Format/Structure

We will organise a typical paper panel session of short 10 minute paper presentations ending with a final Q&A panel including all participants.

Long Abstract

Over recent decades, political ecologists have conceptualised animals as political beings, entangled in multifaceted human-environment relations and subjects of contested power dynamics (Margulies and Karanth, 2018; Srinivasan, 2016). Following debates regarding the valorisation of nature (Martinez-Allier, 2009), animals have also been (re)conceptualised as ‘lively commodities’ (Collard & Dempsey, 2013) enrolled for myriad human uses. However, the control and commodification of animal waste/waste-animals has received markedly less attention – despite the centrality of debates on waste (as an environmental externality, resource, etc.) within political ecology. This session aims to disentangle the contested politics and power dynamics surrounding the material and symbolic association of animals with “waste”.

Industrialized agriculture produces enormous quantities of animal wastes, including manure (Gesing, 2023), whole bodies, tissues, bones and shells (Oliver & Dickinson, 2024). These can cause ecological problems including water contamination and odour pollution (Neubert, 2020; Carolan, 2008); and are therefore subject to fraught environmental management efforts. Simultaneously, humans designate various animal populations as “wastable” (Holmberg, 2016), “filthy, feral, invasive and unwanted” (Nagy & Johnson, 2013) – and therefore, killable, “abject lives” (Fleischmann & Everts, 2024). Thus, animals both produce waste and are rendered as waste, making them key targets of Capitalocene environmental governance (Moore, 2017).

We invite reflections on the “shadow ecologies” (Instone & Sweeney, 2013) surrounding animal waste/waste-animals. We ask: How are animal wastes/waste-animals being recast as resources for hopeful socio-ecological futures? How might rethinking what counts as animal waste/waste-animals challenge established definitions, and what implications does this have for conceptualising animals as political beings? What spatial logics are deployed to ‘secure’ or eliminate waste-animals? How can rethinking animal waste/waste-animals support multispecies justice?

Paper topics may include:

Governing invasive/unwanted species

Governing industrial animal waste-streams

Animal byproducts, biotechnologies and the bioeconomy

Indigenous/decolonial perspectives on waste-animals

Theoretical and empirical perspectives on animal disposability/killability

This Panel has 11 pending paper proposals.
Propose paper