Where species don’t meet: Invisibilized animals, urban nature and city limits

Abstract

<jats:p> A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care for urban nature and creating more socially and environmentally just cities. At the same time, urban biodiversity is the focus of an increasing number of projects at multiple scales. However, in contrast to the ethos of multispecies ‘entanglement’ and ‘becoming with’ that typically animates this research, large numbers of animals ‘entangled’ in the machinations of our cities constitute a ‘nature’ that remains mostly unseen. And yet, it is the local and global practices these animals are part of – associated with food, entertainment, education, companionship and research – and the persistent relations of use and exploitation that underpin them, that are most directly implicated in the ongoing environmental degradation, destruction of habitats and extinction of species that create the ‘problem’ of urban biodiversity. We therefore argue that a persistent anthropocentrism is hampering efforts to respond effectively to the findings and recommendations of the IPCC, IPBES, FAO and others. Based on a thorough literature search and review of 65 articles concerned with urban ‘nature’ and multispecies relations, we demonstrate a prevailing hierarchy in how, and more importantly which, nonhuman species are being represented. Parallels are noted from recent social movements and the work of scholars from complementary fields. We highlight the dangers posed by this selective remit of care and concern and suggest critical animal studies as a way to adjust the frame and extend the boundaries of dominant thinking about what constitutes ‘nature’. In conclusion, we call for researchers concerned with urban nature and biodiversity to adopt more critical and repoliticized understandings of ‘nature’ and multispecies relations – ones that are better poised to challenge practices involving commodified animals and slow the pace of environmental destructions and losses they are associated with. </jats:p>

Animals and urban gentrification: Displacement and injustice in the trans-species city

“…In so doing, we highlight some of the ways that animals are enrolled in gentrification as more-or-less active agents of change but also show that they can be its victims. We do this to emphasise the importance of cultivating a more equitable multi-species city (Van Dooren and Rose, 2012), but do so mindful of the limitations of analyses which too-often ignore those animals ‘off-staged’ in urban animal research: most notably, those animals captive in laboratories, slaughterhouses and zoos (Acari et al, 2020; see also Gibbs, 2020). Although there are clear ways in which the inclusion of such animals into analyses of metabolic urban processes might help us cast the dynamics of gentrification in a new light, the majority of the work we discuss here instead focuses on the ways that human lives at the gentrification frontier entangle with all number of feral, wild and stray animals and the way these are distinguished from, or transformed into, companion animals or pets.…”

“…In the wake of calls to develop a ‘more-than-human’ urban geography (Braun, 2005), the presence of animals in cities has attracted increasing and deserved attention from urban scholars (e.g. Arcari et al, 2020; Franklin, 2017; Holmberg, 2013; Houston, 2019; Steele et al, 2019). Although some of this work positions non-human animals as present in cities only to the extent that they are permitted by humans (e.g.…”

Oysteropolis: Animals in coastal gentrification

“…The implications of this for wider studies of gentrification are, we hope, clear. First, this example suggests we should not always privilege human agency in gentrification as places are also made through non-human agency (Arcari et al, 2020;Kirksey et al, 2018;Silver, 2014). Second, it shows that animals are not always and inevitably the victims of gentrification, displaced to make way for investments in property and infrastructure: in some cases, it might be more helpful to begin by figuring animals as gentrifiers (see Brooks and Hubbard, 2021).…”

Notes from a field: a qualitative exploration of human–animal relations in a volunteer shepherding project

“…The decision to study lookering was influenced by a shared interest in human-animal and multi-species relations, and a desire to explore it empirically, especially in relatively neglected urban and semi-urban settings (Arcari et al 2020). We were motivated by an epistemological commitment to qualitative research, and by a theoretical and ethical commitment to attend to human-animal relations in a particular setting as relations, and in doing so to try to find ways, in the research process, to make nonhuman animals 'matters of concern' or care rather than 'matters of fact ' (de La Bellacasa, 2011).…”