Viewing animal bodies: truths,practical aesthetics and ethical considerability in UK livestock breeding

This paper focuses on the production of aesthetic ‘truths’ in UK livestock breeding, drawing on detailed qualitative research with breeders and breed societies. It extends emerging interest in the aesthetic in human geographical research, examining how aesthetic judgements about non-human animals depend, in part, on the agency of the animal and their inter-subjective relations with humans in specific places. Aesthetic evaluation further produces implicit judgements about animals' ethical considerability, at the same time obscuring the effects of such judgements on their framing and treatment. Aesthetic evaluation is thus related to sets of material and ethical interests. The paper develops a more-than-human reading of Foucault's biopower, which explores how truths about visual evaluations of animals become established. Two empirical perspectives explore, first, a ‘relational practical aesthetic’ for evaluating beef cattle and sheep, exploring the implications of the aesthetic framing of specific animals and, second, the tensions involved in looking at animals when different aesthetic truths conflict and when traditions of aesthetic evaluation encounter genetic modes of evaluation. The paper concludes by discussing the ethical implications of ongoing transformations of evaluative modes in livestock breeding, suggesting that shifts away from inter-subjective modes of aesthetic evaluation further diminish the ethical status of animals.     

Carceral Space: Prisoners and Animals

This paper develops a framework for exploring resonances across human and nonhuman carceral geographies. I illustrate the close linkages across prisoner and animal carcerality and captivity focusing on three types of sites and institutions: the prison execution chamber and the animal slaughterhouse; sites of laboratory testing of pharmaceutical and other products on incarcerated humans and captive animals; and sites and institutions of exploited prisoner and animal labor. The main themes that call for a “carceral comparison” among these sites include: the emotional and psychological strain and violence enacted on bodies that is interwoven into their day‐to‐day operations; their geographies (locations, design, and layout) and carefully regulated movements within them; relationships between carcerality and “purpose breeding” that extends across both nonhuman and human populations; the ways in which “animalization” of incarcerated bodies works to create conditions for social death and killability; and the legal and political contexts that produce certain lives as disposable “bare lives”.     

Biopower,Life and Left Politics

Abstract: The terms biopower and biopolitics have been deployed in widely varying ways in recent critical political analyses. This essay seeks to rescue from the welter of its deployments a general understanding of biopower potentially useful to left political projects. First, recent iterations of the concept of biopower are surveyed. In the main body of the paper, a series of interventions in recent critical debates are used to trace out a critical re‐mapping of the concept of “life” that names the ends of biopower. Biopolitically relevant life is reconsidered in terms of its proper geographical scope, its gender, racial and ethnic specificities, its distinguishing vital qualities, and its relation to temporality (particularly the future). Through this exercise the notion of biopower is redefined so as to provide potential “docking points” for Marxist, feminist and green discourses, and conceptual resources for left struggles against global injustice.     

治理术与地理学:研究述评与展望

治理术作为福柯后期研究的一个重要概念具有丰富的内涵,已被广泛用于西方地理学的研究。本文在福柯的著作和西方相关文献的基础上,梳理了治理术的概念,归纳了西方地理学对治理术的主要应用。福柯的治理术主要包含治理技术和治理理性两个向度;治理术的分析框架以生命政治、计算和治理目的为支柱;与这一分析框架相对应,西方地理学对治理术的应用集中在以下三个话题:族群与生命政治,领土与计算,认知/空间合理性和城市管治。治理术的相关概念和方法在解释中国的单位制度和户口制度、阶级斗争和空间非均衡发展、分税制和城市规划及加强中国地理学的理论化和学术贡献上具有重要意义。     

Sexualized violence and the gendered commodification of the animal body in Pacific Northwest US dairy production

This article draws on a case study of bovine life in the US dairy industry to observe the power relations and violent networks of commodification involved. I use the terms gendered commodification and sexualized violence to understand the lives of animals in the industry and the discourses that are employed to reproduce its practices. Focusing on sex and gender, concepts which have long been classic in feminist geography, this article explores the sexually violent commodification of both female and male animals in dairy production. In addition to the ways in which both are exploited for their productive and reproductive capacities, male animals are also discursively conceptualized as perpetrators of the violence against the females. This article engages with geographies of the body and animal geographies in order to extend geographies of the body to other-than-human bodies and in order to feature the body more prevalently in animal geographies. This attention to the animal body ultimately reveals the pervasiveness of sexual violence and the consequences of gendered commodification for both nonhuman and human others.     

