of nature and culture, it will be argued that human–animal relationships at Göbekli Tepe were part of an ontology marked by both immanence and hierarchy. Imagistic ritualization in evocative architectural contexts, probably directed by shamans, served to express such relations. The internal logic of this is exemplified in a model of the world of Göbekli Tepe, based on a novel approach with so-called referential relations and compositional hierarchy as ways to explore and interpret relations between beings and things.

Presencias no-humanas en el fin del mundo. Animales y animalidad en "Mugre rosa" de Fernanda Trías

2025-06-13

Sergio I. Rosas-Romero | Pasavento Revista de Estudios Hispánicos

Fernanda Trías se ha posicionado como una de las autoras en español más relevantes del siglo xxi. Aunque su carrera literaria se inició tiempo atrás, la publicación de la novela … Fernanda Trías se ha posicionado como una de las autoras en español más relevantes del siglo xxi. Aunque su carrera literaria se inició tiempo atrás, la publicación de la novela Mugre rosa, una ficción pandémica y distópica, tuvo una gran acogida lectora y crítica en distintos puntos del planeta. Si bien la novela se ha estudiado desde los temas de la toxicidad, las maternidades-otras y el encierro o la desazón, no existe aún ningún estudio que se centre en el análisis de los muchos animales no-humanos que pueblan la novela. Así, en este artículo defiendo la idea de que estas presencias no-humanas son parte fundamental de la novela, y que responden a una postura crítica ante los estragos del Antropoceno. Para ello, me valdré de aportes teóricos transdisciplinares, como son el ecofeminismo, los estudios animales y el poshumanismo, para así analizar tres casos concretos en la novela, como son las aves, el perro y un humanimal llamado Mauro. Espero demostrar con dicho análisis que Mugre rosa incluye en su ficción especulativa un espacio de reflexión privilegiado y transgresor sobre la relación humano/no-humano, lo que la hace una de las novelas en español más relevantes de los últimos años.

More-than-Human Geography: Core Issues and Trends

2025-06-13

Lei Wu | International Journal of Social Sciences and Public Administration

In the 21st century, in the trend of ‘returning to materialism’ in Western geography, More-than-Human Geography (MTHG) has emerged as one of the most important ways of exploring the world … In the 21st century, in the trend of ‘returning to materialism’ in Western geography, More-than-Human Geography (MTHG) has emerged as one of the most important ways of exploring the world constituted by human and non-human beings. Through the analysis of relevant journal articles and books, the review finds that there are obvious differences between domestic and international research on MTHG: the West focuses on ecological politics and climate ethics with an ontological revolution as the core, while China focuses on the materialistic turn and localised application. As one of the most groundbreaking theoretical paradigms in human geography in the 21st century, MTHG dissolves the dichotomy between natural determinism and social constructivism, reconstructs the spatial cognitive paradigm of dynamic correlation, and provides a technological and ethical framework for cross-species collaboration in urban planning and ecological restoration.

Introduction. Creating the ‘Good Life’ in the City: Rethinking Urban Spaces from More-than-human Perspectives

2025-06-13

Tanja Granzow , Jacqueline Lorenzen , Matthias Schümann | Global Environment

This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Re-articulating Resistance in Urban* Environments. For Edgy, Plural, More-than-human Good Lives in an Age of Translocalisation

2025-06-13

Elisa T. Bertuzzo | Global Environment

With societies’ growing complexity, determining the ‘good life’ seems unrealistic. This paper re-asserts the plurality of locally specific ‘good lives’, by focusing on cohabitations and connections which enable more-than-human resistance … With societies’ growing complexity, determining the ‘good life’ seems unrealistic. This paper re-asserts the plurality of locally specific ‘good lives’, by focusing on cohabitations and connections which enable more-than-human resistance to contemporary capitalist expulsion and ecological destruction. Linking discourses in gender studies, decolonial praxis, political ecology and urban studies, it discusses more-than-human intra-relatings emerging from global migration and intensifying ecological distress. An ethnographic account of fieldwork conducted in Italy, in a context of rural exodus, flawed EU agricultural policies and rain scarcity, reconstructs trajectories of adaptive seeds imported, developed, selected and cultivated by migrants from Bangladesh on vacant or underused fields. The case study reveals resilient human-vegetal connections supported by far-flung socio-ecological infrastructures in hybrid environments, conceptualised as ‘ urban *’. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Living on buffered time: Toward another sociology of storage

2025-06-12

Veit Braun | Acta Sociologica

This article seeks to understand the role of storage for social time. While social theory has largely interpreted storage in spatial terms, a recent body of literature explores how cold … This article seeks to understand the role of storage for social time. While social theory has largely interpreted storage in spatial terms, a recent body of literature explores how cold storage technologies affect society's relationship with time. The ability to suspend life in ice, several scholars argue, leads to a new relationship with time: the future becomes malleable as frozen cells, tissues and seeds are options with which events can be reversed, action can be postponed, and the status quo can be preserved. However, a growing number of empirical studies of cold storage complicates this hypothesis, finding that these technologies are often used to accelerate action instead. The divergence, this article argues, can be understood by linking the assumptions underlying the suspension hypothesis to sociological concepts like value, expectations, and especially practice. It argues that under certain circumstances, storage is best understood as dynamic rather than static. Taking in things and releasing them at different rates, it acts as a form of buffer that can link social activity and flows of different speeds and rhythms without imposing a shared temporality on them. On these grounds, the article pleads for a broadened understanding of storage as a social technique that affects both space and time.

1. Breathing Violence: Airborne Plastics, Materiality, and Anthropogenic Harm

2025-06-12

Savannah Schaufler | University of Exeter Press eBooks

North America’s last prairies Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty Random House, 2025. 400 pp.

2025-06-12

Sarah Boon | Science

The region’s grasslands—vital ecosystems and carbon sinks—have been farmed and ranched beyond recognition The region’s grasslands—vital ecosystems and carbon sinks—have been farmed and ranched beyond recognition