By Julie Urbanik and Sarah Bortolamiol
It was our pleasure to participate in the AAG 2022 Panel Session, The Future of Animal Geography, organized by John-Henry Pitas and Mariya Shcheglovitova. Given that the brevity of the opening comments during the session did not allow for a full explanation of the key points we wanted to convey about the international community and animal geography definitions emerging from our survey, we are happy to share that material with everyone via this brief article. Our aim is to lay out the preliminary work we have done and to invite questions and suggestions from readers. Our hope is that this material will be helpful to the community as we continue to deepen the impact and reach of animal geography.
While contemporary animal geography has been developing and expanding over the past two decades, debates about the sub-field (e.g., name, definition, goals) remain situated largely within the North American/UK context and lack cross-cultural discussions. Causes and consequences of Covid-19 led us to think about how animal geography is practiced/understood internationally; and the move to virtual platforms during isolation made us realize the amount of animal geography-related material we were missing out on.
We decided to undertake the first global survey of the field during the summer of 2021, and we conducted the survey from September to October of 2021, using the free, globally accessible Google Forms platform. We personally contacted and invited 263 individuals (either self-identified animal geographers we know or via snowball referrals to individuals with an interest in animal geography and/or animals and place/space) from 38 countries, as well as all members of the Animal Geography Specialty Group, to participate. We had 168 people agree to do the survey, and we ultimately received 141 responses from 24 countries.
The vast majority of respondents were faculty members or institutionally-based researchers (56%) who may or may not have teaching workloads. Roughly 54% self-identified as animal geographers and 70% said they had published using an animal geography lens.
The survey was broken into sections addressing our three goals: (1) to explore how people around the world define/explain animal geography; (2) to determine whether or not there was enough interest in developing an official international animal geography community; and (3) to understand who does what, where, and how in terms of animal geography. In this blogpost, we focus on the first goal by sharing how respondents defined animal geography. We received definitions from 133 of the 141 respondents. Reasons for not providing a definition included, for example, statements such as “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” or “I feel as it should be those much closely [sic] involved in the field who come up with the conception they think is the most adequate”.
We undertook a two-step methodology to analyze the 133 definitions we received. The first method was to use R Studio to create word clouds and word frequency visualizations to show some of the differences in terminology and spellings that were used. To produce this we edited the definitions down to the key words (as spelled), removed prepositions and other unuseful phrasing such as “in my view” etc., and ran the keywords through R studio. We produced two versions of the word clouds and frequency charts in order to try and assess whether focusing on word roots versus full words would make a difference in terms of what the program would emphasize.
We found this method helpful in getting us started in thinking about how respondents were, in a broad way, appropriating animal geography. What jumped out to us was the clear link between animal and human as the two-part focus of the definitions.
Our second method involved developing a preliminary typology of the respondents’ definitional focus. We were curious to see how the definitions would compare to the word clouds and word frequency charts which placed animals, humans, and space at the top in terms of pure counts. In order to make this typology we used our initial editing of responses to create the word clouds. Then we went through the definitions manually, first blindly and then cross-checking each other; and then did a final round of sorting into what has become four definitional foci.
It was actually difficult to classify the definitions and identify categorical themes given that we were unable to go back and ask respondents for clarification. In addition, respondents often provided fragments of definitions such as “human – nonhuman animal relations” or “paying attention to multi-species, an antidote to human geography.” We are in the process of looking for automatic or semi-automatic ways to identify common themes among definitions through topic modeling and/or other text classification techniques.
The most dominant category was what we have called “human-animal” – that is to say respondents defined animal geography as the study of human-animal relations. This echoes quite clearly the results from the word clouds/frequencies visualizations. Qualifiers for this focus included space/place/time, social categories, and mentions of territory and decentralizing the human. Examples, quoted in their entirety, include: “Animal geography is the study of how human-animal relations shape the production of space, place, and environment”; “Empirically and theoretically informed investigation of human-animal relations, with particular attention given to their spatial dimensions (how space and place matter in shaping human-animal relations and how human-animal relations shape space and place)”; and “The analysis of the different ways animal lives and spaces are influenced by human activities and how the animals find their places within or out of human societies”.
The next highest was what we’ve called “nonhuman-animal” – here respondents defined the focus as the study of nonhuman-animals themselves. Qualifiers included territory, space/place/time, experience/agency, and linked to more biogeographical concepts such as evolution and biodiversity. Examples include: “Focusing on place and areas as a way to understand animals’ positions;” “The intersections between space, place, and nonhuman animal life on earth;” and “Animal geography can be included in geography since one goal can be to explain how and why living and non-living entities are at a certain place. It gives to non-human animals a greater place than in ‘conventional geography’.”
The third grouping was what we’ve called “multi-species” – here respondents said the field is focused primarily on the study of multi-species relations. No respondent explained what was meant by multi-species or why they chose this term in lieu of human-animal, so we chose to make this a separate category since multi-species *seems* to imply something different than either human-animal or nonhuman-animal. Examples include: “Research on multispecies interactions and their spatiality;” “Hard to say. It could be defined as the study of the temporal/spatial distribution of heterotrophic communities, and Omo [sic] sapiens could be included in it;” and “In short, sets of multispecies relationships that produce spaces and organize more than human forms of life.”
