Serenity in the Storm

Maternity Fashion Guest Post at The Kind Life

0MltODBoeD0Pdfcw8ly0JTJK — Source: Brooke Ashley Photography

Happy Friday! I hope you all have something fun planned for the weekend. Here in Seattle we’re on a streak of perfect spring weather. It’s been sunny and in the 70s all week. Eric and I have made two trips to the dog park this week, done some yard work and plan to do more this weekend. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing…all around it’s just really nice out.

I’m going to admit to a somewhat embarrassing problem I have. I buy maternity clothes like they’re going out of style. Nope, not pregnant. I just unintentionally come home from thrifting with maternity clothes. Sometimes, I notice in the store that an item is maternity and decide to buy it anyway. Other times I don’t notice until I get home. It’s become a joke with my family and friends. If I ever do get pregnant, my wardrobe is SO prepared! All this to say that today I have a guest post over at The Kind Life on maternity fashion. Check it out. And have a wonderful weekend!

Anarchism & the Media, Revisited

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks with not so many blog posts (obviously). I just got back from Boston where I attended (and presented at) the Navigating a Multispecies World conference at Harvard. It was a really good conference and I’ll try to share some thoughts on that at a later date, but for now I’m going to do something I’ve never done before here on the blog. I’m going to repost an old post from last year. Yesterday was May Day and in a repeat of last year, the peaceful May Day demonstrations in Seattle ended in property destruction by a small group of people. Read/watch the story here — a near verbatum repeat of last year’s news reporting. This post from last year is, sadly, still relevant. So here it is (original post here):

***

Understanding Anarchism

You may or may not have heard about the May Day events here in Seattle yesterday. May Day is a global day of action and solidarity for worker and immigration rights and there were events planned around the world to peacefully demonstrate in the spirit of social justice. Media coverage, of course, has not focused on the peaceful demonstrations or the politics surrounding labor and immigration issues. Mainstream media coverage is certainly not focused on the root causes of inequality or the reasons why such demonstrations are necessary in the first place. Mainstream media coverage tends to sensationalize essentialized bits of the protests and ignore the rest, deflecting attention away from the real issues at hand. This is demonstrated nicely in the local KING5 coverage of an incident at yesterday’s May Day in Seattle. I was not at the demonstration yesterday (I was travelling back from Pittsburgh), but what the media is reporting is that a group of ‘self-proclaimed anarchists’ broke windows and spray-painted corporate businesses downtown. The footage harkens back to the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, where peaceful protesters effectively shut down the WTO negotiations and a small group performed similar property destruction in downtown Seattle. The Seattle Police Department cracked down violently on large groups of peaceful protesters in 1999. For an excellent documentary on what happened in Seattle in 1999, watch This is What Democracy Looks Like. The video at this link is yesterday’s reporting of May Day.

There are so many issues to discuss relating to the way this story is reported. For instance–what makes it into the video and what doesn’t, the lines it draws between various factions (the media reporters as ‘innocent bystanders’, the ‘good Samaritans’, the ‘vandals’ or ‘anarchists’, the ‘demonstrators’, the ‘riot police’, etc). There is a lot of work being done in this short video (and in much of the mainstream media coverage of yesterday’s events) to focus on the property destruction performed by a few people and villainize them while simultaneously sidelining the important work the demonstrations around the world were trying to accomplish. This is all extremely frustrating. But what frustrates me especially and nagged at me as I was sitting in airports yesterday reading the coverage online, is the co-optation of ‘anarchism’ and the near-seamless association of anarchism, property destruction, ‘violence,’ youth dressed all in black with face-masks, and (more and more) the insistence that ‘anarchist’ is synonymous with ‘terrorist’. I put these words–’anarchist’, ‘violence’, ‘terrorist’–in quotes to acknowledge the need for real debate about these terms and what they mean. How do we define violence and terrorism? How do we understand anarchism?

As I’ve expressed, the media coverage of this event is disappointing to say the least. But I am also disappointed in the actions of those describing themselves as ‘anarchists’ because of the negative impact of this kind of property destruction and ensuing aftermath on the true agenda of a peaceful demonstration for labor and immigration rights. Moreover, I’m also frustrated because this is not what I understand true anarchism to be about.

