Towards a beyond-human geography: multispecies worlds and veganism in the past, present and future

Oliver, Catherine C.M. (2020). Towards a beyond-human geography: multispecies worlds and veganism in the past, present and future. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the emergence and growth of beliefs, practices and organisation of animal activism and veganism in Britain. It is informed by interdisciplinary theory and practice across political philosophy, critical animal studies, and feminist and cultural geographies and argues for a ‘beyond-human geography’ centring ethico-political veganism.

Within human geography, there has been little attention paid to destabilising the human itself. In this beyond-human geography, it is argued that animals are spectral inhabitants of the ‘in-between’ and affective ethico-political being/things, with whom we already meaningfully co-exist.
Through archival research, interviews and multispecies ethnography, this thesis explores: friendship as both exclusionary power and a resistant way of life; how encounters with embodied vegan truths transform self, relationships and worlds; and how attempts to construct less violent multispecies space through ‘rescue’ might reimagine the futures we inherit.

This thesis understands how animal activists and vegans navigate spatial, temporal and species differences and distances. To do this, it imagines and enacts ethically and politically imbued multispecies spaces of alterity to unthink ‘us’ and establish futures beyond trauma, by inhabiting the present in the mode of as if: as if some experiences were evocative of others; as if we already lived in ideal worlds.

Type of Work:	Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)
Award Type:	Doctorates > Ph.D.
Supervisor(s):	Supervisor(s) Email ORCID Noxolo, Patricia UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Moran, Dominique UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
Licence:	All rights reserved
College/Faculty:	Colleges > College of Life & Environmental Sciences
School or Department:	School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Funders:	None/not applicable
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
URI:	http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/10386

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