Paper short abstract:

In 1974, a small group of Minneapolis-based individuals launched the International Species Information System (ISIS), a computerized database of exotic animals kept in zoos. This paper explores the context in which the system arose and how it shaped the (im)mobilities of zoo animals.

Paper long abstract:

With species increasingly threatened in their natural habitats, the last half century has seen a growing popularity of so-called ex situ conservation in zoos. This approach has required an overhaul of the traditional functioning of zoological gardens. Up to the 1970s, most zoos relied on a steady influx of wild-caught animals. Becoming conservation institutions, then, implied refocusing on the exchange of captive-bred animals in a (global) exchange circuit of zoos. It was with an eye on enabling such a circuit that, in 1974, the International Species Information System (ISIS) was launched.

Developed by a small group of Minneapolis-based individuals, the computerized database of zoo animals is used by over 1300 zoos across the world today. At first sight, ISIS looks like a neutral instrument of universal data collecting. Yet, as historians of information systems know, such a thing does not exist. Analyzing the early history of ISIS, my paper will explore the legal, socio-political and scientific contexts in which the system was developed, and highlight how locally rooted ambitions as well as global inequalities and competition shaped its design and operation. Despite its aura of globality, detachment, and neutrality, it becomes clear that ISIS could only function because of its situated, political, and embodied character. These aspects also explain why, up to today, zoo animals (and their genes) do not freely float across the earth in the ways as ISIS’s planners conceived it in the 1970s.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a vast zootechnical literature, as well as on interviews with pig farmers, this paper sets out to document the development of pig farm buildings in France, from 1850 to the present day, in order to provide a detailed, progressive and nuanced history of pig confinement and immobility.

Paper long abstract:

Since the mid-nineteenth century, pigs have been seen as animal-machines whose performance, i.e. their ability to transform food into meat, should be improved. The subject of an exponential number of agronomic and veterinary treatises, the pig is considered to be one of the most interesting domestic animals to change, from a zootechnical point of view, particularly in terms of the number of physiological factors that humans can influence. Three of these factors have become of vital importance since 1850: pig genetics, rational pig feeding and the buildings in which pigs grow and fatten. The aim of this paper is to document the development of pig farm buildings over the long term, from 1850 to the present day, in France. While it is often repeated that this evolution is simply the story of the ever-increasing confinement of pigs, I would like to present an account that challenges this linear history of pig immobility, and to show the details of this history, by linking it to specific scientific and social contexts, contexts largely traversed by concerns about feed, genetics and antibiotics, and by a plurality of actors (veterinarians, farmers, cooperatives, etc.). The sources for this paper will be a vast zootechnical literature of agronomic and veterinary treatises published in the nineteenth century, scientific articles published throughout the twentieth century by French research institutions devoted to the pig, and interviews conducted with farmers who worked between 1960 and 2000.

Paper short abstract:

This paper sets a temporal rather than spatial agenda for animal (im)mobilities studies. Attempts to manage life in outer space necessitated its mobilization at very different temporal scales. NASA embryology helped foster a shift from technocentric to hybrid management ideals at the institution.

Paper long abstract:

Where most animal (im)mobilities studies focus on spatial dimensions (e.g. animal relocations, re-introductions, and migrations) this paper emphasises animals' temporal mobilization. Considering the multiple temporalities through which animal and human lives are sustained, I examine a set of frog-based experiments conducted at NASA between the 1970s and 1992. These were designed to evaluate the relative plausibility of different future visions for humanity: specifically, the idea that earth-based life would soon expand into outer space.

Design decisions for future space stations, I show, came to depend on specific ideas about the nature of early embryological development, and especially the extent to which zygotic life could be altered by gravitational forces. At NASA, spacecraft design strategies thus came to be influenced by scientists' abilities to conduct embryological experiments in zero gravity conditions. These experiments, I show, entailed management of amphibian life at differing temporal scales: short-term cellular regeneration, medium-term corporeal development, and the long-term population reproduction. Bringing together sperm, eggs, frogs and humans in outer space required the accommodation of messy, unpredictable and unruly bodies within what had hitherto been highly technocentric and technocratic approaches to the management of living beings. At NASA, the turn to space biology helped foster a shift in management style, from cybernetic prediction to event-responsive flexibility.

Paper short abstract:

The most radical animal immobility is death, yet dead animals often have a dynamic life, through taxidermy and museological display. This paper investigates the moral tensions of (im)mobilities by connecting contemporary collections of African animal specimens with the dynamics of Spanish fascism.

