Summary
This study reviews a conceptual approach to understanding animals’ mobility. This field of study recognizes that movement is not just about the physical act, but also about the social and cultural meanings attached to it. In the past, when people studied how animals moved, they often focused only on the mechanics of their movements. However, a new way of studying animals has emerged that takes into account their experiences and interpretations of movement. This newer approach recognizes that animals live in meaningful worlds and have their own unique experiences. It challenges the idea that only humans have the ability to give meaning to their actions.
The authors examine how this new way of studying animals, described above, focuses on how animals experience movement and how it shapes their lives. Researchers who study mobility and animal movements through this lens are interested in how different groups of people and animals use spaces in different ways, and what factors affect this movement. Spaces are organized and controlled to shape the movements of humans and animals through power relations, including sovereign power, disciplinary power, and governmentality and biopolitics. In this paper, the authors describe the factors that configure animal mobilites, practices for research, and how animal mobilities are governed.
This paper draws together animal and mobility studies to develop the concept of animals’ mobilities. It identifies the parallel intellectual interests in these fields that provide the intellectual foundations for this synthesis, in mobility (over movement), affect, relational space, and ordering practices. It explores what configures an animal’s mobility, knowledge practices for researching and evoking animals’ mobilities, and how animals’ mobilities are governed. The conclusion highlights what these fields gain from this synthesis, and identifies the empirical, political and conceptual contributions that this concept makes to geographical research. The argument is illustrated with examples of large, terrestrial mammals, especially bears.