Measuring Fatness, Governing Bodies: The Spatialities of the Body Mass Index (BMI) in Anti-Obesity Politics

Abstract:  The Body Mass Index (BMI) is the dominant means of defining and diagnosing obesity in national and international public health policy. This paper draws on geographical engagements with Foucault's work on biopower and governmentality to question the power afforded the BMI in obesity policy. With reference to a UK public health intervention involving the measurement of children's bodies within schools, the paper questions the multiple materialities and spatialities of the BMI with reference to both its role in the construction of geographies of obesity and its (in)ability to capture the fleshy, material, and experiential bodies of those individuals involved in the process of measurement. The paper contributes to poststructuralist health geographies through writing fleshy, active bodies into a Foucauldian reading of health and illness, thus questioning the justifications and implications of an obesity politics focussed on the BMI.     

Indicators of social change in rural Sweden in the late nineteenth century

Parish registers offer the student of history a wealth of information about the everyday lives of ordinary people in the past. Historical demographers in particular have made extensive use of these materials, and our understanding of the dynamics of local populations in pre-industrial Europe has increased greatly during the last twenty-five years. In addition to the basic demographic data on marriages, baptisms and burials, however, parish registers commonly contain other information which can shed light on social behaviour. Using the exceptionally rich Swedish records, this paper explores some ways in which material of this kind may be used to assess the extent and rate of social change in particular localities at particular times.     

Beyond ‘resistance’: rethinking nonhuman agency for a ‘more-than-human’ world

This article argues that rethinking historical agency to include nonhuman agents is one way to integrate better animals into historical narratives. Drawing on posthumanist theories from geography, anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and forming part of a growing interest in nonhuman, particularly animal, agency, it aims to clear some theoretical and historiographical ground to provide a basis for claims that nature has agency. It then argues that environmental and animal historians have too readily equated nonhuman agency with ‘resistance’, a concept that does not easily map onto animal behaviour and one which also fails to capture the diversity of nonhuman agencies. Using case studies of Police rescue dogs in early twentieth-century France and animals on the Western Front, it argues that exploring the diverse types of nonhuman agencies and their deep and multiple entanglements with human agents will extend studies of nonhumans beyond the resistance model.     

Animals and inequality in Chalcolithic central Anatolia

This paper explores the changing social and economic roles of livestock within three increasingly complex societies in Chalcolithic central Anatolia. By specifically addressing practices associated with the production, distribution and consumption of livestock, particularly sheep and goats, I show how changes in the use of animals were dynamically linked to the emergence of new sociopolitical environments. These changes, including the development of intensive caprine pastoralism and complex provisioning systems as well as an increased focus on the production of secondary products, strongly suggest that control over animals, particularly sheep, and their products played a central role in the development of increasingly complex and hierarchical social systems in MC Anatolia.     

Diasporic dwelling: the poetics of domestic space

This article explores the politics of diasporic dwelling in domestic spaces. Heidegger's concept of ‘dwelling’ is popular in studies of diasporic life as it articulates a sense of belonging in mobility without the problematic connotations of rootedness conjured up by ‘home’. However, the way Heidegger's ‘dwelling’ functions in diasporic contexts is rarely considered, an absence this article seeks to address by exploring the concept in more detail, focusing in particular on ‘the fourfold’ and preservation. This discussion is grounded in the domestic spaces of two Palestinian women living in Britain. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the article explores how these women's houses, and particular spaces within them, enable and constrain their dwelling. I argue for greater attention to be paid to the expansive and integrative capacities of domestic space and demonstrate the need to address houses in their social context and as internally heterogeneous. This article also contributes to ongoing debates about material and symbolic dwelling and diasporic identities that include but also exceed territorialised belonging.     

The Iranian Diaspora in Sydney: Migration Experience of Recent Iranian Immigrants

Recent research has found that discrimination against Islam and Muslims is deeply rooted in Australia. This report explores whether or how recent Iranian migrants have experienced racism, discrimination, or Islamaphobia in Sydney. These questions are explored by focusing on their experiences and issues regarding their making of new lives in Australia. This article suggests that recent Iranian migrants are experiencing far less discrimination than other Muslim diasporas in Sydney. Concluding that despite recent reports by some researchers grouping various Muslim populations together as regards Islamaphobia, there is a necessity for investigating discrimination, stereotyping, and Islamaphobia against particular diasporas to determine the needs of the Muslim population at large.     

