Scent Work: The Interspecies Geographies of Canine Search and Rescue
Topics: Cultural and Political Ecology
, Animal Geographies
, Socialist and Critical Geographies
Keywords: missing persons, more-than-human,
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 45
Authors:
Emma Gaalaas Mullaney, Michigan State University
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Abstract
This paper brings geographies of disappearance and ideas of policing and public safety into conversation with the practice of interspecies care. My presentation focuses on two central arguments articulated by the work that search dogs do. First, in a world seemingly choked with surveillance data, there are still entire landscapes in which we are only knowable and locatable as human because of the exquisite relationship between the active bacterial communities that constitute us, and the olefactory capabilities of a dog who will tell other humans where and what we are. Second, that safety is not a fortressed place, but rather a social, and ecological, relationship. My analysis emerges from the shared journey of my animal self and my beloved animal partner, a dog who first came to me full of his own terror, and who has guided me through the recognition of and ongoing recovery from my own. In our efforts to reengage safely with our respective species, our most transformative and surprisingly joyful social space has been that of the volunteer Canine Wilderness Search and Rescue Team with which we train and deploy on missing persons searches. Together, we do work that explicitly values and seeks to provide care for any and every person we find. At the same time, this work, in many ways, reinforces the very revanchist social structures that render humans, animals, whole ecologies disposable and displaced. These contradictions are a political opening to better organize and care for one another across social and species divides.
Scent Work: The Interspecies Geographies of Canine Search and Rescue
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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