Teaching the Animals, Ethics, and Food class last quarter, students came in with their own ideas about anarchists–namely, the black hoodies with white anarchy symbols, face masks or cloths concealing identities, etc. We read together some chapters from Making a Killing: the Political Economy of Animal Rights, by Bob Torres. Torres describes himself as a Marxist social anarchist and the book itself is an analysis of the exploitation of animals under capitalism. A Marxist critique of capitalism, in short, argues that the nature of capitalism is to exploit a large underpaid (or in animals’ case unpaid) working class in order to keep the machine that produces capital running smoothly. Animals in the food system are a uniquely exploited group because they are, in turns, both laborers (in the case of milk, eggs, and semen) and they are literally the raw materials/inputs themselves (in the case of meat). In order for capital to accumulate (to make a profit and sustain growth and production under capitalism), a capitalist economic system features a pressure that drives down the cost of production in order to minimize the costs of inputs and maximize the profits/outputs from the goods and services produced.

Torres describes the central tennant of social anarchism:

Living principles matter today, right now, in the present. We cannot sacrifice what we believe is right in a principled trade-off for a better world in some distant tomorrow that may never come. Or, to put it another way, the means of revolution are absolutely and inextricably connected to its ends… [Social anarchism] denies that we can achieve equality in either the long-term or short-term by force or outright domination of any kind.

My unease with the co-optation of anarchism by those who have engaged in this property destruction is that it seems to replicate forms of domination with which we are familiar from oppressive regimes both today and throughout history.

Like other forms of oppression, the problem of our domination over animals and other humans is social relations rooted in the emergence of hierarchy and extended and deepened through modern capitalism. There can be no real challenge to this system of domination without a simultaneous challenge to relations of domination that come to us through capitalism, in the form of the commodity relation and of property.

He emphasizes the importance of understanding social relations and he rejects what he calls ‘self-centered, individualist lifestyle anarchism’:

We must reject what Bookchin calls ”lifestyle anarchism,” or an anarchism merely premised on “culturally defiant behavior,” which slides easily into “ad hoc adventurism, personal bravura,” and a ”basically apolitical and anti-organizational commitment to imaginations, desire, and ecstasy.” This kind of resistance (can it even be called that) is readily transformed into “constellations of self-indulgence, inchoateness, indiscipline, and incoherence” within a bourgeois reality “whose economic harshness grows starker and crasser with every passing day.”

And he continues:

So while this individualist, lifestyle anarchism and a sort of pop-punk anarchism are ascendant in today’s postmodern ego-orgy, more important is the seemingly old-fashioned and possibly passe work of social connection-building, and exposing, uprooting, and challenging the processes of domination. Considering this, social anarchism provides what is clearly the most fertile ground for rooting a broad-based struggle against domination at all levels of the social spectrum. Driven by a collectivist perspective that also respects the rights of the individual, social anarchism is anti-authoritarian, and puts anti-hierarchical theory into practice.

According to Torres, social anarchism is about resisting all forms of hierarchy and domination and making the means look like the ends we want.

Social anarchism recognizes that the processes of capital accumulation limit human potential, alter the ecosystem, and transform our relations with each other and the natural world. As a truly radical approach to domination and the problems of society’s organization, social anarchism can provide the theoretical and practical tools for attacking human and animal oppressions the world over. This perspective eschews reforming a system that is ultimately incapable of reform, requires that we have means that look like our ends, and recognizes human potential as a potentially positive and transformative force in the social. Moreover […] anarchism even provides the tools for analyzing itself critically and reflexively, which is key if it is going to remain true to its own principles.

Torres’ book is excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a primer on animal rights, political economy, and the unique alternative mode of thinking and living that he outlines through his social anarchist perspective. In contrast to the vision of anarchism we get from this May Day reporting, I find Torres’ vision of anarchism to be inspiring, intelligent, and a way forward. We have to live the future we want.

Top Ten Thoughts for Living Lighter on the Earth

Happy Earth Day! And a reminder that Earth Day should be EVERY DAY! As (vegan) cheesy as that might sound, one day a year to celebrate/protect/think about the environment is just not going to cut it. Not even close. Following up on the “Top Ten” lists I promised to start posting regularly, I decided to post the top ten ways I try to be mindful of living more lightly on the planet. There are hundreds of others, but these are some of things that are top on my mind on a daily basis. I’d love to hear yours!