The disciplinary effects of communicative planning in Soufriere, St Lucia: governmentality, hegemony and space-time-politics

Communicative planning initiatives are being increasingly implemented across both the North and South of the globe. Influenced by Habermas' theory of communicative rationality, this form of planning concentrates upon consensus building between different signified interest groups. The paper explores how communicative planning in the eastern Caribbean country of St Lucia disciplines people's conduct from the perspectives of Foucault's concept of governmentality and Laclau and Mouffe's theorization of hegemony. Linking the latter to an analysis of Massey's non-bounded conceptualization of the local, it is argued that, as geographers, we may do better to concentrate less upon the deterministic effects of common styles of government and more upon the moments which bring their themes temporarily and spatially into being. In doing so, some initial steps are made toward proposing the concept of space-time-politics, drawing upon Wittgenstein's work on 'aspect-seeing'. In concluding, I argue that we should not see terms such as 'consensus', 'empowerment' and 'the local' as pre-existing moral justifications for political action, but instead as the product of relations of space-time-politics.     

异端空间的生产——福柯对中国政治地理学研究的启示

福柯研究对西方地理学具有很大的影响,但是国内地理学界对福柯的引进和讨论不多。本文基于福柯对权力关系和不正常的人的研究,以异端空间的生产为切入点,归纳了异端空间与权力交互作用的理论框架。其中,权力主要通过特殊化、风险化和知识化取得干预的合法性,而又通过监视、照料或隔离等手段确保对异端的治理。应用谱系学方法,本文总结了四个异端空间生产的原型,并通过将这四个原型应用于一系列中国日常政治地理现象的解释,展示了异端空间生产对理解权力关系的重要意义,揭示了知识-权力与空间生产过程的相辅相成。最后,讨论了异端空间生产的分析对于扩展中国政治地理学理论视角和研究话题的重要性。     

The Gender,Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Feminism and animals: exploring interspecies relations through intersectionality,performativity and standpoint

This article explores the ways and extent to which feminism helps investigate interspecies relations and the lives of animals in academic scholarship. It argues that animals need feminism. Indeed feminists are well suited and positioned to take on questions of and issues related to animal lives through key theoretical ideas and methodological approaches, namely intersectionality, performativity and standpoint. Extending such ideas and approaches to animal subjects fills gaps in animal studies literature and generates invaluable insights on the fundamental workings of power in society and the implications for both humans and animals. The article also argues that feminism should embrace animals and animal scholarship. Doing so generates new insights on societal relations of power and extends existing feminist boundaries regarding whose knowledge counts and how it is counted. Ultimately, an enhanced feminism–animal dialogue generates geographical knowledge that is comprehensive and reflective of the interrelatedness of all beings that shape individual, institutional and ideological realms.     

Vulnerable geographies: human trafficking,immigration and border control in the UK and beyond

Human trafficking inspires strong responses from feminists and other interested parties. This article takes the UK anti-trafficking measures as a case study to explore the interaction between discourses of trafficked women's vulnerability to sexual harm, and national vulnerability to external threats such as organized crime. Drawing on feminist engagements with human trafficking and commercial sex, my aim is to contribute to these debates. I explore how the government's moralistic response to trafficking reflects a particular form of regulation that animates new systems of governmentality and biopower. Against this backdrop I attempt to advance feminist perspectives on trafficking by demonstrating the relationality between UK anti-trafficking measures, and its plans to reorganize its regulatory capacity overseas. I suggest an interpretation of UK overseas anti-trafficking measures that foregrounds respatialized border and immigration controls. I show how this kind of regulation works on and through the bodies and behaviours of government actors. I conclude that while aspects of these overseas interventions do go some way to protect trafficked women, they do not operate in isolation of other geopolitical agendas.     

