Political animals

Reflecting the recent ‘animal turn’ within the social sciences and humanities, this event explores the political role of animals. This event connects the work of two key scholars whose research takes an interspecies approach to politics. Drawing from research conducted on smart cities in India, Yamini Narayanan shows how pigs are instrumentalised for the maintenance of socio-spatial inequalities based on caste. Lisa Jean Moore explores the sociology of the horseshoe crab, an animal that has been exploited as a resource for different purposes but has also contributed to our understanding of geological time and is now labelled as vulnerable.

About the speakers

Yamini Narayanan is Senior Lecturer in International Development at Deakin University, Melbourne. Narayanan’s work on speciesism, racism and urbanism is supported by two Australian Research Council grants. She is Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, an honour conferred through nomination or invitation only.

Lisa Jean Moore is a medical sociologist and Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Purchase College, State University of New York. Her scholarship is located at the intersections of sociology of health and medicine, science and technology studies, feminist studies, animal studies, and body studies.

Rivke Jaffe (moderator) is Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam. Connecting geography, anthropology and cultural studies, her research focuses on the spatialisation and materialisation of power, difference and inequality within cities.