Animal geographies

Animal Geographies is an area of study in geography, studying the spaces and places occupied by animals in human culture.

An interest in animal geographies emerged in human geography in the mid 1990s. This was marked by a special edition of the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space in 1995 and a book by Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel called Animal Geographies: place, politics and identity in the nature-culture borderlands published in 1998.

This movement was prompted by the basic fact that social life and space is heavily populated by animals of many differing kinds and in many differing ways (e.g. farm animals, pets, wild animals in the city). It was also prompted by ecofeminist and other environmentalist viewpoints on nature-society relations (including questions of animal welfare and rights).

This sub-discipline within human geography quickly developed, another landmark being the book Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations.

Papers regularly come out in a number of geographical journals and in journals such as Animals and Society.

Animal geographies is now part of a wider idea of non-human geographies which pays close attention not only to animals but all the things, living and non-living, that help to make up the everyday ‘social’ world and its spaces and places.