Paper long abstract:

If there is an edge to animal immobility, its boundary is defined by death. Yet, in contemporary culture, dead animals have had a highly mobile second life, through taxidermy and public display. The Western enterprise has been shaped over the last centuries by a particular culture of animal hunting associated with masculinity, privilege, profiteerism, racism, colonialism and ecological backlash. Animal trophies are at the centre of a material and moral economy residing in natural history museums, private collections and drinking socialization spaces, but extending further into society. They are also part of an international traffic regulated (with difficulties) by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, established in 1975. I discuss these issues through a case study connecting contemporary collections based on big game hunting in Africa, with the political and cultural dynamics of Spanish fascism (1939-1975) and its residues in the ensuing neoliberal democracy (1975-2024). I enquire into: The recent public discovery of large collections formed by Spanish tycoons who combined privileged connections in the Spanish regime, with major experience as trophy hunter aficionados in Africa. Its relation with an official culture associating national identity with a long-held aristocratic hunting practice, art, and the country’s wealth of natural resources. And, its role with past and current museological practice: Natural history museums have traditionally received exotic specimens (hunted by aristocrats) as gifts, and currently the seizure of such collections by Spanish police is a major way of new acquisitions for these (underfunded) museums.

Paper short abstract:

In 1905 twenty wapiti were introduction to New Zealand, where they shortly hybridized with red deer. During the 20th century, there were efforts to disentangle the trophy (wapiti) from noxious pest (red deer), hybridize and domesticate the two for venison production, and create a pure wapiti herd.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will discuss the history of North American wapiti in New Zealand in the 20th century, and their hybridization with red deer. Wapiti are an exception among the species who were introduced to New Zealand as part of the acclimatization project; where other animals quickly became invasive and controlled by extermination efforts, there were and continue to be campaigns to protect this species and its genetic purity. While wapiti have remained relatively immobile in Fiordland National Park, where they were introduced in 1905, red deer mobilized throughout the country. This paper will discuss a series of episodes in the wapiti-red deer saga: their hybridization in the wild, the failed attempt to create a pure 'Crown Wapiti herd,' and their introduction to the venison market by way of cross-breeding the two species. There is tension running throughout this case study of how (and which) animals should be managed, used, and by whom—exemplified by conflicts in the 1950s-1980s between the New Zealand government and private associations on methods of wildlife management and using wild animals as a natural resource.

Paper short abstract:

Through a study of Norwegian policy documents on the Pacific oyster, and with a focus on different understandings of origin, belonging and movement, this paper explores how authorities navigate the tension between stopping an invasive alien and turning the same species into an economic resource.

Paper long abstract:

Through a study of Norwegian policy reports on the Pacific oyster, this paper explores how the promotion of oysters as resource and luxury food produces a discrepancy between a biological discourse, where the Pacific oyster will always be “pacific”, and an economic one, which centres on the origin of each individual oyster.

So-called “invasive alien species” are suffering from the expectation that all living creatures except humans should stay put. They are considered a problem because humans have moved them to new places, away from where they evolved. Many species defined as invasive aliens are, however, farmed or cultivated by humans in areas where they are non-native. These species are both economically important and ecologically problematic at the same time. In Europe, the Pacific oyster is one such species.

While Norwegian environmental authorities focus on the alienness of the Pacific oyster, other authorities make efforts to turn it into a local delicacy, partly through the concept of “merroir”. Merroir is for seafood what terroir is for wine, it describes the way in which locality influences the taste of the oyster. The concept challenges the idea that the species’ place of origin is more important than the individual’s, but also moves the oyster from living animal to cultivated product. Thus, understandings of movement are central both in producing Pacific oysters as an environmental problem and in turning them into manageable resources, although the oysters’ ability to move and adapt always seems to end up becoming their misfortune.

Paper short abstract:

This article expounds the contingent emergence of a traceability system designed to track illegal cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon; it unpacks the ecologies of animal health data, and emphasizes how they are woven into socio-economic power relations, while modifying them in turn

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, intense fires in the Amazon have put the spotlight on the deep intertwining between Brazil’s beef industry and rainforest destruction. As increasing evidence suggested that cattle raised in illegally cleared lands routinely fed the slaughterhouses owned by major meatpacking companies (JBS, Marfrig, Minerva), these have faced unprecedented criticism. In this context, an already-existing data infrastructure known as the GTA (‘Gûia de Transito Animal’) has become a bone of contention. Developed since the late 1990s by Brazilian veterinary authorities, the GTA keeps track of all cattle movements occurring within national borders : although it was initially designed to allow a rapid reconstruction of contagion chains in case of epizootic disease – a function that it still fulfils –, from 2018 onwards civil society actors started to use it as a proxy to detect deforestation and illegal cattle farming in the supply chain of slaughterhouses. This sudden, unexpected enlargement of the GTA’s scope – i.e., from animal health to environmental traceability – quickly sparked tensions, with big meatpackers, farmers unions, journalists, environmental NGOs, scientists and state administrations defending contradictory agendas. In this article, I aim to reconstruct the socio-historical trajectory of this controversy, and to map out the manifold consequences of this twisted use of animal transit data. Exploring the ecologies of the GTA (the way it is designed, produced, maintenanced, circulated) will allow to show that digital technologies actively redraw the boundaries between society and nature in a time of environmental devastation.

