The Governance of Animals as Problems and Solutions
A lecture by Claudia Hirtenfelder as part of the Lectures for Future series, hosted by Kunst und Intervention | Konzept.
While laws, policies, and social norms are often thought of as limiting, they can also be understood as creating possibilities. These possibilities not only create opportunities, foreclosures, and frustrations for humans, but they shape urban animal lives too.
Whether urban infrastructure is made available to aid or frustrate urban animals is greatly shaped by how they are defined in policy and positioned in imaginaries. For example, animals have become intelligible differently as problems and solutions in urban policy related to sustainable development and health. In some cities, animals like bats and stray dogs are understood as vectors of disease that need to be policed to maintain public health, while in other cities, animals like mussels and bees are being framed as nature-based solutions that can help mitigate the effects of climate change.
This presentation broadly considers what opportunities and foreclosures are created for animals as subjects when they are constituted as solutions and problems in urban policy and design. It further ponders how the positioning of animals as urban subjects, and the practice of animal-aided design, might foster more inclusive multispecies imaginaries that can contribute to the development of the conceptual and material infrastructure necessary to create more just and hopeful futures.
The lecture will be in English.