‘Of place’ or ‘of people’: exploring the animal spaces and beastly places of feral cats in southern Ontario

Patter, Lauren E. Van; Hovorka, Alice J.

doi:10.1080/14649365.2016.1275754

Cited by 73 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Consequently, Crist argued that a denial of animal minds leads more broadly to environmental destruction by humans: “As animals became successfully represented in dominant discourses as devoid of agency and experiential perspective—thereby becoming construable as a means for human ends—a fortiori the (apparently) nonsentient domains of forests, rivers, meadows, oceans, deserts, and mountains (in fact, of any landscape or seascape) were made accessible to the human race without accountability or restriction” [27] (p. 46). As such, there have been several calls by critical animal scholars, including animal geographers, to attend to the inner lives, experiences, and worldviews of animals [37,38]. Animal geographers attempt to highlight animals’ roles in human societies and identities, and in particular, their subjectivities, and their agency as beings with inner thought and intentionality [39,40,41].…”

Section: Animal Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compassionate conservation and animal geography, a sub-discipline of human geography, share two important foundational tenets: (1) both bodies of scholarship developed as a response to the ethical and political responsibilities we hold toward the animals we share our world with [42,44]; and (2) both bodies of scholarship seek to ensure that (individual) animals’ needs are not simply ignored or unthinkingly placed below humans’ needs [7,15,44]. However, animal geography also moves beyond these anthropocentric concerns and attempts to understand the lives of animals in and of themselves, not only as individuals, but as beings who have lived experiences and agency [37,38,43,45,46]. Animal geography is therefore well-positioned to contribute to extending the field of compassionate conservation by highlighting these aspects.…”

Section: Animal Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Compassionate Conservation: Exploring the Lives of African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus) in Botswana

Fraser-Celin

Hovorka

2019

Animals

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Simple SummaryThis paper argues that animals should be positioned as subjects in research and scholarship to further develop compassionate conservation, a new field that aims to bridge conservation biology and animal welfare science. Animals can be treated as subjects by attending to their lived experiences and by recognizing their capacity to act. This paper merges interviews, blog posts, biological research, and observations to position African wild dogs as subjects in conservation research and scholarship using responsible anthropomorphism. It presents wild dogs as thinking, feeling, and sentient animals who have agency (capacity to act), and whose welfare is negatively affected by habitat loss and conflict with farmers. By positioning wild dogs as subjects, we can develop an ethical starting point for a more compassionate conservation. This ‘enriched’ scholarship allows us to more fully appreciate the complex lives of wildlife, their circumstances, and their experiences.AbstractThis paper argues for a more compassionate conservation by positioning animals as subjects in research and scholarship. Compassionate conservation is a multidisciplinary field of study that broadly attends to the ethical dimensions of conservation by merging conservation biology and animal welfare science. However, animal geography is rarely discussed in the compassionate conservation scholarship despite sharing similar tenets. This paper argues that responsible anthropomorphism and animal geography concepts of animal subjectivity (lived experiences) and agency (capacity to act) positions African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) as subjects in conservation research and scholarship. It merges biological research, public communication, and interview and participant observation data to present wild dogs as thinking, feeling, self-conscious animals with agency, and whose welfare is negatively affected in human-dominated landscapes in Botswana. This paper argues for more attention to be paid to animal subjectivity and agency to foster more compassionate relations with wildlife. It argues that positioning animals as subjects in research and scholarship is an ethical starting point for moving compassionate conservation forward. This ‘enriched’ scholarly approach moves us closer to appreciating the lives of wildlife and the complexity of their circumstances and experiences.