Paper short abstract:

Wildlife corridors are becoming an integral part in large-scale elephant conservation in southern Africa. By considering wildlife corridors as a way of infrastructuring elephant mobilities, this presentation will trace their emergence, maintenance and governance in north-eastern Namibia.

Paper long abstract:

Tracking, Mapping, Monitoring: Wildlife Corridors as More-than-human Infrastructure

Elephants are a highly mobile species. With the help of modern technologies such as satellite collars, scientists document their far-ranging movements in and between protected areas, across national borders and through human settlements. The largest contiguous elephant population of the world comprises around 230.000 individuals, representing over 50% of the remaining African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). This spectacular population ranges within the boundaries of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), one of the largest terrestrial conservation areas in the world where they share their habitat with nearly 3 million people. In order to maintain a connected metapopulation in this anthropogenic landscape, wildlife corridors, which are patches of relatively undisturbed land where elephants and other species frequently move through, are becoming an integral part of regional and international land use planning. Based on one year of ethnographic, multi-sited fieldwork, the presentation will engage with a case study of the Sobbe wildlife corridor in north-eastern Namibia. By considering wildlife corridors as a way of infrastructuring elephant mobilities, it will explore how new practices, materialities and discourses unfold in the process.

How are corridors defined, mapped, monitored and inscribed in the landscape? How are they enacted by human and more-than-human actors? Whose mobilities are encouraged and whose are restricted? Which forms of collaboration, governance and contestation emerge? And which implications do they have for large-scale conservation planning?

Paper short abstract:

To attract funding, the managers of the Kuriat Islands marine protected area focus their efforts on a marine turtle. This capitalization process entails a specific type of relationship with the animal. I will show that the managers are attempting to both control and enhance the turtle's mobility.

Paper long abstract:

In Tunisia, marine protected areas (MPAs) are dependent on foreign funding, whether public (development aid) or private (philanthropic foundations). MPAs managers must therefore succeed in attracting donors from the other side of the Mediterranean basin. In the Kuriat Islands (Monastir), the MPA managers have found an effective way to do this: turning the “Kuriat Islands” into the "turtle Islands". Indeed, every summer in July and August, Caretta Caretta sea turtles come to nest on the sandy beaches of these uninhabited islands. In order to attract donors, the MPA managers focus their conservation activities on this emblematic species.

The sea turtle is thus engaged in a process of capitalization, defined as "a pervasive form of valuation that propels a consideration of return on investment and shapes our world accordingly" (Muniesa et al. 2017). How does this capitalization work in practice? On which socio-technical devices is it based? Above all, is it easy to capitalize the Caretta Caretta turtle, a migratory species that travels across the Mediterranean?

Based on my fieldwork, I will look at the relocation of a turtle nest by the MPA managers and the staging of the baby turtles leaving the nest in front of tourists. I will show that this spectacularization of conservation (Igoe 2010) engenders an ambivalent relationship with the animals. In this case, the managers are trying to both control and enhance the value of the turtles' mobility.

Paper short abstract:

Virtual fencing applications transform established techniques of herding animals as well as human-animal interactions. Such media technologies enable governing animals’ (im)mobility based on different kinds of interfaces which the paper will analyze employing the case of an exemplary fencing app.

Paper long abstract:

Various technological developments In the field of precision livestock farming promote a data-driven vision of human-animal interaction. In particular, the cultural technique of herding animals becomes a focus of technological optimization. Core to imagining and developing more ‘effective' herding techniques for managing animal (im)mobilities are virtual fencing applications. Conceptually, the function of virtual fencing is to herd livestock, e.g. cattle, on the basis of digital technology and no longer by established techniques of domestication like electric fences. For virtual fencing a collar is attached to the individual cattle and fed with GPS-data that farmers determine within an application’s visual interface. By virtually drawing a fence, the farmer constitutes the boundaries of available grazing ground in a remote location. This position data is continuously aligned with the position of the cattle respectively the collar. If the cattle approach a virtual fence, the collar emits an audio cue which – if the animal won’t stop – transforms into an electrical shock.

From a media studies and STS perspective, the paper traces current transformations of the cultural technique of herding by analyzing an exemplary virtual fencing application and its interfaces. It focuses on design concepts and particular media operations to address the question of how this media technology governs both animals and farmers as well as their interactions.