Discussant(s): Dr. David J. Bell - Staffordshire University Session Description: Debates about the nonhuman in (human) geography have been enlivened by considerations of animal geographies. However, we lack a sustained set of geographies of human-animal relations in their specificity. This session therefore advances the study of animal-human geographies through a focus on two species and their complex ways-of-relating: humans and dogs. Inspired by Haraway's (2003) manifesto, and by Michael's (2000) discussion of the hudogledog (human + doglead + dog), these sessions explore what the former calls 'the inescapable, contradictory story of relationships' between dogs and their humans; relationships which are co-constitutive, 'in which none of the partners pre-exist the relating, and the relating is never done once and for all'. What are the geographies - the multiple locals and globals, to use Haraway's term – through which dog-human geographies are co-constituted? How do, to echo Haraway again, 'dogs and people figure a universe'? The relational domestication that has forged these 'hudographies' asks us to rethink ideas about nature and culture, subject and object, rights and responsibilities: as Michael says, 'the complex interactions that make up the human-dog relation span the material and semiotic; dogs and humans signify and they touch, they 'talk' and they pull'. The papers in this session critically interrogate the spaces and places of dog-human co-evolution and cohabitation. In doing so they reflect on the creation of naturecultures or hybrid geographies (Whatmore, 2002) and the need to develop a trans-species justice within which people and animals can survive as respected co-residents of the planet (Lynn, 2004).
