animals

By reporting on their own and others’ experiences composting with dung earthworms, Sebastian Abrahamsson and Filippo Bertoni argue for a shift in the notion of “conviviality.”

In this special section on affective ecologies, Julia Hobson Haggerty, Elizabeth Lynne Rink, Robert McAnally, and Elizabeth Bird study the restoration of bison/buffalo by the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes to their reservation in Montana in the United States. They argue that ecological restoration can promote and facilitate emergent and dynamic processes of reconnection at the scale of individuals, across species and within communities.

This special section edited by Franklin Ginn, Uli Beisel, and Maan Barua considers how multispecies flourishing works when the creatures are awkward, when togetherness is difficult, when vulnerability is in the making, and death is at hand.

Jean M. Langford explores different modes of interspecies communications at an urban parrot sanctuary, suggesting that humans can alter their interactions to ease parrots’ distress.

Les Beldo proposes thinking about nonhuman contributions to production, including those taking place at the microbiological level, as labor, and offers an ethnographic description of the lives of broiler chickens.

Considering the role of sound in shifting conceptions of the ocean, Ritts and Shiga explore how the US Navy mimicked whale, dolphin, and popoise communication techniques during the Cold War.

Aimee L. Schmidt and Douglas A. Clark examine the response of local people and agencies to a polar bear-inflicted human injury in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, showing how human-bear conflict is often widely publicized and controversial, and how it shapes public expectations around bear management.

Owain Jones, a Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University, offers ideas and resources about environmental humanities in this blog.

In episode 56 of Nature’s Past, a podcast on Canadian environmental history, Sean Kheraj joins Joanna Dean and Christabelle Sethna to discuss their new book Animal Metropolis: Histories of Human-Animal Relations in Urban Canada and, more broadly, the history of animals and cities.