1. Be vegan. Eating a plant-based diet cuts more CO2 emissions than stopping driving a car.

2. Cut down on car use. I try to use the public buses, lightrail, and good old fashioned feet for walking!

3. Composting. Seattle, luckily, has a city compost/yard waste program and so, in addition to our garbage can and recycling bin, we also get a yard waste bin which takes all yard refuse and food scraps. Eric and I for now put our kitchen scraps in the yard waste, and try to compost most of our yard waste at home in our own composting box. Until we can get a rat-proof worm bin set up for our yard, we just can’t have food composting in the yard. If your city doesn’t have a compost program, see what you can do to get one started and in the meantime, the best thing you can do is compost at home anyway. It’s even possible to have a small worm bin in an apartment for composting.

4. Stop using plastic. Every time you think about buying something packaged in plastic, don’t. See if there is a less packaged option. For instance, try to buy heads of lettuce instead of prewashed plastic boxes of lettuce. If your favorite companies use plastic packaging, write or call them and request that they switch to a more biodegradable option. Buy condiments/sauces/etc that are packaged in glass jars that you can reuse instead of buying the one bottled in plastic.

5. Bring your bags. Now every time I go to the store and grab my cloth bags, I think of the Portlandia skit above about forgetting your bag at the grocery store. Seattle outlawed plastic grocery bags, and now charges for paper bags, which has been a great way to encourage people to bring bags from home and cut down on the mindless consumption of plastic and paper.

6. Buy in bulk. Bulk food buying can reduce packaging, especially if you use cloth bulk sacks to buy things like beans, grains, etc. Just remember the tare weight of your bag for when you check out so you don’t get charged for the weight of the cloth.

7. Change up your cleaning and beauty routine. Household cleaners and beauty products can contain some pretty gnarly ingredients and even the more eco-friendly options are often packaged in plastic. Looking under our kitchen sink is like a forest of plastic bottles — gross. As we use things up, I’ve been trying to switch to simpler options. Not the least of which is vinegar and baking soda (the miracle combo for cleaning and, surprisingly, hair care as well). Check out Sonnet’s recommendations and great recipes for skin/beauty care products.

8. Eat in season for your region. Eating out of season produce can use up an awful lot of fossil fuels. But even when you’re eating in-season foods, be mindful of where they come from. Asparagus might be in season in Washington, but the stuff at the grocery store might still have been shipped from halfway around the world. Read labels and ask questions.

9. Pick up garbage that’s not yours. When you’re out and about, allow yourself to see the garbage around you and pick it up. I realized on my walks with the dogs that I have trained myself to tune out garbage that I see. Instead, I should just pick it up. It doesn’t take much effort. My mom is great at this. Every weekend she goes out into her neighborhood with her gardening gloves and a bag and picks up all the garbage. This doesn’t necessarily solve the problem in number 10, but it does reduce the amount of garbage that wildlife local to your neighborhood is eating and the stuff is polluting your immediate vicinity.

10. Reduce waste. This one is a bit repetitive with some of the earlier ones, but it is probably one of the most important. When we throw things “away,” we have to remember that they don’t go “away” — they go somewhere else. I visited Nicaragua when I was 18 and was brought to a landfill. There was a large community of people living at the landfill in makeshift tents and structures. That reality is seared in my mind forever both because of that example of extreme poverty, and because of the way in which the well-off around the world don’t have to think about how their actions (and waste) impact poor communities around the globe. I’ve been trying lately to be mindful about imagining the garbage I throw away piling up around me. What if we had to KEEP our waste? Also, each time I throw something away, I try to be mindful of the animals who might encounter it. What will this mesh plastic bag that held onions do to a bird or fish that encounters it?

In general, each of these small steps is centered on being more mindful and compassionate. Thinking of how our actions not only impact the air, water, and soil, but also how waste impacts other humans around the world and animals who share the planet with us.

What are your top ways for living lighter on the earth?

Shiitake Noodle Soup

After a visit to the naturopath earlier this week, I’ve been assigned to do an elimination diet. First step: eliminate ALL grains, except for rice for three weeks. Today is day 4 and, honestly, once I hid all the bread items in the house in the freezer so they weren’t staring at me every time I opened the cupboard, it’s not been so bad. We always have cooked brown rice in the fridge for the dogs, so that’s an easy go-to base for a meal. And I bought some rice cakes and some fresh rice noodles from Trader Joe’s. I find that I most often eat grains/breads/gluten when I’m looking for something quick and easy or when I’ve gone too long without eating, so the rice cakes have been a great substitute for that. I generally really like to eat soup at night. I find something hot and brothy really comforting at the end of a long day. The past couple of nights I’ve improvised with some shiitake soup with rice noodles and vegetables. We have a bucket of dried shiitake mushrooms, which make for a really nice, rich broth. Each night has turned out a little differently, so this is more of a rough guideline than a true recipe. Adjust the flavorings to taste.

