Animals and Landscapes

Overview & Synopsis

This volume explores various connections between animals and landscapes, challenging traditional anthropocentric framings and acknowledging the agency of other-than-human species in shaping human surroundings. A critical departure from traditional perspectives, Animals and Landscapes challenges the prevalent anthropocentric and ocularcentric approaches to the scenic landscape. Instead, the contributors adopt a multispecies lens, prioritising the more-than-human and illuminating the intricate relationships between bodies, actions, and place. The chapters navigate a range of environments, exploring visual and aesthetic experiences as well as the entanglements of place, action, bodies, and subjectivities. In doing so the authors discuss historical, geographical, social, economic, and cultural frameworks that shape landscapes, revealing the often-ignored agency of non-human species. Moving beyond human-centric framings of landscapes, it acknowledges the active role that other species play in shaping, using, and producing these environments. Central to this thematic exploration is the idea that animals have their own geographies and act as place-making agents. Underscoring the dynamic role animals play in shaping the spaces they inhabit, this volume encourages a re-evaluation of the narratives that have predominantly marginalised the role of animals in shaping our understanding of place. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to academics and students of sociology, visual culture, geography, and cultural studies, film, and media and television studies with interests in landscape studies and human-animal studies.