The population economy of nonhuman species under settler colonialism: Natalia Gutkowski, ‘Bodies that count: Administering multispecies in Palestine/Israel’s borderlands’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020 | settler colonial studies blog

The population economy of nonhuman species under settler colonialism: Natalia Gutkowski, ‘Bodies that count: Administering multispecies in Palestine/Israel’s borderlands’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020

29Jan20

Abstract: Nonhuman bodies in many sizes and diverse social roles are central to Israel’s control mechanism in the Occupied West Bank. Delving into the agricultural record of the Israeli Civil Administration, I ask how the Israeli system of control operates through animal bodies. What does a bureaucratic record so invested in monitoring animals’ production, treatment, disease, and death tell about the potential disruption of power? Through a political ecology of human–animal entanglement, I argue that nonhuman bodies both reproduce human colonial relations and allow their constant interruption. Nonhumans challenge the power regime through their unpredictable mobility as well as in their role as both objects of a political economy and subjects of potential agricultural diseases, ecological risks, or public health threats. Breaking from contemporary multispecies scholarly literature’s focus on endangered species and relations of care, I place nonhuman bodies as actors of international-interspecies relations in colonial conditions and point to nonhumans, which are here to stay in the climate change era. By doing so, I reflect on the continuous significance of nonhuman bodies to the operation of power in the “borderlands” of Israel/Palestine and beyond.

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