The categories and the types of care we assign are very often tenuous and troubled in nature. The articles in this volume explore some of the intricacy, ambiguity, and even irony in our perceptions and approaches to “multispecies” relations.
Content
Ursula Münster shows us in her essay on silenced and silent practices of avian care in a postcolonial conservation landscape of South India, that care is never innocent, it plays out within established hierarchies and power relations, and it can reinforce long traditions of imperialism and exclusion.
Caring for one set of species at the cost of another is the subject of Amir Zelinger’s article about bird conservation and its implications for the life of cats in Imperial Germany.
Jean Langford discusses what happens “when species fall apart” in the relationships of care at primate and parrot sanctuaries. Care involves an improvised orchestration of social life—through spatial arrangements and regulation of movement—to facilitate often nonnormative, intraspecies, and cross-species intimacies.
This article argues that a purely rights-based approach to greater consideration of animals is not theoretically or practically sound. It suggests a constrained-utility approach, which is both operational and based on negotiated consensus.
This film examines the rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon by 1914, its lessons for the future, and plans from the “de-extinction” movement to reverse the event using genetic science.
This film questions the sustainability of the four billion dollar global sushi industry, which has put the Blue Fin Tuna at risk of extinction.
Dale Jamieson discusses animal liberation as an environmental ethic.
This film explores the social dimensions of the illegal rhino horn trade in South Africa.
This article reflects on the Knechtsand, a sandbank in the estuary of the Weser, that served as a bombing range for the British and American air forces stationed in England in 1952. It examines the locals’ protests historically and uncovers strands of tradition that are hugely significant for our understanding of the Wadden Sea and the expanding conservation regime.
