Constructing captive ecology at the aquarium: Hierarchy, care, violence, and the limits of control
| Autor: | Mollie Holmberg |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Hierarchy
Ecology Ecology (disciplines) 05 social sciences Geography Planning and Development Control (management) 0211 other engineering and technologies 0507 social and economic geography 021107 urban & regional planning 02 engineering and technology Development Management Monitoring Policy and Law Geography 050703 geography Nature and Landscape Conservation |
| Zdroj: | Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 5:861-880 |
| ISSN: | 2514-8494 2514-8486 |
| Popis: | In a time of accelerating ecological crises, captive care performed by zoos and aquariums increasingly plays a central and controversial role in attempts to resuscitate species and ecosystems rapidly disappearing from the planet. Here I use the Giant Pacific octopus ( Enteroctopus dofleini) exhibit at the Vancouver Aquarium to examine practices involved in capture and captive care at a prominent Canadian institution. As I trace how octopuses come to the Aquarium and how people work to keep them alive and healthy in this environment, I examine the complex ways violence and domination interact with care practices. Centering octopuses and their material relations in this analysis thus allows me to connect everyday care practices to systems of governance and extraction that support captive ecologies and also generate the categories used in care. Through this investigation, I find that pastoral power organizes care practices at the Vancouver Aquarium and maintains anthropocentric order in this space. Slow violence here results from the imperfect replacement of lifegiving relations, and the nature of this harm is shaped by different beings’ relationships to anthropocentric order. Hierarchical categorizations structure care practices here, and when care directed at keeping animals healthy fails, slow violence often becomes acute. Elusiveness best characterizes how octopuses confound attempts to know and care for them within this anthropocentric power structure. The theoretical lens and language I offer seeks to describe moments of rupture in anthropocentric power without romanticizing animal endangerment as liberation or (conversely) accepting the logic that harm in captivity can only diminish if care improves. Through this work, I showcase both the violence and possibilities embedded in different ways of living and relating with ecological others amidst crisis. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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