“There is always some moment when other-than-human life bursts into presence amid the clamor of urban routine.” —Maan Barua, Lively Cities

One of the fundamental dimensions of urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. The book Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities, drawing attention to a suite of beings, human and nonhuman, that make up the material politics of city making. From macaques and cattle in Delhi to invasive parakeet colonies in London, author Maan Barua examines the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across the city. Barua is joined here in conversation with Sandra Jasper.


Maan Barua is a university lecturer in human geography at the University of Cambridge.

Sandra Jasper, a geographer and urbanist, is assistant professor of geography and gender at Humboldt University of Berlin.

References:
Matthew Gandy
Tom Fry
Garry Marvin
Vinciane Despret
Anindya Sinha
ARCH+ exhibit Cohabitation: A Manifesto for the Solidarity of Non-Humans and Humans in Urban Space (https://archplus.net/de/cohabitation-EN/)
Yi-Fu Tuan
Deleuze
Charles Elton
Marx
Laura Fortunato
Sylvia Federici



Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Imagining a new—human and nonhuman—grammar of urban life.

Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna is a book that asks why so many big bluefin tuna have vanished from the Atlantic Ocean. Author Jen Telesca notes that the term “red gold” has emerged out of the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands on the global market; for reference, in January 2019, a 613-pound Pacific bluefin tuna sold at market in Tokyo for an astounding record of $3.1 million US dollars. To research this book, Telesca gained unparalleled access to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (also known as ICCAT) to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned to it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. This interview between Telesca and editor Jason Weidemann was recorded in May 2020.

More about the book: http://z.umn.edu/redgold

A transcription of this conversation is available: z.umn.edu/t-redgold

Imagining a new—human and nonhuman—grammar of urban life.

University of Minnesota Press

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