Listening after the animals : sound and pastoral care in the zoo
Abstract
In anthropology and across the humanities and social sciences, zoos have tended to be theorized as places of spectacle. Scholars often focus on the ways in which these institutions enable the viewing of other-than-human animals by human publics. This article, however, uses sound-focused ethnographic fieldwork to engage with two UK zoos and to describe a particular mode of cross-species listening which is enacted by zookeepers. The concepts of pastoral care and control discussed by Foucault and applied to the zoo context by Braverman are productively reworked and reorientated in order to understand this form of listening. The article also demonstrates the interconnectedness of keeper, visitor, and animal sound worlds, in the process generating an original perspective that complements and enriches conventional zoo studies.
Citation
Rice , T , Badman-King , A , Hurn , S , Rose , P & Reed , A 2021 , ' Listening after the animals : sound and pastoral care in the zoo ' , Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13608
Publication
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1359-0987Type
Journal article
Description
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, grant number ES/R009554/1.Collections
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