Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ANIMAPOLIS (Political Animals: A More-than-Human Approach to Urban Inequalities)
Période du rapport: 2023-01-01 au 2025-06-30
ANIMAPOLIS aims to understand the role of animals in the formation of urban inequalities, asking: How do animals’ interactions with humans and infrastructures co-produce the unequal distribution of risks and resources across urban spaces and populations? It focuses on two critical urban domains, security and public health, that are often characterized by stark inequalities, and takes the role of key animals within these domains –dogs and rats, respectively– as a unique analytical entry-point.
Urban inequalities are not only produced by people. Security dogs are socialized to identify threatening individuals on the basis of classed and raced markers. Rats pose a public health risk, and thrive in low-income areas with decaying sanitation infrastructure. Urban scholars have begun to highlight the importance of infrastructures and technologies in configuring access to essential goods and services. While this research provides key insights into how nonhuman entities mediate unequal relations, it has largely overlooked how certain animals –“political animals”– also co-produce inequalities.
Dogs and rats clearly play a role within security and public health, but we know little about how they mediate related inequalities. Through what mechanisms might security dogs co-produce practices of racial profiling, or distributions of rats and rodenticides affect public health outcomes? This project studies such mechanisms by focusing first, on dogs’ and rats’ biological specificities and cultural imaginaries and second, on the spatial, material and affective dimensions of their interactions with humans and infrastructure. The project develops a two-way qualitative comparison, between different urban contexts and between different animals, through multispecies ethnographies in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro. The project’s more-than-human approach extends theoretical and methodological innovations in urban anthropology and geography to open new horizons on the study of urban inequalities.
To answer the main research question, the project pursues five research objectives related to: the development of new multispecies methodologies (RO1); the identification of everyday urban interactions and relations in the domain of security between dogs, humans and socio-technical systems (RO2) and in the domain of public health between rats, humans and socio-technical systems (RO3); comparing mechanisms through which these animal-human-infrastructure dynamics co-produce socio-spatial boundaries and unequal distributions (RO4) and theorize the role of animals in the formation of urban inequalities (RO5).
Urban inequalities are not only produced by people. Security dogs are socialized to identify threatening individuals on the basis of classed and raced markers. Rats pose a public health risk, and thrive in low-income areas with decaying sanitation infrastructure. Urban scholars have begun to highlight the importance of infrastructures and technologies in configuring access to essential goods and services. While this research provides key insights into how nonhuman entities mediate unequal relations, it has largely overlooked how certain animals –“political animals”– also co-produce inequalities.
Dogs and rats clearly play a role within security and public health, but we know little about how they mediate related inequalities. Through what mechanisms might security dogs co-produce practices of racial profiling, or distributions of rats and rodenticides affect public health outcomes? This project studies such mechanisms by focusing first, on dogs’ and rats’ biological specificities and cultural imaginaries and second, on the spatial, material and affective dimensions of their interactions with humans and infrastructure. The project develops a two-way qualitative comparison, between different urban contexts and between different animals, through multispecies ethnographies in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro. The project’s more-than-human approach extends theoretical and methodological innovations in urban anthropology and geography to open new horizons on the study of urban inequalities.
To answer the main research question, the project pursues five research objectives related to: the development of new multispecies methodologies (RO1); the identification of everyday urban interactions and relations in the domain of security between dogs, humans and socio-technical systems (RO2) and in the domain of public health between rats, humans and socio-technical systems (RO3); comparing mechanisms through which these animal-human-infrastructure dynamics co-produce socio-spatial boundaries and unequal distributions (RO4) and theorize the role of animals in the formation of urban inequalities (RO5).
During the first 4 months of Y1, the PI focused on preparatory activities including the recruitment of 4 PhDs and 1 postdoc; the organization of a kick-off conference; the preparation of invited lectures and a conference panel; and improving Brazilian Portuguese. The full team started in May 1, and a kick-off conference with national and international advisory board members and other colleagues introduced the team and project to relevant experts and provided opportunity for feedback and networking . Throughout the first year the team held bi-weekly meetings to discuss relevant readings together, and more clearly define the short and long term objectives of each of the subprojects, aiding the development of individual PhD research proposals, which were evaluated and approved by the PI and respective co-supervisors and external evaluators, and of research and data management plans, approved by the relevant review board and data steward. The postdoc worked on reviewing and connecting relevant multispecies methods. The team also established a project website (https://www.animapolis.nl/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)).
In Y2, team members completed the first, longer fieldwork on dogs and rats in Rio and Amsterdam. The PI and postdoc visited Rio to develop the collaborative, team ethnographic component. During fieldwork, team members carried out participant observation, interviews and conducted various forms of multispecies ethnography. During this period, online team meetings were organized to share preliminary findings and analytical insights on different mechanisms and to develop cross-cultural and cross-species comparisons.
In Y1-2, the team gave multiple presentations on research plans, preliminary findings and analytical insights, and the project as a whole. In addition to presentations at ANIMAPOLIS workshops and conferences in Amsterdam and Rio, the PI gave invited lectures and keynotes on the project at conferences in Cambridge, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London and Mainz; the other team members presented at conferences in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Helsinki, Honolulu, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador da Bahia.
In Y2, team members completed the first, longer fieldwork on dogs and rats in Rio and Amsterdam. The PI and postdoc visited Rio to develop the collaborative, team ethnographic component. During fieldwork, team members carried out participant observation, interviews and conducted various forms of multispecies ethnography. During this period, online team meetings were organized to share preliminary findings and analytical insights on different mechanisms and to develop cross-cultural and cross-species comparisons.
In Y1-2, the team gave multiple presentations on research plans, preliminary findings and analytical insights, and the project as a whole. In addition to presentations at ANIMAPOLIS workshops and conferences in Amsterdam and Rio, the PI gave invited lectures and keynotes on the project at conferences in Cambridge, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London and Mainz; the other team members presented at conferences in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Helsinki, Honolulu, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador da Bahia.
Various emergent analytical themes were identified on the basis of field research (RO2 and RO3), in particular in terms of mechanisms underlying the formation of difference and inequalities (RO4). In terms of affective mechanisms, we recognize simultaneous processes of animalization/dehumanization of some groups of humans (e.g. in legitimizing use of violence), and personification of animals (sometimes valued more than certain human groups). At the same time, we see various forms of interhuman and interspecies modes of care that may mitigate existing inequalities. In terms of spatial mechanisms, our fieldwork points to the role of domestic space and the home – an often neglected scale in urban studies – as a site where inequalities are made manifest. We also see an emerging theme of the digitalization of human-animal relations through social media (e.g. of police dogs) and datafication (where rat presence is translated into statistical data points). In terms of material mechanisms, we have been attending to the fleshy materiality of sensing human/animal bodies, but also to chemical flows (e.g. rodenticide) metabolized by different bodies. Relatedly, we have been finding that sensorial methods focused on material traces in the built environment (RO1) are especially useful for research on hard-to-track urban creatures such as rats. Three additional themes have emerged as relevant to understanding the more-than-human formation of inequalities: labor relations (where we recognize raced, classed and gendered interhuman hierarchies in the domain of animal work such as canine handling and pest management; but also interspecies collegiality and solidarity); colonial afterlives (recognizing that in Brazil and beyond, contemporary multispecies relations are informed by the colonial past of plantation slavery); and the legal dimension (e.g. how legislation structures use of rodenticide or implications of dog-inflicted harm).