Cultural Geography

they are ‘charismatic’ and/or protected under

worldwide conventions? If animals are inherently

linked to place-making and place-specific moral

landscapes, how can they be integrated within

broader notions of geoethics?

In what follows, we track these three basic

themes in animal geography: human identity

and animal subjectivity, animals and the making

of place, and the role of animals in the moral

landscape.

Human identity and animal subjectivity

Questions about human–animal differences and

the nature of the human–animal divide have pro-

liferated recently. Beginning in the 1970s, new

findings on animal thinking, culture and politics

from comparative psychology, primatology and

cognitive ethology underscored animal con-

sciousness and capacities to think and act

(Goodall, 1986; Griffin, 1976; 1984). Highly

publicized research concerned linguistic capabil-

ities of primates and their social and political

behaviour in the wild (de Waal, 1982; Fossey,

1983; Galdikas, 1995; Goodall, 1986). Studies

of other species revealed complex communica-

tions systems and social organizations (Cheney

and Seyfarth, 1990; Morton and Page, 1992).

Behaviour-specific studies, such as those on

animal play, revealed the continuity of vertebrate

behavioural repertoires and their complex social

functions: kangaroos, pronghorn antelope,

ravens and even reptiles engage in play (Bekoff

and Byers, 1998). Simultaneously, genetic

engineering, cloning and xenotransplants

increasingly called into question boundaries

between machines, animals and humans (see

Haraway, 1991; Sheehan and Sosna, 1991; Taylor

et al., 1997). Such complex machine–human–

animal interdependencies raised possibilities of a

‘cyborg’ world. Beyond speculation, however,

scientists created computer implants designed to

correct human medical problems, and an array of

chimeras, for example a mouse with a human ear

(Toufexis, 1995) and pigs with human organs to

be ‘harvested’ for transplantation to people.

Poststructural and feminist refusals of ‘man,

the subject’ shifted the animal out from the

cultural margins ‘by destabilizing that familiar

clutch of entrenched stereotypes which works to

maintain the illusion of human identity, centrality

and superiority’ (Baker, 1993: 26).^9 Exploiting

this move, Wolch (1996; 1998) argued for recon-

ceptualizing the human–animal divide. Humans

may not be able to literally ‘think like a bat’ but,

rather than nihilistic relativism or denial of

human–animal differences, the human response

could recognize that both people and animals are

embedded in social relations and networks with

others (both human and non-human) upon which

their social welfare depends. This realization

allows for the recognition of kinship but also dif-

ference since identities are defined by the ways

in which we are similar to, as well as different

from, related others. Recalling Haraway’s

‘cyborg vision’ Wolch argued that people should

come to know – however partially – the animals

with whom they coexist, thereby sustaining webs

of connection and an ethic of respect, mutuality,

caring and friendship (Wolch, 1998: 122). The

human–animal divide is thus transformed from

an oppositional dualism to a network of intricate

interdependencies.

For other animal geographers, challenges to

unitary subjectivity and their disciplinary predis-

position to acknowledge time–space contingency

in nature–society relations led to empirical con-

ceptions of the human–animal divide. Anderson

(1997) reconsidered the story of domestication,

situating certain chapters in European political

discourses about human uniqueness. Arguing

that domestication could not be understood by

seeing animals as natural resources or as filling a

narrow religio-cultural role, she drew upon

theories of power and identity, contending that

domestication underlay a dualistic model of

human and animal in western cultures, with

implications for both sides of the divide. More-

over, a legacy of the domesticatory project was

colonial oppression and racialization of indige-

nous peoples who were treated ‘like animals’

and ideologies of human improvement that

resulted in ‘civilizing’ efforts, eugenics and

assimilationist policies.

Also recognizing how boundary definitions

are in part determined by the normalization of

human–animal relations in place, Elder et al.

(1998) argued that while concepts of human and

animal are universally understood, the boundary

is in flux and varies geographically. Such reper-

toires are partly environmentally determined: the

diversity of animals available to use is shaped by

environmental factors, as are animal-based

modes of subsistence (for example, pastoral-

ism). In addition, however, ideas about animals

(like other aspects of culture) evolve in place

over time owing to social or technological

change generated within a society, or externally

by migrations or invasions. Thus values and

practices concerning cosmological, totemic or

companionate relations between people and

animals, and material uses of animals, shift

owing to social dynamics, technological change

or culture contact. The result is a dynamic but

place-specific assemblage of animals, valued

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