Shiitake Noodle Soup

Serves 1

Handful of dried shiitake mushroom slices

1 serving of rice noodles

1+ tsp tamari or soy sauce

1+tsp ginger juice of grated fresh ginger

1/4 tsp toasted sesame oil

2-3 baby bok choy, sliced in half

2 scallions, chopped

2 full slices of onion, thinly sliced

If you have time ahead of making the soup, soak the mushrooms in approximately 2 cups of water in the pot you’re going to use for the soup. Add the tamari, ginger, and sesame oil and bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and simmer for approximately 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a separate pot of water to boil. Drop the bok choy in the boiling water for 1-2 minutes and then remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and run under cold water. Using the same pot of boiling water, repeat this step with the sliced onion and then finally the rice noodles (cook the rice noodles according to instructions on package and then rinse with cold water). While the broth is still simmering, prepare your bowl. In a large soup bowl, add the cooked noodles, the bok choy, onions, and scallions. Pour the broth with the mushrooms into the bowl. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed (e.g., add hot sauce, more tamari or soy sauce, etc.) and enjoy!

Do you have any favorite recipes that don’t involve grains? I’d love to hear them!

News Recap

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks of travel, recuperation, school work, etc. Having just returned from L.A. for the annual Association of American Geographers meeting, I thought I’d just recap a number of news items.

AG-GAG LAWS

The most relevant for animal advocates is the increasingly public flurry of debate about ag-gag laws. Will Potter, of Green is the New Red, has been following the emergence and politics of the ag-gag laws for the last several years and regularly posts updates, commentary and information on his blog about it. I’m not going to recap the details of the state-by-state debate because Potter is already doing that on his site. But for those not familiar, ag-gag laws are state legislation that would criminalize the photography and video taping of what goes on behind industrial “factory farm” walls, as well as criminalize the undercover investigations by activists in these spaces. These undercover investigations and accompanying video and photo footage are important because they are often the only glimpse the general public has into how animals are bred, farmed, treated and slaughtered in the industrial food system. An even more widespread debate is now underway because the New York Times published an article about the ag-gag laws a couple of weeks ago. I plan to write extensively about ag-gag laws and the similar federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) in my dissertation to explore a politics of (in)access in spaces of agricultural production, but for now there is lots to read in the media about this issue. Have you all been following the ag-gag debate? What are your thoughts?

AAG

In personal news, I spent the last week at the AAG conference in L.A., which is a massive geographers conference generally drawing around 8,000 geographers. It is truly massive and generally overwhelming with nearly thirty sessions happening simultaneously across three downtown hotels and lasting 5 days (each year is in a different city). I won’t bore you all with a detailed recap of each day, but I will make a few observations. Generally, I try to stick to animal/nonhuman-related sessions at the AAG simply because the schedule is so overwhelming, but this year I branched out. I definitely attended my fair share of animal geographies sessions and saw a couple of really fantastic talks (not the least of which was a fascinating talk on extending who we count as the “animal” in animal geographies — he was advocating the ethical consideration of the tick). But I spent quite a bit of my time going to sessions on topics like violence in the humanitarian present (organized by Tish Lopez), illicit commodities (in which Rosemary-Claire Collard gave a great talk on animal auctions), and a session on suffering, trauma and pain. I found myself literally moved to tears in quite a few of the sessions, which was a surprise to me. A theme across these various great sessions was storytelling — both direct storytelling of a particular place and experience of trauma (murders and disappearances at the US-Mexico border, international sex trafficking of young women, etc.) and reflections on the ethics and politics of telling others’ stories in our research. Many of these stories were heartbreaking — stories of unimaginable sadness, violence and pain. Through my own emotional reaction to this research, I found myself reflecting on the reactions of the audience to these kinds of stories. And, in particular, I was interested in how the reaction of the audience may be different (i.e., complicated) when we are complicit and/or implicated in the violence expressed in the stories. For instance, we are all somewhat implicated in supporting a capitalist global economy that enables things like war or sex trafficking, but we seem to be more directly implicated in, say, the violence against the animals used for food if we choose to eat meat, dairy or eggs. This made me think a lot about how these stories are received and how the experience of those experience pain, violence and trauma may be obscured and/or sidelined when others are reacting to these stories with guilt, defensiveness, etc.

