More than human consumption space: human–animal encounters and relationships in cat cafés in Shanghai

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examined the intricate human–animal encounters and relationships and explored how animals co-constitute consumption practices in a more than human consumption space. Our empirical results, based on participant observation and semistructured interviews conducted in cat cafés in Tianzifang, Shanghai, illustrated that the affective, relational, and imaginative encounters could stimulate interspecies connections between humans and animals in urban commercial context, where animals could show their agency through generating value, providing healing functions and establishing emotional bonds through their co-working with human staff and co-constitute consumption practices with consumers in cat cafés. We further developed the understanding of animal labour in the urban consumption context, emphasizing that it is not only an immaterial, affective process developed through different multi-species interactions, encounters and negotiations, in which animals need to adapt to the social environment set by humans to satisfy human economic or emotional needs, but also an attempt to endow animals with a social status to make animals more visible. The increase in such multi-species encounters prompted us to examine relations with nonhumans within a consumption context that has notable ethical implications and debates.