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Dog Waste, Wasted Dogs: The Contribution of Human–Dog Relations to the Political Ecology of A ustralian Urban Space
Author(s) -
INSTONE LESLEY,
SWEENEY JILL
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geographical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.695
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-5871
pISSN - 1745-5863
DOI - 10.1111/1745-5871.12059
Subject(s) - disgust , politics , shadow (psychology) , political ecology , cohabitation , space (punctuation) , sociology , urban waste , non human , environmental ethics , geography , ecology , political science , social psychology , municipal solid waste , psychology , law , biology , archaeology , linguistics , philosophy , anger , psychotherapist
The city is increasingly recognised as a complex more‐than‐human space where the lives of humans and non‐humans entwine in consequential ways. Human–animal encounters constitute sometimes convivial and sometimes challenging relations that reflect wider pleasures and tensions in urban society. This paper grapples with concerns about the place of dogs in A ustralian urban public space and urban life more broadly. Adopting a relational political ecology approach, we ask what pet dogs tell us about the political, emotional, and material struggles that surround multispecies urban cohabitation. Following two human–dog urban waste streams – one concerned with dog waste, the other with dogs as waste – we consider how human–animal relations of both attachment and disposability shape the material flows that constitute urban political ecologies. In particular, by focusing on the ‘shadow ecologies’ of dog waste and disposal, we uncover the dynamic practices of care, disgust, violence, and love through which dogs, their waste, and their bodies are sanitised, controlled, and ultimately concealed from our everyday urban spaces.