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Section: Animal Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Animal Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Compassionate Conservation: Exploring the Lives of African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus) in Botswana

Fraser-Celin

Hovorka

2019

Animals

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“…The vital relations and contingent differences comprising actual ways of living – what Thom van Dooren terms “flight ways” () – are excluded from any such biopolitical reckoning with environmental destruction. Writing within the environmental humanities (Rose et al., ) as well as geography (see Van Patter & Hovorka, , p. 291) has challenged species essentialism and concomitant conservation discourses of the “greater good.” Increasingly, “species” – as atomised units of concern and a “concrete phenomenon of nature” (Mayr, , p. 263) – become “unthinkable” within posthumanism's rhizomatic ontologies (Haraway, , p. 57; Whatmore, ).…”

Section: Extinction Culture and More‐than‐human Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although methodological and conceptual developments have favoured the former (Hodgetts & Lorimer, 2015), there is growing energy within more-than-human geography to explore the spatial character of animal life beyond its "placing" by humans (Buller, 2014(Buller, , 2015Johnston, 2008;H. Lorimer, 2006;Lorimer et al, 2017;Van Patter & Hovorka, 2018). Animals, figured as "geographers too" (Buller, 2015, p. 380), enact spatial lives and attachments.…”

Section: More-than-human Cultural Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Championing early critical attention to animal geographies, Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert emphasised the need for attention to animals’ own geographies – their “beastly places” (, p. 5) – alongside the social construction of “animal spaces.” Although methodological and conceptual developments have favoured the former (Hodgetts & Lorimer, ), there is growing energy within more‐than‐human geography to explore the spatial character of animal life beyond its “placing” by humans (Buller, , ; Johnston, ; H. Lorimer, ; Lorimer et al., ; Van Patter & Hovorka, ). Animals, figured as “geographers too” (Buller, , p. 380), enact spatial lives and attachments.…”

Section: Extinction Culture and More‐than‐human Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cultural geographies of extinction: Animal culture among Scottish ospreys

Garlick

2018

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper explores cultural geographies of extinction. I trace the decline of the Scottish osprey during the 19th century and its enduring, haunting presence in the landscape today. Taking inspiration from the environmental humanities, extinction is framed as an event affecting losses that exceed comprehension in terms merely of biological species numbers and survival rates. Disavowing the “species thinking” of contemporary conservation bio‐politics, the osprey's extinction story pays attention to the worth of “animal cultures.” Drawing a hybrid conceptual framework from research in the environmental humanities, “speculative” ethology and more‐than‐human geographies, I champion an experimental attention to the cultural geographies of animals in terms of historically contingent, communally shared, spatial practices and attachments. In doing so, I propose non‐human cultural geographies as assemblages that matter, and which are fundamentally at stake in the face of extinction.

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Categorisation of cats: Managing boundary felids in Aotearoa New Zealand and Britain

Palmer

Thomas

2023

People and Nature

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Management of domestic and wild animals is an integral part of conservation and is often based on how an animal is categorised. For example, feral cats are often killed, while valued companion cats and native wildcats are protected. Drawing on qualitative research and using the concept of boundary‐work, this paper examines the complex categorisation and management of cats within conservation in Britain and Aotearoa, New Zealand (NZ). We examine how, both in theory and in practice, valued companion and wildcats are distinguished from unprotected feral cats, and in‐between categories of stray and hybrid cats. We demonstrate that stakeholders draw boundaries between cat categories differently. These differences in boundary‐drawing reflect the inherent blurriness of category boundaries, practical challenges and, importantly, differences in values, in particular whether priority is placed on the life of the cat or the cat's potential victim, particularly native or game birds. This can mean that laws outlining protections for specific categories of animals have limited effect if, in practice, those encountering cats draw boundaries differently. This paper also reports on important differences between the two case studies. In NZ, even cat advocates support the humane killing of unambiguously feral cats while this is less true in Britain. Furthermore, due to the nature of the contexts, conservationists in NZ are more inclined to assume that ambiguous cats are feral whereas conservationists in Britain are more inclined to assume that they are wildcats. This paper demonstrates that values not only shape people's perceptions and treatment of animals but also how they draw boundaries between them. This finding may have important implications for understanding other controversies in conservation and animal management. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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‘Of place’ or ‘of people’: exploring the animal spaces and beastly places of feral cats in southern Ontario

Cited by 73 publications

References 49 publications

Compassionate Conservation: Exploring the Lives of African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus) in Botswana

Compassionate Conservation: Exploring the Lives of African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus) in Botswana

Cultural geographies of extinction: Animal culture among Scottish ospreys

Categorisation of cats: Managing boundary felids in Aotearoa New Zealand and Britain

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