Paper short abstract:

We propose the concept of the “wilding city” by examining the relationships between “wild” roosters, "urban" boars and humans in order to shed light on the contested processes of more-than-human collaboration and resistance in the gentrifying city.

Paper long abstract:

We propose the concept of the “wilding city” by examining the relationships between humans, “wild” roosters and “urban” boars which shed light on the contested processes of more-than-human collaboration and resistance in the divided city. In the summer of 2021, following complaints from some Jaffa’s Jewish residents about "noise and odour nuisances," the Tel Aviv Municipality distributed leaflets announcing, "a terminal treatment of the wild roosters in yards and public spaces." At the same time, in the wealthy northside of the city, the municipality celebrates "urban nature" conservation projects, according to which "the presence of birds brings the city closer to nature”. Meanwhile, in Haifa wild boars fuel an intense political discourse on the proper place for boars in the gentrifying city. How does the nonhuman presence in the ethnically “mixed city” map onto the human complexity between Palestinians and Jews, veterans and new residents? While roosters are highly valued in both Judaism and Islam, free-range urban roosters are perceived as transgressors that disrupt regulated social order and unsettle the border between public and private. The animosity towards boars merges religious taboos and perceptions of spatial alterity. Boars introduce human-wildlife coexistence as a new urban social order in a way that cuts through ethnonational divisions. In the contested zoopolis and binational city, roosters and boars mediate between languages, temporalities, cultural practices and political identities. Animals engender communal coalitions and highlight growing disparities between rich and poor, Palestinian and Israeli, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, between city and nature.