Interspecies

Abstract

This chapter addresses the emerging research area of interspecies relations and its intersection with environmental political theory. Interspecies work engages with the ways that material and conceptual relations between different living species are connected to ecological and political outcomes. Already located by some at the intersection of posthumanism and animal studies, an interspecies rubric has been profitably, and differently, explored at the intersection of politics and ecology in the work of a number of environmental political theory scholars for a number of decades. The chapter calls for a greater focus on the actuality of interspecies relations as a site from which to think about more abstract issues in environmental politics. Such a focus can take at least three forms, explored in turn—the boundaries of political community in relation to non-human others; the workings of sovereignty; and modes of political power.