Global Animals: Science and Technology

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

While much of the literature on nonhuman animals in science has tended to focus on model organisms in (mostly American) laboratories or the analysis of human-animal relations in laboratory settings, there is growing interest in studying the movement of animal bodies through laboratories across national and cultural boundaries. This nascent mode of analysis is crucial to understanding the ways that animal matter(s) continue to shape and define science and society far into the twenty-first century, even as the invisibilization of animals has seemingly accelerated within contemporary capitalism. This panel seeks answers to questions like the following: How have globalization and new technologies of movement and communication transformed laboratory animal science? How have novel assemblages of lab, field, ecosystem, and more shifted and blurred the traditional boundaries of scientific activity? How are relations between the Global “North” and “South” reconfigured and reinforced by the movement of laboratory specimens across geographical and national borders? Lastly, how do conditions of the ‘anthropocene’ or the ‘sixth extinction’ transform the nature and practice of animal experimentation? The panel seeks to bring together a transnational set of scholars studying the ‘global animal’ from both multi-national and multi-sited perspectives, shedding new light on this important development in science and technology.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Global Animals: Science and Technology

Chair

• Brad Bolman, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Arks, Freezers, and Gardens: Biodiversity Repositories in Toxic Landscapes and Planetary Futures - Anna-Katharina Laboissière, Ecole Normale Supérieure/Curtin University

• Feeding the Flock: Wild Cockatoos and Their Facebook Friends - Eben Kirksey, Deakin University; Thom van Dooren, University of Sydney; Paul Munro, University of New South Wales

• Moving birds in Hawai'i: Translocation and an ethics of creaturely movement - Thom van Dooren, University of Sydney

• Nature and Nation: Conservation Science in Aotearoa New Zealand - Courtney Addison, Victoria University of Wellington

• The Colours of Seawater: Lenses and Rhythms in the Sea - Astrid Schrader, University of Exeter

Session Organizer

• Brad Bolman, Harvard University