The field of urban studies has scrutinised digital technologies and their proliferation, but rather little attention has been paid to databases. Furthermore, contributions to date have focused almost exclusively on how digital technologies interface with human populations in cities. By contrast, we draw attention to databases maintained by city governments that contain identifying information about pet dogs and their legal owners in cities. Methodologically, our study merges database ethnography with multi-species ethnography. Conceptually, we contend that "dog data" contribute to orderly conduct in urban space. This orientation to urban governance illustrates "trans-biopolitics," in the sense of socially-situated and technologically-mediated power relations that operate through multi-species entanglements. As such, this article extends the literature on (neoliberal) urban policing by providing a fine-grained analysis of how emergent forms of social control become palpable. In general terms, the adoption and use of digital technologies by city governments has increased their capacity to enforce rules and regulations. Overall, we find that the more legible dogs and their legal owners become in databases, the more governable both dogs and people become in urban life.
This chapter considers the growing interest in multi-species entanglements as an opportunity to bring medical anthropology and environmental anthropology into deeper dialogue, through discussions of social justice that acknowledge the presence and absence of non-human animals in shared environments. It begins with an overview of medical anthropology, particularly as regards theories of disease, illness, sickness, and suffering. This overview highlights the fact that non-human species have not featured prominently in medical anthropology and that anthropologists interested in non-human animals have had little to say about disease or health. The chapter reviews parallel developments in geography. This review suggests that, by comparison with anthropology, conversations regarding non-human species are more advanced in that discipline. Finally, the chapter demonstrates the importance of multi-species interactions and ecologies for medical anthropology, by discussing some recent monographs that pivot on somewhat different conceptualizations of 'entanglement'.
Urban parks are important settings for physical activity, but few natural experiments have investigated the influences of park modifications on activity patterns and visitor profiles.We assessed the impact of implementing a municipal policy on off-leash dogs in city parks in Calgary (Alberta, Canada). Systematic observation undertaken in 2011 and 2012 within four parks captured patterns of use, activities, and visitors׳ characteristics. After baseline data collection, off-leash areas were created in two parks only. We compared changes in the sociodemographic and activity profiles in all parks between 2011 and 2012. Visitors with dogs participated in less intense activity relative to visitors without dogs. In both modified parks, the intensity of children׳s activities decreased, while the intensity of adults' activities remained stable. Adjusting for visitor characteristics, the likelihood of dog-related visits, relative to other activities, significantly decreased in one of the two modified parks (odds ratio 0.55, p<.05). Accommodating off-leash dogs in parks has the potential to modify activities undertaken inside parks as well as the profile of visitors, but may not increase park visits among dog-walkers in the short term. Recreation, park, and urban planners and policy-makers need to consider the needs and preferences of the broader community in the design and redesign of public parks.
To what extent do non-human animals participate in that particular political configuration known as a public? While conventional wisdom about publics is predicated on a vision of political agency that privileges discursive and deliberative processes, recent scholarship situated in the material turn in the social sciences and humanities challenges the notion that publics are purely human and constituted exclusively through language. With these theorizations as a backdrop, this paper takes into consideration the multiple species that are implicated in political life and that play a role in constituting publics. Placing material definitions of publics in line with central concerns raised by human-animal studies, it is argued that animality is significant to publics in ways that have yet to be sufficiently theorized. The intent of this research is to invite further investigation of the myriad ways in which animal bodies and lives influence public formations in a manner that accounts for and also exceeds human capacity for symbolic communication.
The rapidity of technological change underpins the centrality of genomes in framing COVID-19 problems and proposals for remedies. We counter such framings through a critical perspective that seeks to infuse more-than-human geographies into public health.
ABSTRACTWeight-related health problems have become a common topic in Western mass media. News coverage has also extended to overweight pets, particularly since 2003 when the US National Academy of Sciences announced that obesity was also afflicting co-habiting companion animals in record numbers. To characterize and track views in popular circulation on causes, consequences, and responsibilities vis-à-vis weight gain and obesity, in pets as well as in people, this study examines portrayals of overweight dogs that appeared from 2000 through 2009 in British, American, and Australian mass media. The ethnographic content analysis drew inspiration from the literature in population health, animal–human relationships, communication framing, and the active nature of texts in cosmopolitan societies. Three main types of media articles about overweight dogs appeared during this period: 1) reports emphasizing facts and figures; 2) stories emphasizing personal prescriptions for dog owners, and 3) societal critiques. To help ordinary people make sense of canine obesity, media articles often highlight that dogs share the lifestyle of their human companion or owner, yet the implications of shared social and physical environments is rarely considered when it comes to solutions. Instead, media coverage exhorts people who share their lives with overweight dogs to “own the problem” and, with resolve, to normalize their dog's physical condition by imposing dietary, exercise, and relationship changes, thereby individualizing culpability rather than linking it to broader systemic issues.Keywords: companion animalsmedianarrative analysisobesitypublic understanding
