Interspecies care and aging in a gorilla 2.0 world |
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| Institution: | 1. Miller Worley Center for the Environment, 204 Dwight Hall, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01002, USA;2. Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, USA;3. Environmental Studies Program and Department of Geography, Bucknell University, USA;4. Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph, Canada;1. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK;2. Science Domain (SD) 5 – Environmental Services, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya;3. Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway;1. School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Roseworthy Campus, Roseworthy, South Australia, 5371, Australia;2. JBI, School of Public Health, The University of Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia;1. Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria |
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| Abstract: | Two key figures analyzed in Donna Haraway’s monograph, Primate Visions: Gender Race and Nature in The World of Modern Science (1989) warrant further analysis in the emerging cyber politics of environmental conservation. These figures are Koko, a female lowland gorilla born in the San Francisco Zoo and her companion Dr. Francine (Penny) Patterson, a developmental psychologist who taught Koko how to communicate with a modified form of American Sign Language (ASL). Nine years after Haraway’s initial analysis, Koko and Patterson became early examples of conservation-related Web 2.0 engagement with their unprecedented inter-species America Online chat room encounter with 7811 member participants. Today, Koko has a Twitter account (@kokotweets), a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and a website where users watch videos of Koko celebrating birthdays and donate to ‘distant’ conservation projects. One project site is a gorilla reserve in Cameroon and another is a former pineapple plantation turned private nature preserve in Maui, Hawai’i. Inspired by recent analytical work in animal geographies and feminist political ecology, this article explores complex landscapes of caring, aging and conservation in a time of proliferating social media engagement from colonized sites of enduring privilege. The article argues that new media adds layers of violence, disciplinary techniques and co-dependence to the aging bodies, caring practices and landscapes that Koko, Patterson and others inhabit in California and in the proposed physical spaces of a repurposed pineapple field in Maui. |
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| Keywords: | Aging Animal geographies Conservation Ethics of care Gorillas Hawai’i New media |
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