Animal geographies II

I Introduction

What disciplinary engagements do animal geographers pursue to enhance understandings of human-animal relations? What future collaborations within geography might be productive? To answer these questions, I continue my theme for this animal geographies trilogy (see Hovorka, 2016) of highlighting and embracing the ‘heterogeneity of ideas, practices, methodologies and associations’ (Buller, 2014: 31) of our wide-reaching and diverse interspecies networks. For this second progress report, I invoke hybridity as disciplinary practice and conceptual frame to encourage creative conversations regarding animals and to generate holistic knowledge of human-animal relations.

First, I draw inspiration from Mei-Po Kwan’s (2004) call for hybrid rather than canonical tendencies within the discipline of geography. Kwan argues that the ebbs and flows of new theoretical or methodological approaches, and resultant geographical visions, are often marked by antagonistic discourses that deem unacceptable existing or emerging viewpoints. Disciplinary efforts to canonize a particular approach mean that creative synergies are left untapped and alternatives are less likely to emerge. Kwan offers hybridity as the location between geographical perspectives where differences may be productively negotiated, facilitating fluid identities beneficial for innovative geographical research. Examining the arguably canonical evolution of animal geographies to date reveals synergies with human geography sub-disciplines, and offers possibilities for future engagements with human-environment geographies, physical geographies and geomatics.

Second, I embrace the concept of hybridity to push animal geographies’ boundaries in productive directions. Originating in the natural sciences to signify offspring of different species, the term has gained currency in recent intellectual movements valorizing emergent conditions and debunking modernist dichotomies. Hybrids ‘transgress and displace boundaries between binary divisions and in doing so produce something ontologically new’ (Rose, 2000: 364). More-than-human, beyond-anthropocentric and posthumanist thought in geography have brought forward new conceptualizations of humans, natures, animals, and associated entities and dynamics in between (Castree et al., 2013; Haraway, 2008; Whatmore, 2002). Hybridity is a burgeoning trend in animal geographies, producing new and exciting knowledge about human-animal relations. Arguably, further engaging hybridity conceptually within animal geographies research requires hybridized disciplinary practice.

I begin this report by surveying the current hybridized scope of animal geographies scholarship to emphasize sub-disciplinary synergies that have taken or are taking place. I argue that existing synergies fall largely within traditionally human realms of geography, reflecting the evolution of ‘third wave’ animal geographies since the 1990s. I also argue that emerging conceptual hybridity trends may be characterized as a ‘fourth wave’ pushing scholarly boundaries via affective engagements that require sub-disciplinary engagements beyond human geography. I then survey how future animal research may benefit from further extension into human-environment geographies, physical geographies and geomatics so as to capitalize on hybridity as both concept and practice aimed at exploring the lives of animals in and of themselves, and in relation to humans and the environment more broadly.

II Hybridity trends in animal geographies

Animal geographies’ original iterations may be characterized as canonical. Early 20th-century (‘first wave’ à la Urbanik, 2012) animal geography featured zoogeographic perspectives examining animal spatial patterns and distributions, and environmental conditions shaping species adaptations (Hesse, 1924; Newbigin, 1913; Shelford, 1911). Middle 20th-century (‘second wave’) animal geography featured cultural perspectives examining animals as symbolic sites (Bennett, 1960; Sauer, 1952). Late 20th-century (‘third wave’) animal geography offered a ‘new’ cultural perspective, highlighting animals as subjects rather than as objects under human control (Urbanik, 2012), drawing attention to conceptual questions of the animal (in relation to and defining the human) and exploring human-animal encounters in relation to space, place, location, environment, and landscape (Philo and Wolch, 1998).

This third wave has promoted synergies among human geography’s sub-disciplines since the late 1990s, largely through its imperative to ontologically and epistemologically reconfigure anthropocentric social science and humanities traditions (Buller, 2014). As a result, the animal silence is no longer as deafening (cf. Wolch and Emel, 1995) in human geography. Some argue that human-animal interactions have been ‘corralled’ into particular human-based scholarly realms (Srinivasan, 2016: 76). Nevertheless, robust synergies exist between animal geographies and the likes of rural, urban, historical, cultural, social, critical race, and feminist geography (see overviews by Buller, 2014, and Urbanik, 2012).

