Animals

Material Boundaries: Animals and the Making of Place

Discussions in human geography about the social construction of landscapes have led to the exploration of how animals and their networks leave their imprint on places, regions, and landscapes over time. Animal geographers consider tangible places such as zoos, farms, experimental laboratories, and wildlife reserves as well as economic, social, and political spaces such as the worldwide trade of captive wild animals. Even a relatively new space through which animals are woven into human culture, the “electronic zoo,” has been explored as an emerging form of animal display trading in digital images rather than animal bodies like traditional zoos and aquariums.

Animal geographers also study places characterized by the presence or absence of animals and how human–animal interactions create distinctive landscapes. Researchers have considered the impact of land use practices on wildlife survival in the Peruvian Amazon, the boundary-making policy conflicts between urban and rural New Yorkers over the proper[Page 9] place of wolves, and the changing relationships between people and mountain lions in California. In addition, some animal geographers foreground the links between humans and other animals—those used for meat, medicine, clothing, and beauty products, for example—that go largely unseen in contemporary society given the distance engendered by modern commodity chains. Other researchers focus on domesticated animals that share the most intimate spaces with humans, including beloved family pets and service animals. Borderland communities, where humans and animals share public and/or private space and where some animals are loved, others are despised, and so many are unconsciously consumed, reveal the contingent and often contradictory ways in which humans and animals interact with one another.

Borderland communities can span various places and spaces. Investigating human–dolphin encounter spaces, for example, requires a look at the well-defined boundaries of zoos and aquariums, where dolphins are confined and cared for by humans, as well as natural habitats, where a growing number of tourism operators seek out dolphins to sell a “magical experience” to customers who wish to closely interact with, or even touch and swim with, wild dolphins. On the other hand, U.S. government officials strive for just the opposite, calling such activities illegal “harassment” and working to keep people a defined distance apart from all wild dolphins. And how do the dolphins encourage or defy the human ordering of these border waters? Each of these material places, from the zoo and the open ocean to the economic and policy arenas considered by investigating human–dolphin encounter spaces, helps illuminate the complex relationships between human and nonhuman worlds.

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