VIOLENCE

I assume most of you heard the awful news about the bombings in Boston, and the explosion at the fertilizer plant in West Texas. Two devastating instances of death, injury and loss in U.S. news this week, along with many other local reports of violence, I’m sure. I’ve heard a lot of talk this week about “The End of Days” and questions about what the world is coming to. There is no doubt that this violence strikes close to home and shakes our feeling of safety and security. And we naturally search for ways of understanding and making sense of it. As I’ve been trying to make sense of this news, I couldn’t help but ask myself what acts of violence, death, and mayhem were going un- (or under-) reported in light of these tragedies at home. So, I did a search on other bombings and deaths around the world, and came up with this article from the Associated Press. The article, “Boston Attacks are Reminder of Violence Elsewhere,” reminds us that this week, there are horrific instances of violence involving mass deaths occurring this week in places such as Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Bahrain, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As we engage in mourning the deaths and injury occuring in the U.S. this week, let’s also include in our hearts and thoughts the 120 killed daily in Syria, the 55 Iraqis killed Monday in a suicide bombing in Fallujah, the more than 30 people killed in Somalian bombings on Sunday, the 20 people killed in the Central African Republic (including the bombing of a church), the deaths of a family of 8 in a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on Monday, the deaths of those involved in Pakistan’s elections this week, and all those who have been victims of violence, murder, rape, human trafficking, kidnapping and torture around the world. As I go through the week, I keep hearing whispers of disbelief, “These kinds of things don’t happen HERE” as if this kind of violence is normalized in other parts of the world, but not in the U.S. But the truth is that these kinds of things happen everywhere and when we bury our heads in the sand about violence elsewhere in between reportings of mass shootings and bombings in the U.S., we risk not making any change. When we do not actively work against the violence of war, the violence of labor conditions, the violence of mass incarceration, the violence against animals in every way they are used and exploited, and the violence against every distant other, we perpetuate a system so thoroughly rooted in violence that these things can’t help but continue to happen.

So, I send out warm thoughts of love, compassion and non-violence to those in Boston, those involved in the accident in West Texas, those in the Middle East and elsewhere who are suffering from loss, trauma and injury. May you all find some peace.

Top Ten TV Shows

I hope everyone is having a good weekend! I thought I’d start a series of “Top Tens” as a kind of lighter, fun change of pace for the blog. Plus, I thought it would be a great way to hear back from you all about your favorites in the comments section, so we can all learn about new great things! I was thinking favorite TV shows, favorite movies and/or documentaries, favorite books, favorite food ingredients, favorite vegetables/fruits, etc. Other “Top Ten” list ideas?

Today, since it’s the weekend and I’ve been known to enjoy a little TV now and then, I thought I’d share my top ten TV shows of all time in no particular order (except number one is my current number one pick).

1. Treme

2. Doctor Who (2005-Present)

3. Mad Men

4. Firefly

5. Misfits

6. Californication

7. Shameless (US)

8. Walking Dead

9. Breaking Bad

10. Downton Abbey

So there they are! Do you have ten favorite TV shows of all time? Let’s hear ’em!

Health Trouble-Shooting and Veganism

I heard Melanie Joy (author of Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows) speak a couple of times at the national Animal Rights conference last summer in Alexandria, VA. During one of her talks she asked for hands of those in the audience who had ever pretended not to be sick or downplayed their illness specifically because of their veganism. Nearly everyone in the room raised their hand. We all had a good laugh about it at the time — it’s ridiculous to pretend you’re not sick just to protect the image of veganism. And yet, many of us often do it. There are so many folks out there ready to pounce on your veganism as a reason for ill health… “Well, you probably wouldn’t have that cold if you just ate some meat or dairy…” or “Jeez, Jane really seems to be sick a lot. It’s probably because she’s not getting enough protein or calcium on her vegan diet…” Heck, even complaining about being a bit tired can bring on critiques of veganism. As Melanie Joy said in her talk, as vegans, we hold ourselves to higher standards of health and we are held to higher standards of health. But none of us are super-human and though a well-balanced vegan diet is now recognized to be an excellent preventive or treatment for various illnesses, we are still going to get sick sometimes! Even so, I’ve been somewhat resistant to talking about recent health issues I’ve been having specifically because I don’t want to promote an image of a “sickly vegan.”