Contemporary animal geographies are moving into an arguably ‘fourth wave’ on account of hybridity as both conceptual frame and disciplinary practice. Urbanik (2012) identifies hybridity as a foundational concept of animal geographies (albeit still part of the ‘third wave’) ushered in with post-humanism and beyond-anthropocentric fields (e.g. STS, ANT). Animal geographers are ontologically challenging ideas of whose (animal) life might be known and epistemologically contemplating what an animal worldview may be, how an animal may wish to represent itself, and how we may come to know these expressions (Hovorka, 2015). Animal geographers are moving more firmly from ‘the animal’ solely as a conceptual device to interrogate ‘the human’, towards more intimate lived and dwelt encounters with animals themselves as necessarily networked beings (Buller, 2013). Operationalizing hybridity requires engaging animals directly and materially. The challenges of achieving empathetic understanding and representation of animal lives should not be used to discard the possibilities of such knowing; indeed, acknowledging animals as active subjects possessing situated knowledge is within the realm of possibilities (Birke, 1991; Nagel, 1974) and prerequisite to engaging them in scholarly and political arenas.

Operationalizing hybridity conceptually requires interdisciplinarity practice. To this end, animal geographers are applying methodologies to grapple with animal agency and the innate and learned behaviours, engagements, circumstances, and experiences of animals in and of themselves (Buller, 2014; Hodgetts and Lorimer, 2015). We are learning-to-be-affected (Haraway, 2008) so as to explore animals’ geographies and lived experiences (Hodgetts and Lorimer, 2015). We are stretching to acquaint ourselves with the particularities of nature and forging beneficial alliances to investigate its complexity (Lulka, 2009). This requires bridging social and natural sciences, embracing numerous modes of inquiry and associated calibrations, and supplementing familiar repertoires of humanist methods with those that amplify other corporeal registers (Jepson et al., 2011; Lorimer, 2010; Whatmore, 2006). Animal geographers increasingly have as much to say about ‘beastly places’ relative to ‘animal spaces’ through innovative trans-species methodologies (Buller, 2014; Hodgetts and Lorimer, 2015).

As an early example, Gullo et al. (1998) engage cougar behavioural ecology to assess how cougar ideas about people may be changing given human encroachment and other habitat pressures in California. They take cougars themselves as a starting point to consider how animals construct and interact with people. They explore whether predators try to fit unfamiliar animals (i.e. humans) into preconceived mental maps of prey opportunities or whether they construct new sets of distinctions about danger and diet to guide their behaviour. Findings reveal that cougars appear curious about people yet keep a respectful distance, suggesting adapting to a shared habitat with humans in metropolitan border zones and trading off potential danger from humans with the benefit of plentiful (non-human) prey in shared cougar-human spaces. Once considered prisoners of instinct, the authors argue, cougars learn from experience and adapt behaviour accordingly. The authors also highlight the social processes by which cougars come to be seen by people as having certain powers, personalities, virtues and vices. They argue that animal-human borderlands require learned understanding and behavioural change by both cougars and humans, perhaps most effectively by keeping a respectful distance, to ensure safe and fruitful co-existence.

In another example, Risan (2005) explores cow subjectivity through insights on mindfulness and resultant behaviour. He describes the story of ovulating cow #445 who instinctively and/or perceptively runs away from her regularly scheduled artificial insemination procedure of which the author himself is a part. The cow realized, according to Risan, that something was coming. The author contemplates whether it was his focused gaze and bodily determination that made the cow react instinctively and flee while other non-ovulating cows remained put. He argues that the cow subjectively interpreted the situation based on awareness of her own ovulation, past experience of ovulation (leading to AI procedures), and observation of his determined approach. He grounds his claims in ethological and neurological evidence that such introspective interpretation of mammalian thought reflects conscious, emotional, cognitive and creative inner life of the animal. In turn, interpretation of a cow’s mind, as unique and relational rather than an expression of something general, is necessary in the study of animal intentionality and behaviours. The cow interpreted the author’s cues in a cultural, technological, historical-specific context, including her past experience with AI by humans, yet the interaction between cow and author was also shaped by millions of years of natural history.

Gullo et al.’s cougars and Risan’s cow provide early (‘third wave’) examples engaging hybridity as concept and practice. Both offer insights on animals as ‘becoming’ through material and discursive processes; both engage trans-disciplinary approaches drawn from social and natural sciences to explore the lives of animals themselves, as well as in relation to humans and the broader environment. Other animal geographers offering similarly robust engagements with and insights on animal ecology, behaviour, cognition, mindfulness and welfare include, for example, Whatmore and Thorne’s (2000) elephants, Lulka’s (2004) bisons, J. Lorimer’s (2008) corncrakes, Dempsey’s (2010) bears, H. Lorimer’s (2010) seals, Bear’s (2011) octopus, Miele’s (2011) chickens, Collard’s (2012) cougars, Barua’s (2014a) elephants, and Geiger and Hovorka’s (2015) donkeys.

