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(as always, apologies for cross-posting) CFP: Political Ecology of Multi-Species Spaces: Contestation and Cohabitation Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting San Francisco, California // 29 March - 2 April, 2016 Jeff Martin, UC Berkeley, organizer Jennifer Sedell, UC Davis, organizer Rosemary-Claire Collard, Concordia University, discussant Conflicts between humans and non-human species have seen growing attention among scholars concerned with the knotty and interdisciplinary questions of coexistence. Work within wildlife ecology and management increasingly recognizes the need to look beyond the biophysical, with calls for social science attention to the “human dimensions” of these conflicts (Dickman 2010; Treves & Karanth 2003). At the same time, scholarship around philosophical posthumanism, critical animal studies, and new animal geographies has brought to bear radically different perspectives on relationships between human and non-human species (Haraway 2008; Kirksey & Helmreich 2010; Wolch & Emel 1998). This session provides an intervention into these conversations by examining the production of multi-species spaces and boundaries through the lens of political ecology. Multi-species contestations do not take place in the ether, but rather in and through the production of space. This session is concerned with how humans “place” animals in material and conceptual ways – through taxonomic or legal classification, a more amorphous “othering,” or the legal and material bounding of space – and how animals transgress or “resist” these boundings and produce alternative spatial relations, often resulting in deep unease from both real and perceived threats to humans’ “biosecurity” (Collard 2012; Philo & Wilbert 2000). We are interested in the many forms these threats take: from alligators (Ogden 2011) and cougars (Collard 2012) to insects (Shaw, Robbins & Jones III 2010), weeds (Robbins 2004), viruses (Braun 2011; Greenhough 2012), and more. We contend that a critical, more-than-human geography (Whatmore 2002) of inter-species conflict should attend carefully to questions of space and power, as well as the particularity of context, history, and individual species. Against abstract questions of coexistence with non-human others, we might instead consider concrete and grounded dynamics of spatial “cohabitation,” of living together - a challenging and contradictory terrain of lived intersubjectivity (Fox 2006), but which open the possibility of producing space and society differently (cf. Loftus 2012; Robbins & Moore 2013). We propose that political ecology provides an invaluable set of theoretical and analytical tools for analysis and intervention in multi-species contestations (Perreault, Bridge & McCarthy 2015; Robbins 2012). Its long tradition of interdisciplinarity, simultaneous concern with the material and the meaningful, and normative scholarship provide a framework for investigating questions of space, meaning, and agency in the complex entanglements between human and non-human species (cf. Kosek 2010). This session provides a valuable opportunity for conversation and collaboration among scholars from diverse backgrounds and trainings in the interest of researching and thinking through cohabitation and our multi-species futures. Questions of interest: - How does boundary creation encourage or discourage inter-species interaction? - What are the impacts of designating spaces for certain species and not for others? - How do species change materially, legally, and conceptually when they occur in different spaces (and at different times)? - When and how do we build and enforce boundaries through both what we shut out and what we invite in? - How do we recognize and politically account for the importance of other species? - How can critical social theory traditions help us understand interspecies interactions? - How can empirical investigations of biophysical processes enrich theoretical framings? Potential topics and themes include (but are not limited to): - human-wildlife conflicts and controversies - invasive species exclusion efforts and debates - quarantines for plant, animal, and human health threats - risk and risk perception, (bio)security/ization, (dis)proportionality of response - novel ecosystems - microbiotics, probiotics, and cultivation of gut micro-ecologies - non-human agency - human values, attitudes, and practices toward non-humans Those who would like to participate in the session should submit a brief statement of interest and/or draft abstract by October 17th to Jen Sedell at [log in to unmask] and Jeff Martin at [log in to unmask] Session participants will need to submit a final abstract and register for the conference by October 29. Bibliography: Braun, Bruce (2011) “Governing disorder: biopolitics and the molecularization of life,” in Global Political Ecology, eds. R. Peet, P. Robbins and M. Watts. Routledge. Collard, Rosemary-Claire (2012) “Cougar-Human Entanglements and the Biopolitical Un/Making of Safe Space,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 30(1): 23-42. Dickman, A.J. (2010) “Complexities of Conflict: The Importance of Considering Social Factors for Effectively Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflict,” Animal Conservation, 13(5): 458–466. Fox, Rebekah (2006) “Animal Behaviours, Post-Human Lives: Everyday Negotiations of the Animal-Human Divide in Pet-Keeping,” Social & Cultural Geography. 7(4): 525-537. Greenhough, Beth (2012) “Where species meet and mingle: endemic human-virus relations, embodied communication and more-than-human agency at the Common Cold Unit 1946-90,” Cultural Geographies 19(3): 281-301. Haraway, Donna Jeanne (2008) When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press. Kirksey, S. Eben and Stefan Helmreich (2010) “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography,” Cultural Anthropology. 25(4): 545-576. Kosek, Jake (2010) “Ecologies of Empire: On the New Uses of the Honeybee,” Cultural Anthropology. 25: 650–678. Loftus, Alex (2012) Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology. University of Minnesota Press. Ogden, Laura (2011) Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades. University of Minnesota Press. Perreault, Tom, Gavin Bridge, and James McCarthy (eds) (2015) The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology. Routledge. Philo, Chris and Chris Wilbert (eds) (2000) Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations. Routledge. Robbins, Paul (2004) “Comparing Invasive Networks: Cultural and Political Biographies of Invasive Species” The Geographical Review 94(2): 139-156. Robbins, Paul (2012) Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. Robbins, Paul and Sarah A. Moore (2013) “Ecological Anxiety Disorder: Diagnosing the Politics of the Anthropocene,” Cultural Geographies, 20(1): 3-19. Shaw, Ian Graham Ronald, Paul F. Robbins, and John Paul Jones III. (2010) “A Bug's Life and the Spatial Ontologies of Mosquito Management,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 100(2): 373-392. Treves, Adrian and K. Ullas Karanth (2003) “Human-Carnivore Conflict and Perspectives on Carnivore Management Worldwide,” Conservation Biology. 17: 1491-1499. Whatmore, Sarah (2002) Hybrid Geographies: Natures Cultures Spaces. Sage. Wolch, Jennifer R. and Jody Emel (eds) (1998) Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands. Verso. -- Jeff Vance Martin PhD Candidate and Doctoral Researcher Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley [log in to unmask]