Guest Introduction

More-than-human contact zones

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4464812
AutoresJenny R Isaacs (0000-0003-0188-2335), Ariel Otruba (0000-0003-3849-132X)
Año2019
Volumen2
Número4
Páginas697-711
Fecha de publicación2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/2514848619855369
OpenAlexW2977789546
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas19
Referencias citadas63

Mary Louise Pratt used the term "contact zones" to describe those spaces where "cultures, meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today". Building on three sessions at the 2017 American Association of Geographers' Annual Meeting, this special section features articles which apply Pratt's concepts to environmental research. We argue that these articles demonstrate a "more-than-human 'contact' approach" to (1) better account for nonhuman agency by multiplying perspectives, (2) intervene in cases of violence and injustice, and (3) decolonize knowledge/production. Included are empirical case studies which describe encounters with the nonhuman; these include a postcolonial reading of the BBC's Blue Planet II, a feminist science study of migratory shorebird conservation on New Jersey's Delaware Bayshore, and political ecologies of prescribed forest burns by Parks Canada and tidal energy production in the Bay of Fundy. These articles broaden the definitions of "contact" and "justice" as they direct critical attention to the politics of environmental knowledge production, technoscientific means of understanding and managing the living environment, and forms of resistance to the exclusive governance of "wild" spaces. They present sites of environmental management and exploration as places of transformation, co-presence, unpredictability, and often intimate violence. The section demonstrates how political ecologies and more-than-human geographies expand Pratt's "contact" perspective. An afterword is provided by Mary Louise Pratt

Agency (philosophy · Corporate governance · Environmental ethics · Environmental governance · Environmental justice · Injustice · Management · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Reading (process · Resistance (ecology · Social science · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology · Law