The final, and smallest, grouping was what we’ve called “environment-humans-animals” – here respondents defined the field as primarily the study of the equal interplay between the three with qualifiers relating to space/place/time, but respondents were clear that the environmental conditions were the starting point and there was no mention of qualifiers related to social/cultural categories. Examples include: “Animal geography would consist, according to me, in the study of interactions and exchanges between humans and non-humans and between humans and non-humans and their living environment. It consists in the study of frictions, conflicts, cooperations, modalities of governance and co-presence;” “For me, animal geography is a branch of geography that is interested in the different ways in which animals occupy space and share it to cohabit with other beings;” and “Interactions between animals, people and the environment in space and time.”
After building out the word clouds and typology we reflected on five things that stood out to us that we have not had a full chance to develop at this point; however, we felt they were worth mentioning in the panel session and this article as food-for-thought moving forward.
The first is getting better clarity on the distinction between human-animal and multi-species. While we can make our own assumptions as to what the differences might be in the context of animal geography, we were unable to find a publication that succinctly explained when one or the other may be a better choice. For example, are those using multi-species instead of human-animal implying that all animal geography work should examine several species at one time instead of just human interaction with one animal species? Does multi-species mean a focus on flora, fauna, and the human and not just human/nonhuman species? Does this distinction matter? Or is this just a case of the academic trend to coin new terms for publication purposes?
A second item, related to the first, was our curiosity about how to disentangle respondents’ use of relations versus interactions versus coexistence. We know these words are often used both interchangeably and as different in the literature, but is it good/helpful/evolutionary for the field to convolute them? Definitionally, relations imply a longer-term experience while interactions could imply a specific, one-time experience. How does using one or the other shape what we, and those outside the field, understand animal geography to be?
A third item we were surprised to find was a near total absence of definitions that included concepts like critical and abolitionist – we had only two respondents (1 each) use these terms, as well as distinguishing animal geography, animal geographies, and animals’ geographies (the last two also only mentioned 1 time each). Given the increasing emphasis on critical animal geography, vegan geographies, and much of the work on industrial agriculture in North America/Europe, we thought we would see more “scholar-activist” style definitions than we did. What does that say about how we understand animal geography? What weight should such positions carry in our discussions of the future if they are of such negligible underlying focus? Given the marginalization of animal studies that still exists within the academy, and the emotive nature of animal rights and activism in the public sphere, we wondered whether we should have asked the question: what role do you see animal geographers playing in the discipline, the academy, and the public sphere?
We noticed a fourth issue related to methodology. There was virtually no mention of methods and zero mention of mapping – so are methods central to the identity of animal geography? Indeed, it is not so common to see maps in animal geography-based publications (at least in English), yet the absence of focus on methods possibly unique and/or essential to animal geography, of any type, was surprising. We wondered what it means if animal geography does not have a coherent and easily identifiable methods toolbox. Does this allow other disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology) to “co-opt” animal geography concepts? Does this dilute the impact of the field? Does it matter?
Our fifth reflection point was noticing that there seemed to be a split on starting from socio-economic-political framings versus starting from environmental conditions – how does this shape future trajectories of animal geography? Again, we did not think to ask how people arrived at animal geography (or an interest in it), so that is our loss in the survey data, but it made us really wonder how people are finding animal geography material to begin with. What differences in geography curriculums exist globally that would lead people finding animal geography from a biogeography starting point or from a social theory starting point? How might these starting points change what is seen as relevant topics/methods for study? Is such a difference helpful to the field or is there a chance of diffusing it even within Geography?
As a way to synthesize the initial work we have done on the definition of animal geography via the word clouds, the preliminary typology, and the five items we noticed, we presented the following three questions to the attendees to facilitate discussion:
1. How are we to understand what “animal geography” is without a cohesive definition?
2. Do we need a cohesive approach to understand our contributions to Geography itself as well as Human-Animal Studies/Animal Studies?
3. Without a cohesive definition are we risking losing ground to other disciplines using geographical concepts and calling it animal geography?
By doing so, we were not proposing that we have the answers to these questions, but saying that the differences we are finding in our international survey reveal a need to reflect more deeply on our foundational terminology if we want to be sure the global community is ‘speaking the same language’.
Regardless of definitional perspectives, it was clear from survey respondents that there is abundant interest in the broad topic of humans-nonhumans-place-space and we feel this shows there is ample opportunity to collaborate creatively within our discipline of geography, and with other humanities, social sciences, and life sciences disciplines. The next steps for us as we continue to analyze the results of the survey are to finalize our preliminary typology via likely topic modeling (any thoughts are welcomed!) and to delve into the remaining sections of the survey.
Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions and/or suggestions for us as we move forward.