Methodologies for animals’ geographies: cultures, communication and genomics

Abstract

The recent renaissance within animal geography has tended to focus on the spatial orderings of animals by humans, rather than on the lived geographies and experiences of animals themselves. We suggest that one reason for this imbalance is methodological -a persistent commitment to human-centred methods somewhat at odds with the more-than-human aspirations of the sub-discipline. In this paper we review and critically assess methodological developments in three areas that we consider to be especially significant for developing animals' geographies: (i) techniques for tracking the spatialities of animal culture; (ii) scientific and artistic engagements in inter-species communication; and (iii) geographic tools afforded by genetic analyses. In conclusion, we reflect on the promise and some of the challenges to developing these methods within (what is still largely known as) human geography.

„The Rest“: Geographien des Alltäglichen zwischen Affekt, Emotion und Repräsentation

“…Während sich im Cultural Turn Fragen der Identität, kultureller Differenzen und der Herstellung von Wahrheitsregimen fast ausschliesslich auf Gesellschafts-und Subjektivierungsprozesse fokussierten, erweitert die affektive und nichtrepräsentationale Wende den (wissenschaftlichen) Blick. Sie wendet sich den vielfältigen Beziehungen zwischen menschlichen und nicht-menschlichen Akteuren wie Tieren (Hodgetts und Lorimer, 2015), Natur (Whatmore, 2006) und Technologien (Thrift, 2004 zu. Affektives Leben entsteht wie in Atwoods Gedicht durch die Beziehungen zwischen menschlichen und nicht-menschlichen Körpern sowie in Zusammenhang mit räumlichen Artefakten.…”

Vegetal politics: belonging, practices and places

“…As Poe et al argue, 'we recognize that having placed ourselves in the 'thick of things'… we are both constituted by, and active agents in, the constitution of assemblages we describe here as 'urban foraging' (p. 3). None of these are explicitly methodological papers, and one task that is important over the coming years is to grapple more systematically with the question of how we do ethnobotany, or cultural geography attuned to human-plant encounters, in more relational ways (Hitchings and Jones 2004), as others have pondered for animals (Buller 2014, Hodgetts andLorimer 2014) Further, since questions of methodology are ontological as well as epistemological, attending to the more-than-human in this way is an inherently political and ethical act -both for the knowledges produced as well as for the process of research itself (Bawaka Country et al 2014). Attending and attuning to the radical difference of plants will not only reveal our interconnectivity -it will necessarily challenge us, requiring us to ask which categories are useful and which need rethinking.…”

Dilemmas of transgression: ethical responses in a more-than-human world

“…… [F]lying foxes inhabit not just trees but worlds of meaning… 97 To be re-enchanted by the other, and recognize its expressiveness, involves paying attention to other lives and worlds, using for example some of the methods of tracing nonhuman topologies described by Hodgetts and Lorimer 98 . It includes too the kind of attention paid in Whatmore's stories of 'becoming elephant', 99 and in Darwin's study of earthworms 100 .…”

“…In this paper, we take up a point emphasised recently by Hodgetts and Lorimer 19 , that animal geographies are multiple, with different topologies that are not necessarily commensurate with those of humans. Topologies here is used in Shields' 20 sense to mean conceptualizations of space in terms of significant connections and relationships within the space, foregrounding some and backgrounding others, rather than 'geometries' that focus on distances and shapes.…”

“…For any space, there are likely to be "multiple, conflicting spatialisations that intersect, usually remaining separate but at certain times and places breaking in on each other" 21 . Finding ways to understand how topologies differ between species, for example through ethology, "helps acknowledge intersections, absences, incommensurabilities and discordances within and between the multiple ways and forms of being in the world" 22 . In the examples To discuss transgression is to discuss the boundaries and borders that make transgression possible.…”