Humans and Animals: Contemporary Debates Beyond Boundaries

Research forum 2008

Thursdays from 12:15 to 14:00, Room MR040 (new room!)

Uni Mail, 40, Bd. du Pont-d'Arve, 1211 Geneva

NB: This forum also includes a pre-conference to Minding Animals (Newcastle, Australia, 2009). See the Pre-Conference page for more info.

That the social sciences should take an interest in animals may initially surprise: yet today, as in the past, animals uniquely question and challenge the social world. The idea of a barrier of species long served to distinguish (and protect?) humans from the rest of living beings, yet contemporary challenges to this have raised new questions about the boundaries between humans and animals. Recent media frenzies about mad cows, bird flu viruses, biting dogs and human-animal chimeric embryos have further served to rehearse fears about good beasts and threatening Others.

It seems to us that contemporary changes in industrial, ethical and emotional processes require critical examination. The relations between humans and animals continue to be ambivalent, and this mobile and dynamic ambivalence has vital contemporary social and spatial dimensions. This challenges us to explore these complex relationships and mobile, porous and at times non-existent boundaries between human and non-humans, in order to understand human societies and collectives better. The places and spaces assigned to animals, both symbolic and concrete, are key to understanding these. Wolves returning in the Alps, reintroduced bears in the Pyrenees or invasive foreign lobsters are made to tell tales that question material and symbolic boundaries. Polemics around these movements and appearances indicate key changes that require critical examining in order to tease out new conceptions of nature and society, new rights and responsibilities for all involved.

In order to explore these issues, sociologists and geographers are making the most of their diverse backgrounds, approaches and theories to focus on animals not only as subjects of study but also as acting subjects that are part of new socio-spatial configurations. This cycle of conferences is designed to be a place of dialogue to question the boundaries around and between humans and animals, responding to contemporary debates and setting future research agendas. By mixing and matching speakers and disciplines, we aim to offer an academic debate open to wider audiences. This means that we have designed this series of talks as part of both geography and sociology Master’s programmes at the University of Geneva, as well as opening it to the wider public as a free ‘cours publique’ advertised as such by the university.

Scientific steering is ensured by professors Annik Dubied (sociology) and Juliet Fall and Jean-François Staszak (geography), as well as two additional researchers Emmanuel Gouabault and David Gerber, who will all aim for coherent and productive dialogue throughout the series. This series will be published in an edited interdisciplinary volume that will ensure that these discussions and debates between sociologists and geographers gain a wider audience.

This forum is a course for our master degree students, open to anybody interested. It is brought to you by the Departments of Sociology and of Geography . The organizers are Annik Dubied, Juliet Fall, Jean-François Staszak, Emmanuel Gouabault and David Gerber.

The program on your right hand side contains details in English only about the speakers whose conference will be in English. For any information or assistance, feel free to contact us.

Photo: Julian Opie, some rights reserved ( Creative Commons )