HCST Lecture with Juno Salazar Parreñas

Associate Professor
Science and Technology Studies and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Cornell University

White Supremacy, Animal Advocacy, and the Longue Durée of Misanthropy

Inspired by Aisha M. Belisa-de Jesús and Jemima Pierre’s challenge to pursue an anthropology of white supremacy and Lesley Green’s decolonial ecopolitics in South Africa, this talk engages the racialized and gendered dynamics of animal advocacy in South Africa and on Borneo in present-day Malaysia as a way to consider how animals are instrumentalized in projects of white innocence and white supremacy. In South Africa, ex-circus lions from Latin America, Middle East, and Eastern Europe have been repatriated to white-owned properties. In Malaysia, wildlife centers harbor displaced orangutans and their operations depend on both commercialized volunteering efforts and local low-wage labor. Comparing these two sites offers a way to think about race and racism by thinking about animals.

Organized by the Human Context of Science and Technology program.  Cosponsored by the Departments of Philosoph; Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health; Geography & Environmental Systems; Gender, Women's, + Sexuality Studies; and the Center for Social Science Scholarship.