I’m going to share a bit about my personal health journey without going into excessive detail. I’ve had this unexplained *severe* abdominal pain for the last 4-5 months. It comes and goes. Sometimes it’s excrutiating and has landed me in the ER. Most of the time it’s moderate pain and discomfort and I feel like I’ve adjusted to pain being my new “normal”. Nothing makes it better or worse; it doesn’t seem to matter what I eat. Painkillers don’t help (I was even given IV morphine during an ER visit and it did nothing to the pain). I’ve spent the last 4 months going back and forth to doctors and specialists, having every kind of test, trying lots of different medications, etc. Finally, the gastroenterologist said the last thing we could try was an endoscopy, and if that didn’t turn up anything, then I would just have to wait it out (“These things sometimes just resolve on their own,” he said). So I waited and waited for the endoscopy date and had the test yesterday. Everything looked normal. There was nothing to explain the pain. I had really been wanting to wait to blog about this until I had found a cause of the pain and could write a nice tidy blog post explaining my journey to finding answers, with a happy ending (e.g., it was my gall bladder and I just needed to have it removed, it was an ulcer, etc.). It has been incredibly frustrating to have Western conventional medicine fail to uncover anything and reach the point where the doctors are ready to say I just need to wait it out.

My next plan is to find a good naturopath and see what they have to say. Honestly, I don’t know why I ever went back to a regular doctor — I used to see a wonderful naturopath in Seattle who would spend 1-2 hours talking with me about every aspect of my health in a holistic way that took into account my whole body and not just one part of it. She unfortunately closed her practice and then I fell into going to the clinic at school for medical care. Do any of you lovely readers have recommendations for great naturopaths in Seattle who are supportive of a vegan diet? Have any of you had good experiences working with a naturopath for healing?

I’m thinking since no medical reason has turned up, perhaps it’s something I’m eating on a regular basis that’s causing the problems… I’m hoping to try an elimination diet guided by a naturopath/nutritionist. Since I have already cut out some of the common culprits (e.g., dairy), I’m hoping it might be relatively straightforward to identify if anything (like gluten or nightshades) are causing problems. I would love to hear if any of you have had experience trying an elimination diet. Did it work? What method of elimination diet did you use? Did you do a self-guided elimination diet, or did you work with a medical professional? I think sometimes it can help to talk about these things as a community — to share experiences, thoughts, etc. Thank you!

CFP: Critical Animal Geographies edited volume

Good morning, Monday readers! Today I want to share a call for papers I’ve been working on with my colleague and friend, Rosemary-Claire Collard — for a Critical Animal Geographies edited scholarly anthology. Please consider submitting an abstract for consideration and it would be great if you could spread the word if you’re so inclined!

Call for Contributors to Critical Animal Geographies edited volume

Fifteen years after the publication of the groundbreaking Animal Geographies (Wolch & Emel 1998), followed by Animal Spaces, Beastly Places (Philo & Wilbert 2000), a growing number of geographers now readily acknowledge the nonhuman animal as an important site of intellectual inquiry. Following the call to “bring the animals back in” to the discipline (Wolch & Emel 1995), animal geographers have taken up the project of “decentering the human in human geography” (Anderson 2013) by reckoning with the inescapable contingency of the human subject. This has yielded fascinating and important explorations of deeply constitutive human-animal relations and the spaces, traces, violences and practices that enable them and are left in their wake.

Since the “third wave” of animal geographies (Urbanik 2012) in the 1990s, billions of real animals have continued to service humans and capitalist accumulation as food, labourers, entertainment, clothing, biomedical research subjects, and companions. Human-animal relationships are fraught with complex dynamics of power and privilege involving the uneven appropriation of lives, labours and bodies across species, including humans. At the same time, humans and animals have an extraordinary capacity for engaging in inter-species relationships of mutual care, love, and companionship. These ambivalent material-semiotic entanglements between humans and animals are both at stake and implicated in contemporary ecological crises, bringing a critical urgency to the task of rethinking dominant orders (capitalist, species, juridico-political, scientific) that structure human-animal relations.

As geographers, we have just scratched the surface of academic inquiry into the rich and varied lives of animals, the ethical and political questions relating to human-animal relations, and the implications for thinking about alternative modes of being in this multispecies world. Critical human geography has traditionally aimed not merely to interpret and analyze the world, but to change it. In such a spirit, this edited volume makes a call for a distinct critical animal geography – one that interprets the complex plurality of human-animal relations, but does not stop there. Critical animal geographies interrogate structures of power and social inequality across species lines and presuppose a commitment to understanding and destabilizing the status quo and reimagining alternative visions of human-animal relations.

