Cultural Geography

voices with authority to speak on behalf of

animals, over specified domains; such voices

should include lay people, non-experts and

indigenous peoples, as well as scientists willing

to learn from others with more situated knowl-

edge and perspectives.

Finally, recognizing animal agency and

subjectivity means that moral choices must be

made. Animals do survive at the leisure or pre-

disposition of humans. There is an implicit set of

assumptions or moral choices embedded within

much of the new cultural geography writing

dealing with animals and nature. These assump-

tions and choices need excavation and honest

enunciation. In fact, an area of scholarship that

has gone far in critiquing the lack of self-

reflexivity in natural and physical science and in

economics has shown little evidence of willing-

ness to follow suit itself, to confront the anthropo-

centric character emanating from the discourse

as a whole.

One has only to look at the environmental

residual of Marxist-led development in Russia

and China to see why many greens (and

animal advocates) are as uncomfortable with a

‘no limits’ Marxist-informed nature/culture

discourse as they are with a western-capitalist-

informed discourse and structure. Are there no

limits with which to be concerned? No problem-

atic scarcities? Is cloning merely an extension of

domestication and breeding practices and the

creations of chimeras simply another step for-

ward in an already hybridized nature? Those

who would argue that social science, and more

specifically geography, should not address such

questions in the domain of morality or politics,

ignore the great strides that feminist, Marxist,

poststructuralist and other theorists have made in

the past few decades. At the peril of trivializing

their discipline, geographers ignore the immense

political import of their scholarship in this

heady field of nature/culture discourse and

animal–society relations. Precisely because there

is no foundational ‘truth’ or ‘nature’, talk about

morality is not out of bounds. Without morality

talk, animal geographers risk adopting a project

much like Habermas’ wherein democracy is

grounded in ‘domination-free communication’, an

ideal most of us would recognize as unrealizable.

Animal geography – undergirded by a critique

of capitalism, an awareness of positionality and a

deployment of poststructuralist methods of analy-

sis, and manifesting a cautionary position regard-

ing ‘science’ – offers an important ethical

perspective on these questions. It highlights the

importance of a politics of care and the admission

of animals as legitimate beings ‘first and foremost

themselves’. Such a stance may help overcome

some tensions between radical social theorists and

more conventional environmentalists, both of

whom seek to find more humane futures for

people and other sentient beings. More specifi-

cally, morality talk in animal geography aims at

preventing suffering and cruelty, and fostering

happiness and comfort. As ‘suffering’, ‘cruelty’,

happiness’ and ‘comfort’ mean different things

to different people and other animals, therein lies

the rub and the importance of political process.

Although crucial, it is not enough to illuminate

the multiplicity of meanings; we must also

imagine how these meanings are created,

changed and coexist (or not), and the nature of

new institutions that can foster comfort and

happiness for animals as well as people. Those

undertaking this latter task must have cultivated

moral selves, lest these social institutions

become too disciplinary and coercive. This is a

complex challenge. Ethical/moral dilemmas are

more complicated than ever (for example, bio-

engineered animals and viruses), and most

societies, under the influence of a post-Keynesian

neoliberal ideology, seem headed toward more

individualization, less education for citizenship,

and less moral/ethical training or sensitization.

It is nonetheless incumbent upon intellectuals

to help reconstruct modern organizations so

that, to use Bauman’s (1995: 148–9) words,

‘massive participation in cruel deeds’ becomes

impossible rather than possible, and without

witness.

NOTES

We are grateful to Chris Philo for his comments about the

historical development of animal geography, and to Sarah

Whatmore for her fine editorial advice and recommenda-

tions. The support of the US National Science Foundation

(Program in Geography and Regional Science) and the US

Sea Grant Program, which was critical to research by

Wolch and her colleagues that is reported in the chapter, is

kindly acknowledged. Please direct correspondence to

Jennifer Wolch, Department of Geography, University of

Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089–0255,

USA.

1 Some zoögeographers also used concepts of place and

region: see Cansdale (1949), Davies (1961) and

Thompson (1905).

2 German geographers, such as Hahn, were prominent

influences, as were Vidal de la Blache, who discussed

animal domestication historically in relation to trans-

portation, and other French regionalists (James, 1972:

252–3), such as Vidal’s student Brunhes (1920), who

argued that animal ‘conquest’ and animal-raising, as

well as the ‘devastations’ they caused were ‘essential

facts’ of human geography (James, 1972: 250; Vidal,

1926: 354ff).

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