S3E4: Urban Biopolitics with Krithika Srinivasan
Claudia talks to Krithika Srinivasan about the concept of biopolitics and how it could be used to understand multi-species urban relations. They touch on the tensions between harm and welfare as well as how different socio-biological tactics are enforced in the name of urban development.
Krithika Srinivasan’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political ecology, post-development politics, animal studies, and nature geographies. Her work draws on research in South Asia to rethink globally established concepts and practices about nature-society relations. Through empirical projects on street dogs and public health, biodiversity conservation, animal agriculture, and non-elite environmentalisms, her scholarship focuses on decolonizing and reconfiguring approaches to multispecies justice. Both her research and teaching are deeply rooted in long-term field engagement and praxis in India. Krithika has worked as a Lecturer in the departments of Geography at the University of Exeter and Durham University before moving to Edinburgh. You can find out more about Krithika here and connect with her on Twitter (@kritcrit).
"It is simpler to arrest poachers and exterminate invasive alien species or free-living dogs than to effectively contest the developmental machine. However, the net outcome of such scapegoating is that conservationist attention is distracted from the root causes of biodiversity loss and large-scale human induced harm to non-human nature" - Krithika Srinivasan et al, Conservation Scapegoats and Developmentality.
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Sonic Arts Studio and the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory (SAPLab) for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John (Website) for the logo, and Hannah Hunter for the Animal Highlight