Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
serious damage to woodland in some areas. In Denmark and Holland,
where large pig and chicken farms are a major industry, precious
heathlands are being destroyed.
(McKie 1999:4)
These three extracts from recent newspaper stories show some of the myriad ways in
which human relations with the world of non-human animals
1
can become the focus
of attention, and all three point to the importance of the
spaces
and
places
bound up
in the human—animal relations under scrutiny.
2
The first extract tells of a place
which had initially witnessed one of the first sustained encounters between humans
and gorillas, a remote and wild place, now undergoing serious changes: first as a
designated national park encouraging a 'gorilla tourism' entertaining casual
encounters between tourists and gorillas, and then as an environment for an 'animal
genocide' occurring in the shadow of humans waging war. From being a 'natural'
place where the gorillas remained relatively undisturbed by humans,
3
this place has
become, variously, the scientist's site of fieldwork, the naturalist's site of biological
conservation, the entrepreneur's site of capital accumulation, the poacher's site of
prey, and the soldier's site of refuge. Different sets of humans possessing differing
purposes and technologies have hence flowed into and out of this East African
region, reflecting broader geographies of science, state intervention, capitalism,
colonialism, politics and human struggle, and in the process they have shaped
widely divergent kinds of human—animal relations (see also Haraway 1989:263-
268).
The second newspaper extract tells of a type of space, the scientific laboratory, which
has seemingly seen the mass extermination of mice, rats, dogs and other mammals
simply because many more of them have been bred than are actually 'necessary' for
the conduct of pharmaceutical scientific experiments. The impression is of a whole
hidden geography of such laboratories and breeding stations, tucked away in
countryside complexes and university campuses, wherein many animals live and die
as part of a highly unequal human—animal relation predicated on the utility,
adaptability and expendability of the animals so incarcerated. Questions about
science, state intervention (or lack of it) and capitalist industry are obviously again
to the fore, as well as those of ethics, welfare and politics.
The third extract then tells of how animal products, their bodily wastes in this
case, may have effects which can diffuse beyond the bounds of the spaces where they
are immediately present, creating a spatial connection from the pigs and chickens on
their farms to a range of environments beyond the farm boundaries (a 'spatial
externality' neatly underlined in a cartoon accompanying the article: see
Figure 1.1
).
In this instance, a complex human—animal relation is established which does not
operate solely through the physical proximity of humans and animals, but rather
entails a spread-out geography through which animals are able to have an effect on
humans at-a-distance. Wider questions, for example about private property, the
byproducts of economic activity, and the duty of the state to regulate agricultural
