Kristin Asdal - Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The more-than-human condition

HUMANS, ANIMALS AND BIOPOLITICS

Being human is not as simple as it may sound. We are not necessarily who we think we are. Rather, humans are bound together with a host of others, upon whom we depend for our knowledge, for our sustenance, for companionship and much besides. Central to that co-existence are the multiple relations that people have with non-human animals. How have these often iniquitous and fraught relationships been enacted and shaped in recent history, and how are they performed and sometimes made uniform in different settings?

This book brings together a range of leading scholars from Science and Technology Studies (STS), Geography, History and Anthropology, in order to interrogate, empirically and theoretically, human-animal relations. Chapters are conceptually grounded, though many of them question theoretical frameworks that tend to obfuscate rather than illuminate the insights that can be gained from detailed field or archival work. From enviro-pigs to farmed fish, and from animal rights to flu-infected birds and nomadic camels, the book reflects the multi-sited and multi-species ways in which human-animal lives are practised and politicised. A key question for this book is how might we glimpse alternative ways of being, or becoming, more-than-human from these experiences?

This book will be required reading for those interested in human-animal relations, including advanced undergraduate students, postgraduates and researchers in Geography, STS, Anthropology, Sociology and History. It will be central to any programme that involves re-thinking the ways in which we live together as, and become, more-than-human others.

Kristin Asdal is Professor of Science, Technology and Culture at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, Norway.

Tone Druglitr is Postdoctoral Fellow at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, Norway.

Steve Hinchliffe is Professor of Geography at the Department of Geography, University of Exeter, UK.

Multispecies Encounters

Series Editors:

Samantha Hurn, University of Exeter, UK and Chris Wilbert, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Multispecies Encounters provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion, development and dissemination of research focused on encounters between members of different species. Re-evaluating our human relationships with other-than-human beings through an interrogation of the myth of human exceptionalism which has structured (and limited) social thought for so long, the series presents work including multispecies ethnography, animal geographies and more-than-human approaches to research, in order not only better to understand the human condition, but also to situate us holistically, as human animals, within the global ecosystems we share with countless other living beings.

As such, the series expresses a commitment to the importance of giving balanced consideration to the experiences of all social actors involved in any given social interaction, with work advancing our theoretical knowledge and understanding of multispecies encounters and, where possible, exploring analytical frameworks which include ways or kinds of being other than the human.

Published

Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Researching Encounters with Mysterious Creatures

Edited by Samantha Hurn

Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The more-than-human condition

Edited by Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitr and Steve Hinchliffe

Forthcoming titles in this series

Animals in Place

Jacob Bull and Tora Holmberg

HUMANS, ANIMALS AND BIOPOLITICS

The more-than-human condition

Edited by Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitr and
Steve Hinchliffe

First published 2017

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 selection and editorial matter, Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitr and Steve Hinchliffe; individual chapters, the contributors.

The right of Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitr and Steve Hinchliffe to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Asdal, Kristin, editor, author. | Druglitr, Tone, editor, author. | Hinchliffe, Steve, 1955- editor, author.

Title: Humans, animals and biopolitics : the more than human condition / edited by Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitr and Steve Hinchliffe.

Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. |

Series: Multispecies encounters | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015045517 (print) | LCCN 2016004833 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472448651 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781472448682 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781472448668 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472448675 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Human ecologyPolitical aspects. | Biopolitics. | Human-animal relationshipsPolitical aspects.

Classification: LCC GF21 .H883 2016 (print) | LCC GF21 (ebook) | DDC 179/.4dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045517

ISBN: 978-1-4724-4865-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4724-4868-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-3155-8763-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by FiSH Books Ltd, Enfield

CONTENTS

Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitr and Steve Hinchliffe

John Law and Marianne Elisabeth Lien

Vibeke Pihl

Kristin Asdal and Tone Druglitr

Martina Schlnder

Christoph Gradmann

Robert G.W. Kirk

Natalie Porter

Steve Hinchliffe

Susan McHugh

Kristin Asdal is Professor (dr.art) at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. She writes on the politics and performativity of methods and has published extensively on empirical studies of nature in politics and administration. She is currently managing an ERC Starting Grant on valuation practices in the bioeconomy. Her recent publications include: Enacting values from the sea: On innovation devices, value-practices and the co-modification of markets and bodies in aquaculture, in Value Practices in the Life Sciences & Medicine (2015), edited by I. Dussauge, C.-F. Helgesson and F. Lee: Oxford University Press. With co-author Brd Hobk she is currently working on the book Parliamentary Practices and the Nature of Constitutional Power: Assembling the Leviathan (under contract with Routledge).

Tone Druglitr holds a PhD in Science and Technology studies. She is currently employed as a post-doctoral research fellow at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. She has published on the science and politics of laboratory animals and animal welfare, the professionalisation of veterinary medicine and on writing radical laboratory animal histories. She is the co-editor with Kristian Bjrkdahl of the anthology