In response to the pressing need to re‐constitute the ways we live with non‐humans, more‐than‐human geography's distinctive contribution has been to describe an ethics based not on ‘certain subjects’ but on the relational entanglement of life: to show that ‘we’ are connected and thus invited to care. This paper aims to suggest, however, that this relational diagnostic obscures as much as it reveals and that detachment, as much as relation, provides an everyday ethic that can accommodate more‐than‐human difference. I do this by analysing how life is stuck together and pulled apart in the British domestic garden, drawing on life history interviews and ‘show me your garden’ walking tours with experienced gardeners. The article is aligned with a widening bestiary of companion species in geography, and considers the appearances and disappearances of a domestic monster: the slug. Therefore in contrast to existing literature the paper explores gardening's darker aspects. First, I describe how slugs and gardeners are ‘sticky’: joined together by shared histories, curiosity and disgust. The paper then shifts to examine how gardeners practice detachment: distancing themselves from the act of killing slugs but yet avowing the violence of their actions; acknowledging the limits of their capacities to bend space to their will and imagination; recognising the vulnerability of slugs, and being transformed by that recognition. The analysis shows first, that the emphasis on gathering together and relationality obscures what lies outside relations, and second how detachment emerges not as the negation, but as an enabling constituent of more‐than‐human ethics. In conclusion the paper argues for looser mappings of relationality and ethics that attend more fully to the distance between species.
National identity in many post-colonial states is predicated on nature being outside and antecedent to culture and the colonial project. This paper questions the historical and essentialist assumptions underpinning this vision using New Zealand as a case study, and in particular the Christchurch Botanic Gardens in the nineteenth century. I argue that the Gardens were a site in the multi-species extension of colonial space, but that far from being docile entities, non-humans kicked back to change the very nature of the project. New Zealand's eco-nationalist project is described as not only an attempt to order the past, present and future lives of non-humans (invasive, native and migrant alike), but also to sanitise the colonial expropriation of the indigenous and to preclude any mode of relating to 'nature' that might subvert the essentialisms inherent in a preservationist ethic. Situated between three modes of critique: nature-as-ideology; nature as complex but real; and an ontological exposure of hidden hybridity, I make a modest move beyond (re)description of naturecultures to normative critique of their constitutive relations. key words eco-nationalism New Zealand history nature botanic gardens preservation
Giant isopods are one of the star attractions in the Toba Aquarium, Japan. Under normal circumstances these crustaceans live at depth on the cold, dark ocean floor, scavenging flesh from dead fish and whales. Their alien appearance, as well as the strangeness of their lives, instills a combination of fascination, fear, and disgust in the aquarium visitor. In 2007, one specimen-29 centimetres long and weighing just over a kilogram-was plucked from waters off the Mexican coast and sent to the aquarium. He was named Giant Isopod No.1. No.1 refused to eat for the first year at the aquarium. In 2008 he took two small bites of fish, and again in 2009, but stopped eating completely thereafter. 1 For five years he refused all food, and every attempt to coax the creature into eating failed. Then, one morning his caretaker, Takeya Moritaki, found Giant Isopod No.1 lying listless on the bottom of its tank. By 5pm No. 1 was dead. 2 No.1's captivity and death captures the themes addressed by this special section: the awkwardness of being together in multispecies entanglements; the differential vulnerability that both precedes and is reshaped by being drawn together; the way killing and death circulate alongside care and life. This special section aims to enrich our understanding of the ethics of living with nonhuman others. We are interested in creatures that bite, or sting, or-like giant isopods-fascinate but repulse us, and in creatures that must die so that others may live: awkward creatures, in other words, which tend not to fit off-the-shelf ethics. 1 Toba Aquarium, "ダイオウグソクムシについてのお知らせ" (News about the Giant Isopod). Accessed 29 April 2014, http://www.aquarium.co.jp/topics/index.php?id=250.
Geoengineering, especially its potentially fast and high‐leverage versions, is often justified as a necessary response to possible future climate emergencies. In this article, we take the notion of ‘necessity’ in international law as a starting point in assessing how rapid, high‐leverage geoengineering might be justified legally. The need to specify reliably ‘grave and imminent peril’ makes such a justification difficult because our scientific ability to predict abrupt climate change, for example, as tipping elements, is limited. The time it takes to establish scientific consensus as well as policy acceptance restricts the scope for effective forewarning and so pre‐emptive justifications for geoengineering become more tempting. While recognizing that dangerous, large‐scale impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid, the pre‐emptive, emergency frame is problematic. We suggest that arguments from emergency operate on a high level of uncertainty and tend toward hubristic attempts to shape the future, as well as tending to close down rather than open up space for deliberation. We conclude that the emergency frame is not likely to go away, that ignoring or repressing it is a dangerous response, and that more effort is required to defuse and disarm emergency rhetoric. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:281–290. doi: 10.1002/wcc.263 This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Decision Making
Turfgrass yards dominate the residential landscapes of St Petersburg, Florida, and much of the rest of the urban and suburban United States. Increasingly, alternatives to the resource-intensive turfgrass lawn are the focus of interest among environmentalists, state and county governments, and growing numbers of residents in cities in the water-scarce Southeast and Southwest. Drawing on ethnographic and survey field research on everyday yard practices, resource use, and landscape perceptions, we explore the environmental and cultural dilemmas presented by the choice between conventional turfgrass and the more environmentally benign xeriscaping. We engage with Bourdieu's notions of habitus, field, and distinction to explore how local and personal scale yards, as produced and consumed technonatures, mediate the scales of global environmentalism, national and regional cultural identities, classed aesthetics, and personal and collective security. We find that xeriscaping does not increase proportionate to income. We argue that yards are a display of cultural capital and that xeriscapers are invested in an environmentalist field that operates at an imagined global scale as opposed to the neighborhood and national scale values invoked with the traditional turfgrass lawn. Referring to Bourdieu's work on taste and distinction, we argue that xeriscaped landscapes may entail a more environmentally benign set of landscaping practices but that the adoption of xeriscaping is no less implicated in the reproduction of privilege and distinction than is the traditional turfgrass lawn.
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