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of the new language, but also of animals and whatever is unformed' (Deleuze 1998:
153, endnote 18).
6
If organisms such as viruses are seen as animals, then many of them
do
exert a power
of life and death over many humans. This being said, it is unclear whether the prion
blamed by scientists for the disease of BSE is more than a form of protein. The BSE
crisis in the UK may not really be thought of as an assertion of dominance by animals
over local humans, moreover, since some three million cattle have been killed since
1996 in order to try to limit the spread of the disease. (Actually, an attempt to
underwrite confidence in the export meat market is arguably a more likely reason for
these substantial animal sacrifices.) See also Hinchliffe and Naylor (1998).
7
Special reference should also be made to Anderson's contributions in this connection.
Her initial piece on the Adelaide Zoo (Anderson 1995) was particularly influential,
but so too have been her subsequent papers on the long-term historical geography of
domestication, wherein she considers both the material processes involved and the
ideological codings written into these processes (Anderson 1997, 1998).
8
Examples of new animal-geographical work which tackles birds and reptiles include
Proctor (1998; Proctor and Pincetl 1996) on owls, and Whatmore and Thorne (1998)
on crocodiles.
9
Little geographical work on fish has departed from the zoogeographical mapping
tradition (a recent example is Kracker 1999), although a few geographical studies of
the fishing industry have in effect been inquiries into human—fish relations. Of
particular note has been Coull's detailed research on Scotland's sea fisheries, as
brought together in Coull (1996; and also Cruickshank 1984).
10
Very little geographical work has been conducted on insects, although recent Meetings
of the Association of American Geographers have included occasional zoogeographical
papers on ants (Davis 1998; DeMers 1994) and papers touching on the human
dimensions of 'plagues of locusts' (Richardson 1994, 1998).
11
A reformulated plant geography, perhaps along the lines being advocated for an
animal geography, may be interesting, although questions to do with plants, gardens,
forests and other plant habitats (such as heathlands) have already been well covered in
the study of landscape. We certainly support ongoing research into the geographies of
viruses, as linked into medical and health care geography. See, for instance, Gould
(1993). While not being entirely happy with aspects of this topic, the attention paid to
the micro-spaces of HIV (see Gould 1993: Chap. 1), as connected to inquiries into
different spatial scales of human-virus interactions from the city to the continent to
the globe, does strike us as imaginative and important. See also Hinchliffe and Naylor
(1998).
12
'The modern constitution' is what Latour, following Shapin and Schaffer (1985), terms
the separation of powers between representatives of non-humans, the scientists, and
those of humans, the politicians. This historical separation between epistemology and
sociology, or between nature and society, is seen to be 'invented' in the dispute
between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century. The
constitution thus 'defines humans and non-humans, their properties and their
relations, their abilities and their groupings' (Latour 1993: 15). Latour (1999) makes
some further elaborations upon this constitution through a reading of Plato's
Gorgias
.
13
Cooter and Pumfrey (1994:250) make the further point that when experts appeal to a
public for support, they seek to appeal to its interests. If a lay public accepts such an
appeal, it allows itself to become part of a network of alliances sustaining that
