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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research during the Greek economic crisis, this paper expands Bauman’s concept of wasted lives beyond the human. It introduces politi-canis to examine how relations with stray dogs shape exclusion, disposability, and belonging across species.

Paper long abstract

Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of wasted lives has illuminated how modern and late-modern regimes of order produce human populations rendered disposable under conditions of crisis and inequality. Yet this framework remains largely anthropocentric, leaving unexplored how logics of waste extend to more-than-human animals. This paper expands the concept of wasted lives beyond the human, developing a multispecies analytic attentive to the production and management of surplus life across species.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research conducted during the economic crisis in Greece, the paper examines relations between humans and stray dogs on a Greek island. I develop the concept of politi-canis to conceptualize political practices enacted with and through dogs, shaped by species-level capacities shared by dogs and by the dispositions of particular canine individuals within specific relational contexts. Within these practices, stray dogs emerge as wasted lives—abandoned, regulated, rescued, and revalorized—while human groups are positioned differently in relation to waste and belonging; foreign women are pushed to the social margins, whereas Muslim refugees are rendered disposable, framed as surplus populations whose removal from the island is desired.

Following everyday practices of feeding, disciplining, rescuing, and re-homing stray dogs, the paper shows how more-than-human animals are implicated in the organization of social boundaries. Dogs are not merely symbolic figures; their bodies, affects, and mobilities shape how care and value circulate across bodies and spaces. By foregrounding wasted lives and politi-canis, this paper argues for a critical multispecies ethnography that situates humans and dogs within extractive worlds shaped by crisis.