Here I wish to argue that hybridity may serve as foundational concept and practice for a fourth wave of animal geographies given the scope and possibilities of knowing through such robust conceptualizations and methodologies. I also argue that geographers as a whole are well positioned to contribute holistic and rigorous understanding of the lives of animals on account of our interdisciplinarity and interests in human-environment relations. Animal geographers may capitalize on these hybrid synergies to ‘bring animals more fully into’ human-environment geographies, physical geographies and geomatics.

III Animal hybridity: Opportunities in geography

Opportunities exist to bring animals more fully into geography as a whole by acknowledging central tenets of animals as subjects and agents, and by operationalizing hybrid conceptual frames in interdisciplinary ways. Sub-disciplinary engagements beyond human geographies offer animal geographers possibilities of exploring ‘beastly places’; concurrently, human-environment geographers, physical geographers and geomatics scientists may be inspired by studying ‘nature’ in a way that highlights animals. Below I identify fruitful opportunities and calls for geographers to become (further) affected by the lives of animals vis-à-vis political ecology, global environmental change geographies, and biogeographies.

First, political ecology explores how environmental issues, dynamics and conditions are products and drivers of political processes that reinforce the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ rooted in societal struggles manifested at multiple scales (Robbins, 2004; Roth, 2015; Perreault et al., 2015). Animals feature as topics of study (often by scholars self-identifying as both animal geographers and political ecologists), including animal/fish husbandry (Bassett, 1988; Lien, 2005; Turner, 2004), agriculture (Emel and Neo, 2011, 2015; Evenden, 2004; Hovorka, 2006), biodiversity conservation and wildlife conflict (Barua, 2014b; Campbell, 2007; Collard, 2012; DeMotts and Hoon, 2012; Goldman et al., 2013; Goldman, 2009; Lunstrum, 2014; Neumann, 1992, Sundberg, 2011), and animal commodification (Collard, 2014; Collard and Dempsey, 2013). Yet political ecology is largely anthropocentric with animals as backgrounded, incidental, static or material things (Emel and Neo, 2015; Hobson, 2007; Srinivasan, 2016). Opportunities exist to explore how animals influence environmental politics, how political processes shape animal circumstances and experiences, and how species relations of power (human-animal or animal-animal) manifest across local, regional and global scales. Geographers have begun to seize such opportunities. For example, Hobson (2007: 250) urges political ecologists to view animals as ‘dynamic beings, inextricable to political processes, and integral to the formation and operation of political networks that regulate, protect and exploit them’. Her case study of bear bile farming in East Asia engages a hybrid lens, revealing bears as already-active political constituents embedded within uneven processes and diverse forms of power. Sundberg (2011) encourages political ecologists to recognize nonhuman properties, energies, and potentials as central to political outcomes given their role as political actors imbued with agency (also see Notzke, 2013). She grounds post-humanist political ecology in performative aspects of nonhumans and builds upon relational hybrid and networked metaphors to account for situated politics-in-action where all bodies are participants in bringing the world into being. Srinivasan and Kasturirangan (2016) challenge political ecology to recognize the adverse effects of mainstream development efforts as shaped by a human/animal dichotomy and discourse of human exceptionalism. They claim that development efforts focused on the pursuit of human wellbeing must embrace the wellbeing of nonhuman nature. Arguably, animals offer political ecologies opportunities for engaging more with ‘ecology’ (see Vayda and Walters, 1999; Walker, 2005) by considering animals as pivotal actors shaping human-environment conditions, change, and outcomes through networked and hybridized concepts (see Turner, 2016). Political ecologies align well with animal geographies given theoretical commitment to post-positivist understandings of nature, methodological commitment to mixed, place-based approaches, and political commitment to social justice and change (Perreault et al., 2015).