The aim of this edited volume is to feature cutting edge critical animal geographies research that radically rethinks how we conceptualize our relationship and responsibility to nonhuman animals. We are interested in empirical and theoretical engagements rooted in critical geographic research relating to animals and human-animal relations. We are also interested in fresh perspectives on methodological approach and on extending critical and radical theoretical framings to include animal geographies work. Chapters may include (but are not limited to) engagement with feminist/eco-feminist, political economy, post-humanist, cyborg/hybrid, anarchist, post-colonial, and queer literatures in order to envision a diverse set of epistemological, ontological and methodological perspectives on animals.

We ask that anyone interested in contributing to this Critical Animal Geographies volume submit a one page CV (including previous publications) and an abstract of no more than 500 words by June 1, 2013. If your abstract is selected for inclusion in the book, full chapters will be due February 1, 2014.

Please send abstracts and direct any questions to the volume editors: Katie Gillespie (katieag@u.washington.edu) and Rosemary-Claire Collard (rcollard@geog.ubc.ca).

References:

Anderson, Kay. 2013. “Mind over Matter? On Decentering the Human in Human Geography,” Annual Cultural Geographies Lecture, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, April 12.

Philo, Chris & Chris Wilbert. 2000. Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. Routledge.

Urbanik, Julie. 2012. Placing Animals. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Wolch, Jennifer & Jody Emel. 1998. Animal Geographies. London: Verso.

Wolch, Jennifer & Jody Emel. 1995. Guest-edited issue: Bringing the animals back in. Environment & Planning D: Society and Space, 13(6).

Gates’ Vision of the Future of Food

No doubt some of you have already seen the news that Bill Gates is advocating plant-based “meat” alternatives as a solution to the environmental drain on resources by the global production of animal products. If you haven’t seen it, you can see the snazzy slideshow here. On GatesNotes.com, the Future of Food is pitched in these terms:

“Meat consumption worldwide has doubled in the last 20 years, and it is expected to double again by 2050. This is happening in large part because economies are growing and people can afford more meat. That’s all good news. But raising meat takes a great deal of land and water and has a substantial environmental impact. Put simply, there’s no way to produce enough meat for 9 billion people. Yet we can’t ask everyone to become vegetarians. We need more options for producing meat without depleting our resources.

Over the past few years I’ve come across a few companies that are doing pioneering work on innovations that give a glimpse into possible solutions. To be sure, it’s still very early, but the work these companies are doing makes me optimistic. I wanted to share with you a look at their work on creating alternatives to meat and eggs that are just as healthful, are produced more sustainably, and taste great.

Read on to learn how their work can benefit everyone.” SOURCE

On the surface, this all sounds pretty great — or at least not bad. Economies are growing. People are making more money and can afford more “meat.” “Meat” consumption is skyrocketing, which is not sustainable. But not to worry — there’s a technological fix for the problem. There are corporations working to find innovative solutions to animal-derived food products so that all 9 billion people on the planet can eat “meat” if they choose to. Afterall, “we can’t ask everyone to become vegetarians!” The approach here is appealing in part because it’s pragmatic. Gates is acknowledging the problem that vegans have long been aware of — that animal products are wholly unsustainable. And he’s offering what appears to be a ‘rational’ solution (make more sustainable “meat” out of plants)!

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great that Gates may be hopping on the plant-based bandwagon. The more the merrier and the better for the animals who are not raised, slaughtered and eaten because of it. However, I think we should think carefully and critically about what this kind of move entails. I’m just going to share a few of my thoughts on the matter and I would love to hear your perspectives on this initiative in the comments below! There is so much more to say about this and I can already tell I’m not even going to scratch the surface.

The Techno-Fix

Gates states, “The meat market is ripe for reinvention.” He shares with us that, in addition to companies developing “meat” and egg replacements, spices are being reinvented to taste salty, but with very low sodium. These technological developments are supposedly going to be better for everyone — they are supposedly healthier, they are supposedly better for the environment, and they will supposedly get plant-based protein sources to people living in poverty around the globe. It’s the “people around the world are starving and this one technology could feed the world!” discourse. Sound familiar? It’s been used again and again. And connected specifically to Gates, this is the language that has been used to justify the production, promotion and distribution of genetically modified (GM) seeds (a topic for other posts). And while these technologies may be taken up uncritically by the corporate philanthropy industry, they have been rejected by local communities around the globe.

