Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
truth than Rimbaud could have anticipated.
5
In return, of course, animals are
dramatically affected by the actions of humans, not least through farming and,
increasingly, genetic engineering. Indeed, humans past and present have radically
changed the life conditions of all manner of animals, whether pets, livestock or wild
(Benton 1993:68-69; see also Watts, this volume). Human—animal relations have
hence been filled with power, commonly the wielding of an oppressive, dominating
power by humans over animals, and only in relatively small measure have animals
been able to evade this domination or to become themselves dominant over local
humans. Examples can be adduced of the latter, such as plagues of locusts,
rampaging elephants, or perhaps the ramifications of BSE or 'mad cow disease'.
6
Yet, usually animals have been the relatively powerless and marginalised 'other'
partner in human—animal relations. What surely cannot be denied is the historical
and global significance of such human—animal relations for both parties to the
relationship—to be sure, they commonly entail matters of life and death for both
parties, the animals in particular—and any social science which fails to pay at least
some attention to these relations, to their differential constitutions and
implications, is arguably deficient.
A 'new' animal geography has emerged to explore the dimensions of space and
place which cannot but sit at the heart of these relations, and contributions here are
now running alongside more established anthropological, sociological and
psychological investigations into human—animal relations (see the journal
Society
and Animals
). An older engagement between academic geography and the subject-
matter of animals, often cast as 'zoogeography', had been preoccupied with mapping
the distributions of animals—describing and sometimes striving to explain their
spatial patterns and place associations—and in so doing it had tended to regard
animals as 'natural' objects to be studied in isolation from their human neighbours.
A branch of geographical inquiry expressly named as 'animal geography' secured a
modest foothold for itself, notably when it was positioned as one of the 'systematic
geographies' by Hartshorne in his famous diagram of the discipline's logical
structure (Hartshorne 1939:147, Figure 1). The importance to animal geography of
the human influence on animal lives was noted in a few papers published in the
1950s and 1960s, particularly in Bennett's (1960) explicit call for a 'cultural animal
geography' drawing upon the interest of the Berkeley School in themes such as animal
domestication, but the connections to research in human geography (as opposed to
physical geography) remained tenuous. In fact, Davies (1961:412) complained that
the concerns of animal geography remained 'too remote from the central problems
of human geography'. It was therefore not until much more recently that
geographers in any number began to recognise the possibilities for, and indeed socio-
ecological importance of, a revived animal geography which would focus squarely on
the complex entanglings of human—animal relations with space, place, location,
environment and landscape. The publication of the 'Bringing the animals back in'
theme issue of the journal
Society and Space
(Wolch and Emel 1995) was a landmark
in this respect, to be followed by an edited topic drawing upon contributions to this
theme issue and adding others (Wolch and Emel 1998), and also by a theme issue
