Regional Cultures of Conservation

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City Creatures: Rediscovering Human-Animal Relationships in Chicago’s Urban Wilderness

Lead Staff: Gavin Van Horn, Ph.D.

PROJECT CO-DIRECTOR AND CHN FELLOW: DAVID AFTANDILIAN

Rationale

Our interactions with nonhuman animals are critical to our understandings of concepts such as ecology, biodiversity, wilderness, and our sense of what it means to be human.  Yet, for most people, physical interaction with a wide diversity of animals is increasingly constricted.  Moreover, virtual animals presented through various forms of media are supplementing, and in some cases, replacing embodied interactions with living animals.  This problem, which has been referred to as “the extinction of experience,” may be particularly pronounced in urban areas, where encounters with other animals are often limited to familiar species—such as pigeons, squirrels, and sparrows—that are well adapted to anthropogenically altered habitats.

Animals play several crucial but underappreciated roles in human cultures. First, as developmental psychologists have long recognized, animals help children become aware of the difference between self and other. Second, animals are our closest kin, and therefore act as our most intimate link to the natural world, wherever we encounter them. Third, animals can be spiritual presences and mediators in our lives. Finally, animals can also connect us more closely to each other.  With this project, we aim to help Chicagoans become more aware of these fellow members of our urban ecological community. Only by developing such an awareness, we argue, can people come to care about other animals deeply enough to be moved to conserve them and reconcile our shared habitats.

History and Partners

David Aftandilian, assistant professor of anthropology at Texas Christian University, will co-direct this project.  David lived in Chicago for eighteen years, and his work focuses on anthropological aspects of human-animal relationships both past and present, with a specialty in animals and religion.  He edited a scholarly book in animal studies, What Are the Animals to Us? Approaches from Science, Religion, Folklore, Literature, and Art (University of Tennessee Press, 2007), and he has also been an editor since 2001 for the Nature in Legend and Story Annual.

Others have expressed deep interest in this project, and will be featured both on the blog and in the planned book.  As these partners emerge as primary contributors, they will be noted here.

Goals and Strategies

One of the most powerful ways people can learn to become aware of, and care about, other animals is through stories that touch their hearts as well as their intellect.  Therefore, “City Creatures” will explore both seemingly ordinary encounters and transformative moments of human-animal interaction in Chicago, document them in accessible narrative (and perhaps visual) form, and share them with the public through a series of connected initiatives, including an edited book and a blog.

The overall goals of the project include highlighting: 1) how human experiences with other animals are shaped currently and have been shaped historically by the urban environment, 2) how nonhuman animals have adapted to urban environments and human presence, 3) the multi-faceted ways in which we can encounter animals in the city, 4) and the powerful ways in which we can learn to appreciate the role of nonhuman animals in contexts of limited biodiversity.  This project will involve a mutually reinforcing strategy of public dialogue and scholarly writings informed by animal encounters.  The emphasis will be on animals as both real presences and symbolic representatives of larger realities, and how those perceptions are shaped in an urban context. Urban areas such as Chicago are unique sites that offer us the opportunity to become more attentive to animal presences and to actively rethink human-animal relationships in the city and beyond, by encountering the “wild” in the midst of our greater “backyards.”

What’s Next?

In 2012, a primary goal will be to assemble a book of edited essays that prompts a greater awareness of (and ideally caring for) animals in the city from ecological, ethical, spiritual, historical, and other perspectives. In spring of 2012, an “Animal Encounters” blog will be launched by CHN, with guest contributors regularly reflecting on their encounters with non-human animals.  Planning for the book project is underway, and initial discussions have occurred with the University of Chicago Press.  Possible art and storytelling events are also being considered for the project.

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