Urbanization and development of green spaces is continuing worldwide. Such development frequently engulfs the habitats of native animals, with a variety of effects on their existence, location and ways of living. This paper attempts to theorize about some of these effects, drawing on aspects of Foucault's discussions of power and using a metaphor of human colonization, where colonization is understood as an "ongoing process of dispossession, negotiation, transformation, and resistance." It argues that a variety of different kinds of human/animal power (...) relations can exist in urban areas, not all of which are examples of human domination. The paper concludes by raising a number of questions about the implications of these human/animal relations. (shrink)

Urbanization and development of green spaces is continuing worldwide. Such development frequently engulfs the habitats of native animals, with a variety of effects on their existence, location and ways of living. This paper attempts to theorize about some of these effects, drawing on aspects of Foucault's discussions of power and using a metaphor of human colonization, where colonization is understood as an "ongoing process of dispossession, negotiation, transformation, and resistance." It argues that a variety of different kinds of human/animal power (...) relations can exist in urban areas, not all of which are examples of human domination. The paper concludes by raising a number of questions about the implications of these human/animal relations. (shrink)

The recent 'animal turn' in geography has contributed to a critical examination of the inseparable geographies of human and non-human animals, and has a clear ethical dimension. This paper is intended to explore these same ethical issues through a consideration of the historical geography of petkeeping as this relates to the death and commemoration of favourite household animals. The emergence of the pet cemetery, towards the end of the 19th century, is a significant step in itself, but this was only (...) one element in a radical reappraisal of the place of non-human animals in human sensibility and spirituality. For some bereaved pet-owners, the old question of the immortality of animal souls was retrieved and transformed, and sustained by a raft of unorthodox theological and spiritual speculation. The significance of this late Victorian and Edwardian response to non-human animals is assessed and treated as a problem of ethics, as a counterweight to the dominant anthropocentrism of past times and ours. (shrink)

In this paper we examine attempts to reframe the ethics of nature-society relations. We trace a postmodern turn which reflects a distrust of overarching moral codes and narratives and points towards a more nuanced understanding of how personal moral impulses are embedded within, and inter-subjectively constituted by, contextual configurations of self and other. We also trace an ethical turn which reflects a critique of anthropocentrism and points towards moves to non-anthropocentric frames in which the othernesses and ethics of difference are (...) shaped by an acknowledgement that human and non-human agency are relationally bound and assembled in networks and places. These turns suggest the need for a more sensitive 'ethical mindfulness' which is grounded in particular space-time contexts. Throughout the paper we draw on research we have conducted on the interconnections between trees and places, and in particular we describe three specific tree-places - an urban square, an urban cemetery and an orchard - which provide grounded contexts of encounter and potential for ethical mindedness. We conclude that notions of intrinsicality, otherness, enchantment and hybridity are helpful in configuring the search for grounded ethical mindfulness, both for and in nature. (shrink)

Our hypothesis is that ecological transformation involves socio-environmental communities formed through joint action on a material environment, which can be set as a conjonction of practices between senses and meanings — giving birth to landscapes, life environments and matter of all kinds — analyzed in the context of solidarities — as well as conflicts of territoriality, in which human collectives associate with living matter and the environment to fight against other uses of space or to implement new ways of seeing (...) nature. The environment as a collective work then becomes a self-sustaining call to action, which enhances the skills and legitimacy of the actors (citizens, formal and informal collectives) and their role in socio-ecological transition. We thus witness emerging environmental citizenships of a new kind that deviate from political militancy and testify to civic engagement in ordinary practices, a collective environmentalism that contributes to public action and democracy. What we call ordinary environmentalism includes environmental alliances and socio-environmental communities (with cats and cockroaches, mushrooms and noise interpretation, narrating, creating music, etc.) that have hitherto been considered negligible and we emphasize their value in democratizing the co-production of everyday and ordinary environments. One way to do this is to admit – as many scholars in the field of biosemiotics have done – that nature is made up of « signs, interpretations and meanings » (Wheeler 2014: 375) and to increase our knowledge of an aesthetic experience related to nature. We will deploy these issues on a theoretical level through the conceptual expression of environmental forms and the concept of immunity. Based on an interdisciplinary research, the related fieldwork includes a hundred non-directive interviews and observations conducted in several French cities (Paris, Rennes, Lyon), in specific neighborhoods such as the public housing district of Blosne in Rennes and the Croix-Rousse district in Lyon, or with specific associations to reflect the role of public institutions in the socio-natural arrangements of groups of inhabitants in the cities of France. (shrink)