Second, global environmental change geographies explore vulnerabilities of people and ecosystems to natural and anthropocentric hazards. This sub-disciplinary realm engages coupled human-environment systems-based approaches and defines vulnerability as exposure to socio-environmental stressors, sensitivity to the exposure, and adaptive capacity to cope with, respond to, and recover from the hazard (e.g. Burton et al., 1993; Leichenko and O’Brien, 2008; O’Brien and Leichenko, 2000; Polsky et al., 2007; Smit and Wandel, 2006; Turner et al., 2003). Existing scholarship is anthropocentric with animals subsumed into ‘environment’ and positioned as drivers of environmental change (e.g. livestock industry) or as exposure units (e.g. animal-based livelihoods or biodiversity threatened by hazards) (Stoddard, 2015). Opportunities exist to explore further the role, agency and vulnerabilities of animals in global environmental change dynamics. For example, production systems for meat, eggs and milk emit greenhouse gases and facilitate disease transfer, compromising both ecological and human health (Gerber et al., 2013; Ilea, 2009; Koneswaran and Nierenerg, 2008; Pelletier and Tyedmers, 2010; Steinfeld et al., 2006, 2010). Growth, intensification and industrialization of livestock production have accelerated biophysical contradictions of capitalist agriculture, entrenched socioeconomic inequities with major environmental implications (Weis, 2013), and exacerbated variable weather conditions compromising grazing land and rendering humans vulnerable to loss of foodstuffs and economic instability (Freeman et al., 2008). That human exploitation of animals shapes global environmental change and creates such animal, human and ecological vulnerability in the first place goes largely unaddressed (Stoddard, 2015). Animal lives, circumstances and experiences as vulnerable actors and components of such systems are left unexplored, as are broader issues related to animal welfare and injustice. Existing research also highlights animals as vulnerable to biodiversity loss (Hautier et al., 2015; Lovejoy and Hannah, 2005; Mannion, 2014) and/or human-wildlife conflict exacerbated by or driving global environmental change (Manfredo, 2015). Again, however, global environmental change research conceptualizes animals as biophysical components associated with ecosystem services, structures and function, rather than actors within social-cultural and political-economic systems. Enhanced sub-disciplinary conversations could offer, for example, a trebled animal-human-environment system as conceptual lens recognizing vulnerabilities of animals, humans and ecosystems as interdependent. Further, ‘environmentalist discourse’ of global environmental change scholarship could illuminate animal tendencies and biophysical properties as part of more robust hybrid understandings of ‘the animal’.

Third, biogeography studies the spatial and temporal distribution of biological entities (from species to higher orders of taxonomic classification) and ecosystems, searching for explanations as to factors underlying such patterns and developments (Thomas, 2016). Zoogeography is the branch of biogeography that focuses specifically on animal species and processes (see Russo, 2011); connections to first-wave animal geography are explored elsewhere (see Urbanik, 2011). Animals do not feature prominently in contemporary biogeography, which focuses primarily on plant distributions and vegetation dynamics (Lorimer, 2010; Lulka, 2009). Yet physical geographers working at the interface of biogeography and conservation biology highlight animals and animal-human relations more broadly (Alexander et al., 2005; Bryan et al., 2015; Darimont et al., 2015; Housty et al., 2014; Lukasik and Alexander, 2012). This is similarly the case for those engaging animal-based geomatics to explore spatial distributions, movements and dynamics of animals in relation to human populations and in broader ecological contexts (Alexander et al., 2004; Graves and Wang, 2012; Steklis et al., 2005; Tang and Bennett, 2010). Opportunities exist here for animal geographers, physical (bio)geographers, and geomatics scholars. For example, Lulka (2009) argues that a ‘reasonable alliance’ between social and biological sciences may be achieved through ‘thick hybridity’ that merges human-centric accounts with the particularities of nature cast in terms of biotic interchange, material exchanges, and mundane interactions among different species. Lorimer (2010) argues that we need to open up conversations between human and physical geographers to enact ‘lively biogeographies’ for interdisciplinary understanding and collaboration. He notes that the relational turn has brought out common threads amongst geographers in part via hybrid and networked metaphors, and increasing attention to animal behaviour, agency and intelligence in the ‘becoming’ of animals in different socioecological contexts. Hodgetts and Lorimer (2015) point out a need for animal geographers to converse with scientists, given our methodological shortcomings (e.g. lack of field skills, instruments, and training to do research on ‘beastly places’). They also argue that animals should not be left to biologists alone, given that animals matter as political and ethical subjects and we must comprehend and possibly improve their life experience. They identify and assess methodological developments that may facilitate interdisciplinary conversations related to technologies for monitoring, tracking, analysing spatialities of animal behaviour, mobilities and communication in productive ways. Jepson et al. (2011) offer useful insights on how animals may be embraced more fully within conservation biology as ‘actors’ with the capacity to produce a phenomenon or modify a state of affairs. They apply a ‘soft’ actor network theory to illustrate how elephants co-produce their conservation through relationships with humans, technologies and institutions in a particular context.

IV Conclusion

In conclusion, animal geographies embracing hybridity as a conceptual frame will benefit from enhanced interdisciplinary engagements with human-environment geographies, physical geographies and geomatics. Investigating wholly and rigorously animal lives, circumstances and experiences requires effort to document animal thought, intention, and behaviour, as well as understand them within broader relational ecologies and societal dynamics. Animals also must be viewed as agents and active participants in socioecological and knowledge production realms. Collectively, geographers can strive for affective engagements with animals through hybrid concepts and practice. While geography is already an integrated discipline that combines elements of natural/physical/geo sciences, social sciences and humanities, there is room to push further. Together, geographers can embrace hybridity as a conceptual frame and disciplinary practice so as to facilitate holistic and meaningful insights into the lives of animals.