In praise of counter-conduct

Without access to Michel Foucault's courses, it was extremely difficult to understand his reorientation from an analysis of the strategies and tactics of power immanent in the modern discourse on sexuality (1976) to an analysis of the ancient forms and modalities of relation to oneself by which one constituted oneself as a moral subject of sexual conduct (1984). In short, Foucault's passage from the political to the ethical dimension of sexuality seemed sudden and inexplicable. Moreover, it was clear from his published essays and interviews that this displacement of focus had consequences far beyond the specific domain of the history of sexuality. "Security, Territory, Population" (Foucault, 2007) contains a conceptual hinge, a key concept, that allows us to link together the political and ethical axes of Foucault's thought. Indeed, it is Foucault's analysis of the notions of conduct and counter-conduct in his lecture of 1 March 1978 that seems to me to constitute one of the richest and most brilliant moments in the entire course. Is is astonishing, and of profound significance, that the autonomous sphere of conduct has been more or less invisible in the history of modern (as opposed to ancient) moral and political philosophy. This article argues that a new attention should be given to this notion, both in Foucault's work and more generally.     

Ambivalent desires: State formation and dispossession in the face of climate crisis

In this paper, we analyze the politics, experiences and dynamics of state formation in a particular context of climate crisis. Through the study of the implementation of state-led adaptation and mitigation projects in two rural localities of northern Colombia, we interrogate the ways in which these interventions shape the everyday lives of those who happen to be located in the targeted areas. We found that, in spite of the different goals and particular configurations of the adaptation and mitigation interventions, these climate projects engendered the same contradiction. They promised a resilient and environmentally sound future, but the path towards that future has not been available to everyone. Furthermore, we show that the subjects of climate interventions do not embrace state promises in the same way. Local expectations, desires and engagement with the state are ambivalent and heterogeneous, and cannot be taken as a given. This paper develops these ideas by way of three arguments. First, we argue that exclusion, dispossession and marginality are inherent to the promises of climate mitigation and adaptation in the cases we study in the Colombian Caribbean. Secondly, the goals of state-led adaptation and mitigation programs we study are at odds with the material and social conditions of the areas of implementation. And thirdly, paying attention to the dynamics of state formation in the Colombian Caribbean in relation to climate change challenges common binaries opposing state absence/presence, failure/success, and retreat/return.     

Liquid passions: bodies,publics and city waters

This article explores water’s capacities as a vibrant matter with specific properties that generates passions, attachments and a sense of belonging, and which enrols bodies in new connections, socialities, alliances and politics in unpredictable ways. Based on research into practices and engagements with water in a large urban public space the paper builds on studies of blue space. It concludes that water has the capacity to enhance a sense of well-being in those that swim in it and to mobilise a very particular sense of embodiment which gives this form of public space its distinctiveness constituting new forms of sociality and connections amongst diverse individuals. It seeks to do this by paying attention to the experiences of things themselves and the active participation of nonhuman forces in events and the ‘vital materiality’ that runs through and across bodies both human and non-human. The article also explores water’s capacity to be constituted and defined by experts as dangerous and risky matter, and to thus engender political associations and connections amongst diverse groups who seek to oppose such expert interventions.     

From plate to pet: Promotion of trans‐species companionship by Korean animal activists

In Korea cats and dogs are both pets and food. This article looks at how Korean activists bring the issue of animal welfare to the attention of Korean society in the context of cat and dog meat consumption. It explores the ways in which activists deploy rescue narratives in order to attract families willing to adopt rescued animals, thus transforming people's perception of livestock animals into that of potential lifetime companions. Combined here are the Confucian virtue of impartial benevolence and 18th‐century Western moral philosophy.     

Corporate security technologies: Managing life and death along a Colombian coal railway

This article demonstrates how the security of an extractive corporation is related to the governance of the lives and deaths of local inhabitants living in the area around a large coalmine and its railway in Colombia. Making legible the corporate security technologies that manage railway mortality and work along a spectrum from “hard” to “soft”, this article explores the productivity of corporate security in relation to the lives and deaths of local populations. Offering a specific lens on corporate railway security, it shows how corporate security technologies influence not only the lives of local residents but also their deaths. The findings also suggest that deaths and/or suicides be understood as both a product of and a productive force for corporate territorialization. Drawing on conceptualizations of ‘social death’ from genocide studies and Foucauldian ideas about death and technologies of power, I discuss the implications of corporate sovereignty (deciding over lives and deaths) as a technology of the corporate protection of mining infrastructure that normalizes corporate territorialization and justifies corporate social control.