Animals, Geography, and the City: Notes on Inclusions and Exclusions

Abstract

This paper offers notes on the ways in which nonhuman animals have been treated within the texts of academic geography, principally human geography, The argument is that their inclusion here has always been a very partial one, conditioned by what has sometimes been termed a ‘human chauvinism’ leading them to be ignored altogether or only researched in the context of their utility to human beings. An alternative perspective is proposed in which animals are regarded as a marginal ‘social’ group discursively constituted and practically affected by human communities, and as a group which is thereby subjected to all manner of sociospatial inclusions and exclusions, The argument is that animals should be seen as enmeshed in complex power relations with human communities, and in the process enduring geographies which are imposed upon them ‘from without’ but which they may also inadvertently influence ‘from within’. The implications of adopting such a perspective require careful examination, but in the second part of this paper some possibilities are raised though substantive vignettes of animals as a social group included in or excluded from the city. Particular attention is paid to 19th-century debates about meat markets and slaughterhouses, wherein can be detected a will to exclude livestock animals from cities such as London and Chicago on a variety of grounds (medical and hygienic, organisational and moral).