ANIMAL TRAFFIC: MAKING, REMAKING, AND UNMAKING COMMODITIES IN GLOBAL LIVE WILDLIFE TRADE by ROSEMARY-CLAIRE MAGDELEINE SOLANGE COLLARD A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) December 2013 © Rosemary-Claire Magdeleine Solange Collard, 2013 Abstract Against mass species loss and escalating concern over declining biodiversity, legal and illegal trade in wildlife is booming. Annually, it generates tens of billions of dollars and involves the circulation of billions of live and dead animals worldwide. This dissertation examines one dimension of this economy: flows of live, wild-caught animals – namely exotic pets – into North America. My central questions are: how are wild animals’ lives and bodies transformed into commodities that circulate worldwide and can be bought and owned? How are these commodities remade and even unmade? In answering these questions the dissertation is concerned not only with embodied practices, but also with broader, dominant assumptions about particular figures of the human and the animal, and the relations between them. This dissertation draws on reading across economic geography and sociology, political economy and ecology, and political theory to construct a theoretical approach with three strands: a commodity chain framework, a theory of performativity, and an anti-speciesist position. It weaves this theoretical grounding through multi-sited research carried out from 2010-2013, including participant- and spectator-observation, interviews, and film and photography. In this research, to retain a focus on animals I inserted myself in multispecies contact zones. Specifically, I traced three nodes in global live wildlife trade’s circuits: commodification of animals through capture in biosphere reserves in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize; recommodification (re-legitimation of the animals’ status as commodities) through exchange at exotic animal auctions across the US; and attempted decommodification through rehabilitation at a wildlife centre in Guatemala. This research suggests that commodification and decommodification are not processes of “denaturing” and “renaturing”, respectively. Rather, they are both productions of particular natures. Commodification produces an encounterable, individual and controllable animal life. Decommodification seeks to do the opposite. Ultimately, I argue that all of these global live wildlife trade processes depend on and perform, or bring into being, a human/animal dualism that positions the human figure as a master subject and the animal as a subordinate object. This dissertation thus amounts to a critique of the exotic pet commodity form. ii Preface This dissertation is an original intellectual product of the author, Rosemary-Claire Collard. UBC Research Ethics Board certificate number H10-03073 covered the fieldwork reported in these pages. The work presented in this dissertation led to the following publications: Collard, R-C. Putting animals back together, taking commodities apart. 2013. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (1): 151-165. Work appears in Chapters 5 and 7. Collard, R-C and J Dempsey. 2013. Life for sale? The political of lively commodities. Environment and Planning A 45 (11): 2682 – 2699. Contribution: 50 percent. Work appears in Chapters 5 and 6. iii Table of contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. ii Preface .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of contents .............................................................................................................. iv List of tables ..................................................................................................................... vi List of figures .................................................................................................................. vii List of maps .................................................................................................................... viii List of graphs ................................................................................................................... ix List of acronyms ............................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Animal traffic .................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Key arguments and contributions .................................................................... 11 1.4 Dissertation outline .......................................................................................... 16 1.5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 20 Part I. Context and approach Chapter 2. Global live wildlife trade ............................................................................... 22 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 22 2.2 Wildlife trade – the basics ............................................................................... 24 2.3 Wildlife trade – a brief history ........................................................................ 26 2.4 Trade governance and monitoring ................................................................... 28 2.5 Trade volume, distribution and socio-economic effects .................................. 31 2.6 Wildlife trade’s ecological effects ................................................................... 32 2.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 34 Chapter 3. Commodities, performativity, speciesism ..................................................... 35 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 35 3.2 A commodity chain framework ....................................................................... 37 3.3 A theory of performativity ............................................................................... 44 3.4 An anti-speciesist position ............................................................................... 52 3.5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 4. Methodologies for multispecies contact zones .............................................. 61 4.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 61 4.2 Animal ethics ................................................................................................... 63 4.3 Multispecies contact zones .............................................................................. 66 4.4 Multiple sites (and how they were selected) ................................................... 69 4.5 Methods ........................................................................................................... 71 4.6 Research challenges ......................................................................................... 73 4.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 76 iv Part II. Three traffic nodes Chapter 5. Capture .......................................................................................................... 78 5.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 78 5.2 Theorizing wildness and lively commodification ........................................... 81 5.3 Investigating wildlife capture economies ........................................................ 85 5.4 Wild life ........................................................................................................... 93 5.5 Making the lively commodity ......................................................................... 99 5.6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 106 Chapter 6. Exchange ..................................................................................................... 109 6.1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 109 6.2 Auction performances ................................................................................... 113 6.3 Investigating exchange at doubly live auctions ............................................. 121 6.4 What is on “Noah’s ark”? .............................................................................. 127 6.5 Multispecies performances of the lively commodity .................................... 131 6.6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 139 Chapter