I think at the heart of this problem of the techno-fix is the way the accumulation of capital is tied up in discourses of philanthropy, which is a classic problem of the uncritical adoption of development projects around the world. It makes it more difficult to argue with a company like Monsanto when they are promoting powerful discourses of “feeding the world” and “ending world hunger,” no matter how different the reality might be. These complex techno-fixes (e.g., GM seeds) intentionally obscure simpler solutions in order to protect the interests of those who gain (billions $!) from the production of patented commodities.

The Vegan Avoidance

Another thing that bothers me about the discourse in the Future of Food slideshow is the upfront assumption that “we can’t ask everyone to be vegetarian.” Gates is taking this classically pragmatic approach that says, “listen, guys, obviously, it’s irrational to expect anyone to be vegetarian, so let’s find another solution.” The implicit assumption is that vegans (and those who advocate widespread veganism) are irrational and/or unpragmatic. But isn’t it a bit irrational to be so attached to the taste of “meat” that you’re willing to go to great lengths and expense to develop fake “meat” products when there are simpler and tasty plant-based whole foods.

To be honest, I’m not really sure what Gates is trying to say about vegetarianism. He is advocating the production of plant-based “meat” products, but he is also saying that we can’t expect the world to be vegetarian. But, if he got his way and these plant-based “meats” were adopted worldwide, wouldn’t that be making the world vegetarian (or at least heading in that direction)? Or is he advocating adoption of plant-based “meats” for those living in poverty around the world and those who can afford the “real thing” can continue to buy “meat” with a clear conscience now that we’ve taken care of those who are newly able to afford “meat”? Does he envision these “meats” replacing animal proteins entirely, or just supplementing animal proteins so that the global elite can avoid being inconvenienced by the impending ecological crisis caused by their consumption practices?

Even in spite of my questions about this initiative, I will be interested to see how it develops and how Gates’ involvement evolves (e.g., will the Gates Foundation take this project on or will this be more of a personal project?). It certainly is a powerful statement for Gates to advocate plant-based eating!

Thoughts? I’d love to hear your ideas/reactions to this on both ends of the spectrum! Happy Friday, by the way!

Welcoming Spring!

Happy first day of spring (yesterday)! In Seattle, spring has officially sprung. Daffodils are bright and beautiful, the cherry trees are pink and white and breathtaking, and the daphne makes the air smell sweet and flowery. The weather has been a little all over the place — sunny one moment, raining the next — and really feels like the change of seasons. Things have been a bit crazy here in the world of Serenity in the Storm, so just a quick update before I dive back into my to-do lists. Maizy has had a rough go of it with her digestive system lately and we have had many consults with the vet (thankfully, it seems like that’s working itself out); Saoirse is terrified (I mean, terrified!) of the sun reflecting in through the windows and making weird shadows on the ceiling; Eden narrowly escaped a tumor (which turned out to just be a muscle — over-protective parent here!); Abigail is generally cranky that she’s not the only-animal in our lives; Eric has been doing lots of projects around the house now that he is temporarily unemployed; and I’ve been battling abdominal pain and migraines and am eagerly awaiting an endoscopy in a couple of weeks to see what the problem might be. School stuff has been busy, busy, busy. It’s funny how, even when I’m not teaching, the end of the quarter feels insane (this is finals week). I finally submitted my paper on sexualized violence and the gendered commodification of the animal body in the dairy industry to a journal and now I’ve got to get going on the next one and try to forget the agony of waiting for feedback! The AAG (annual geographer’s meeting) is at the beginning of April in LA and I’m preparing for that. Lots of long-term projects and little immediate things to do and I’m trying to wrap up lots of things before my mom comes to visit next week. We’ve already got quite a few items on the agenda for her visit (a trip to the nursery, some gardening, some walks in the great outdoors, shopping, Passover Seder, and a trip to visit my soon-to-be-99-year-old (!) grandmother in Portland). We try to pack in as many fun things as we can when she comes to visit since we don’t get to see each other that often.

There’s something about spring showing up that makes me feel energized and productive… I suppose it’s the rebirth of the landscape, the baby birds and animals being born, and longer days that make us feel alive and engaged with the world after a long winter. We have been trying to celebrate spring by cleaning out the garden, taking walks with the dogs and doing some spring cleaning in the house to clear the decks for a new season. What do you do to celebrate spring?