Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T05:39:51.903Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intimate Bureaucracies: Roadkill, Policy, and Fieldwork on the Shoulder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Alexandra Koelle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, wildlife biologists and transportation planners have worked with environmental groups and state and tribal governments to mitigate the effects of human transportation arteries on animal habitats and movements. This paper draws connections between this growing field of road ecology and feminist science studies in order to accomplish two things. First, it aims to highlight the often unacknowledged roots that the interdisciplinary field of animal studies has in feminist theory. Second, it seeks to contribute to conversations in the humanities and social sciences on roadkill and on wildlife biology by steering us into a world of practice that foregrounds mundane details. I approach this topic through interdisciplinary methods, including interviews with tribal and state wildlife biologists and participation in fieldwork on a western painted turtle tagging project. Although engaging in science and formulating policy are often understandably regarded by nonspecialists as practices that distance observers from their topic, in the world of roadkill prevention, I argue that the opposite is the case. What I call “intimate bureaucracies” are formed: arrangements of papers, policies, and people that bring a world of counting, and accountability, into being.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 27 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Animal Others , Summer 2012 , pp. 651 - 669
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, Sarah. 2010. Happy objects. In The affect theory reader, ed. Gregg, Melissa and Seigworth, Gregory J.Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Alaimo, Stacy. 2008. Ecofeminism without nature? Questioning the relation between feminism and environmentalism. International Feminist Journal of Politics 10 (3): 299–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ARC. 2010. The international wildlife crossing infrastructure design competition. http://www.arc-competition.com/welcome.php (accessed March 25, 2012).Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bauchspies, Wenda K., and Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2009. Feminist science and technology studies: A patchwork of moving subjectivities. An interview with Geoffrey Bowker, Sandra Harding, Anne Marie Mol, Susan Leigh Star, and Banu Subramanian. Subjectivity 28: 334–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckmann, Jon P., Clevenger, Anthony P., Huijser, Marcel P., and Hilty, Jodi A. 2010. Safe passages: Highways, wildlife, and habitat connectivity. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.Google Scholar
de la Bellacasa, Maria P. 2011. Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science 41 (1): 85–106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Etienne. 2010. Wired wilderness: Technologies of tracking and the making of modern wildlife. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Birke, Lynda. 2002. Intimate familiarities? Feminism and human–animal studies. Society & Animals 10 (4): 429–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camel, Whisper R. 2007. Where does a deer cross a road? Road and landcover characteristics affecting deer crossing and mortality across the US 93 corridor on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana. MS thesis, Montana State University.Google Scholar
Candea, Matei. 2010. “I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat”: Engagement and detachment in human–animal relations. American Ethnologist 37 (2): 241–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clevenger, Anthony. 2006. The Banff wildlife crossings project: Lessons from highway wildlife crossings in a North American protected area. Bozeman, Western Transportation Institute.Google Scholar
Coffin, Alisa W. 2007. From roadkill to road ecology: A review of the ecological effects of roads. Journal of Transport Geography 15 (5): 396–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. 2007. Flathead Reservation Transportation Plan 2007–2017: 122.Google Scholar
Deloria, Vine Jr. 1988. Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Forman, Richard T. T. 2003. Road ecology: Science and solutions. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.Google Scholar
Gregg, Melissa, and Seigworth, Gregory J., eds. 2010. The affect theory reader. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffin, Kathleen, and Pletscher, Daniel. 2006. Potential effects of highway mortality and habitat fragmentation on a population of painted turtles in Montana. Montana Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration: 44.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hardy, A., Fuller, J., Huijser, M., Kociolek, A., and Evans, M. 2007. Evaluation of wildlife crossing structures and fencing on US highway 93 Evaro to Polson and finalization of evaluation plan. Montana Department of Transportation and U. S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Bozeman: Western Transportation Institute.Google Scholar
Hilty, Jodi A., Lidicker, William Z. Jr., and Merenlender, Adina M. 2006. Corridor ecology: The science and practice of linking landscapes for biodiversity conservation. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.Google Scholar
Huijser, Marcel P., Kociolek, A., McGowen, P., Hardy, A., Clevenger, A. P., and Ament, R. 2007. Wildlife–vehicle collision and crossing mitigation measures: A toolbox for the Montana Department of Transportation. Bozeman: Western Transportation Institute.Google Scholar
Huijser, Marcel P., Tracy McGowen, Patrick, Fuller, Julie, Hardy, Amanda, and Kociolek, A. 2008. Wildlife–vehicle collision reduction study. Report to Congress, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration.Google Scholar
International Conference on Ecology and Transportation (ICOET). http://www.icoet.net (accessed March 25, 2012).Google Scholar
Kociolek, A. V., Cleavenger, A. P., Clair, C. C. St., and Proppe, D. S. 2011. Effects of road networks on bird populations. Conservation Biology 25 (2): 241–49.Google ScholarPubMed
Koelle, Alexandra. 2010. Rights of way: Race, place, and nation in the Northern Rockies. PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Li, Tania M. 2005. Beyond “the state” and failed schemes. American Anthropologist 107 (3): 383–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lochlann, Sarah S. Jain. 2004. Dangerous instrumentality: The bystander as subject in automobility. Cultural Anthropology 19 (1): 61–94.Google Scholar
Lopez, Barry H., and Eschner, Robin. 1998. Apologia. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Lorimer, Jamie. 2008. Counting corncrakes: The affective science of the UK corncrake census. Social Studies of Science 38 (3): 377–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lulka, David. 2008. The intimate hybridity of roadkill: A Beckettian view of dismay and persistence. Emotion, Space and Society 1 (1): 38–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, Jacob. 2008. Intimacy without proximity: Encountering grizzlies as companion species. Environmental Philosophy 5 (2): 99–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michael, Mike. 2004. Roadkill: Between humans, nonhuman animals, and technologies. Society and Animals 12 (4): 277–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of experts: Egypt, techno‐politics, modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Montana Department of Transportation. 2007. The Peoples Way Summer 2007 Newsletter: 4.Google Scholar
Montana Department of Transportation, United States Federal Highway Administration, and Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation. 2008. US Highway 93 Ninepipe/Ronan improvement project final supplemental environmental impact statement and section 4(f) evaluation.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 2004. Animal relatives, difficult relations. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 15 (1): 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soron, Dennis. 2007. Road kill: Commodity fetishism and structural violence. Topia 18 (Fall): 107–25.Google Scholar
Starn, Orin. 2011. Here come the anthros (again): The strange marriage of anthropology and Native America. Cultural Anthropology 26 (2): 179–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Peoples Way. US 93 North post‐construction wildlife crossing structure monitoring. http://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/us93info/post_construct.shtml (accessed March 25, 2012).Google Scholar
Urry, John. 2006. Inhabiting the car. Sociological Review 54 (1s): 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
US Poultry and Egg Association. 2011. http://www.poultryegg.org/economic_data/ (accessed March 25, 2012).Google Scholar
Western Transportation Institute. http://www.westerntransportationinstitute.org/research/roadecology/default.aspx (accessed March 25, 2012).Google Scholar
World Health Organization. 2009. Global status report on road safety 2009. http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/road_traffic/world_report/en/index.html (accessed March 25, 2012).Google Scholar