Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Placing animals in the traditional zoo
Zoos exist in a variety of forms in different societies and cultures. They have been
shaped by, and given shape to, a wide range of human responses to animals.
Moreover, they are complicated institutions whose form and function reveal
overlapping purposes and occupy different places in diverse networks which
commodify, control and care for animals, generating and popularising knowledge
about animals and accruing value from them. In their evolution zoos have been
places of collection, colonisation, agricultural experimentation, education and
exhibition. Zoo buildings are therefore rarely found in isolation, and surrounding an
urban zoo are usually found a mélange of other buildings and institutions such as
botanical gardens, lecture theatres, display galleries, libraries, living quarters and
dissecting rooms; not to mention more recently cinemas, food halls and souvenir
shops. This multiplicity of functions means that there are continual contestations
over the distribution and form of space required for the different functions of the
zoo. The changing layout of zoological and botanical gardens reflects wider changes
to the status and popularisation of certain forms of science (Outram 1996). 3 The
scientific, cultural and technological transitions which are revealed in the
establishment of what can be called 'classical zoos' in the nineteenth and the early
twentieth century 4 provide a useful point from which to develop analysis and
understanding of the new space of the electronic zoo. They reveal the symbolic
spaces occupied by animals within zoos and the very practical means through which
these organisations are created, maintained and changed. I pursue this analysis
through a focus on the way that animals are mobilised, stabilised and circulated in
the networks surrounding the forms of animal display found in the classical zoo
(Latour 1987).
The networks of the traditional zoo
Common to classical zoos is their distinctive array of living animal species. These
institutions characteristically bring into urban centres collections of geographically
dispersed 'wild' animal species. These are arranged in displays which taxonomically
distribute animals into genera, families and species—the big cats, great apes, and so
forth—furnishing their cages with maps showing the location of each animal's
natural habitat. This geographical displacement is part of what constitutes their
attraction, and the process of decontextualisation alone can serve to give exotic value
to certain animal species, the majority of which are never seen by people in nature.
In this, the genealogy of the classical zoo can be traced to the private collections of
caged animals or menageries and cabinets of curiosities that were important status
symbols for the wealthy or the royal in the eighteenth century (Findlen 1996).
These valorised certain ways of knowing about nature that emphasised adventure,
exploration and the development of knowledge by way of moving through space
(Outram 1996; Pratt 1992). The animals thus collected stood in metonymically for
the regions from which they were derived, providing a visual display of imperial
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