Critical Animal Geographies

Critical Animal Geographies provides new geographical perspectives on critical animal studies, exploring the spatial, political, and ethical dimensions of animals’ lived experience and human-animal encounter. It works toward a more radical politics and theory directed at the shifting boundary between human and animal. Chapters draw together feminist, political-economic, post-humanist, anarchist, post-colonial, and critical race literatures with original case studies in order to see how efforts by some humans to control and order life – human and not – violate, constrain, and impinge upon others. Central to all chapters is a commitment to grappling with the stakes – violence, death, life, autonomy – of human-animal encounters. Equally, the work in the collection addresses head-on the dominant forces shaping and dependent on these encounters: capitalism, racism, colonialism, and so on. In doing so, the book pushes readers to confront how human-animal relations are mixed up with overlapping axes of power and exploitation, including gender, race, class, and species.

Critical Animal Geographies provides new geographical perspectives on critical animal studies, exploring the spatial, political, and ethical dimensions of animals’ lived experience and human-animal encounter. It works toward a more radical politics and theory directed at the shifting boundary between human and animal. Chapters draw together feminist, political-economic, post-humanist, anarchist, post-colonial, and critical race literatures with original case studies in order to see how efforts by some humans to control and order life – human and not – violate, constrain, and impinge upon others. Central to all chapters is a commitment to grappling with the stakes – violence, death, life, autonomy – of human-animal encounters. Equally, the work in the collection addresses head-on the dominant forces shaping and dependent on these encounters: capitalism, racism, colonialism, and so on. In doing so, the book pushes readers to confront how human-animal relations are mixed up with overlapping axes of power and exploitation, including gender, race, class, and species.

Exploring the innovative and thriving field of animal geographies, this Research Agenda analyses how humans think about, place, and engage with animals. Chapters explore how animals shape human identities and social dynamics, as well as how broader processes influence the circumstances and experiences of animals.

This book explores the growing significance of veganism. It brings together important theoretical and empirical insights to offer a historical and contemporary analysis of veganism and our future co-existence with other animals. Bringing together key concepts from geography, critical animal studies, and feminist theory this book critically addresses veganism as both a subject of study and a spatial approach to the self, society, and everyday life. The book draws upon empirical research through archival research, interviews with vegans in Britain, and a multispecies ethnography with chickens. It argues that the field of ‘beyond-human geographies’ needs to more seriously take into account veganism as a rising socio-political force and in academic theory. This book provides a unique and timely contribution to debates within animal studies and more-than-human geographies, providing novel insights into the complexities of caring beyond the human. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in geography, sociology, animal studies, food studies and consumption, and those researching veganism.

One in the series of Human-Animal Studies ebooks produced as a result of the (printed) publication of the definitive HAS handbook, Teaching the Animal: Human–Animal Studies across the Disciplines. This chapter focuses on cultural studies, includes two course syllabi, and has a full resources section covering all disciplines. Includes chapter "Animal Geographies" by Jody Emel and Julie Urbanik.

With the ever rising demand for meat around the world, the production of meat has changed dramatically in the past few decades. What has brought about the increasing popularity and attendant normalization of factory farms across many parts of the world? What are some of the ways to resist such broad convergences in meat production and how successful are they? This book locates the answers to these questions at the intersection between the culture, science and political economy of meat production and consumption. It details how and why techniques of production have spread across the world, albeit in a spatially uneven way. It argues that the modern meat production and consumption sphere is the outcome of a complex matrix of cultural politics, economics and technological faith. Drawing from examples across the world (including America, Europe and Asia), the tensions and repercussions of meat production and consumption are also analyzed. From a geographical perspective, food animals have been given considerably less attention compared to wild animals or pets. This book, framed conceptually by critical animal studies, governmentality and commodification, is a theoretically driven and empirically rich study that advances the study of food animals in geography as well as in the wider social sciences.

As Julie Urbanik vividly illustrates, non-human animals are central to our daily human lives. We eat them, wear them, live with them, work them, experiment on them, try to save them, spoil them, abuse them, fight them, hunt them, buy and sell them, love them, and hate them. Placing Animals is the first book to bring together the historical development of the field of animal geography with a comprehensive survey of how geographers study animals today. Urbanik provides readers with a thorough understanding of the relationship between animal geography and the larger animal studies project, an appreciation of the many geographies of human-animal interactions around the world, and insight into how animal geography is both challenging and contributing to the major fields of human and nature-society geography. Through the theme of the role of place in shaping where and why human-animal interactions occur, the chapters in turn explore the history of animal geography and our distinctive relationships in the home, on farms, in the context of labor, in the wider culture, and in the wild.

This timely book provides a methodological guide for how to conduct and theorise research in human-animal studies. In response to critiques of the anthropomorphic slant to human-animal research and the increasing political relevance of animals in contemporary environmental debates, this book emphasises methods which bring to light the animal side of multispecies encounters. Drawing from the interdisciplinary strength of human-animal studies, this book contains contributions from practitioners and scholars working in sociology, anthropology, ethology and geography. Each chapter uses a case-study approach to present a theoretical framework and empirical application of cutting-edge methods in human-animal studies, from creative writing in multispecies ethnographies to visual methods like videography and body mapping. Organized in three parts – theorizing; collaborating; visualizing – the book equips readers with methodological tools to conduct human-animal studies research attentive to animal lives. Furthermore, chapters reflect on the opportunities, limitations and ethical considerations of research that seeks to understand our more-than-human worlds. The book is aimed towards undergraduate and graduate students in human-animal studies and scholars investigating human-animal relations. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy-makers who engage with conservation, wildlife management or the human-animal interface of urban and regional planning.