Fair or fowl: Human-animal relations,sensory boundaries and social control

Abstract

Urban living in densely populated cities such as Singapore requires a balance between polemic human-animal relations and the sensory boundaries of conduct and transgression. Noise and smell which emanate from animals serve as a source of disturbance that impels the authorities to intervene and resolve such transgressions. However, substantial numbers of residents rear animals in or around their public housing flats, thereby serving as a source of complaint by their neighbours. Transgressions manifest as threats to hygiene, use of space, and an intrusion of one’s residential rights. This scenario brings to the fore contested claims and rights over often-shared urban residential spaces and how the presence of animals has elicited such contestation through urban sensory interactions and ostracism. As sources of sonic and olfactory transgressions, these animals are perceived as not having the sensory and spatial rights to occupy what is deemed as urban residential spaces only to be taken up by human actors. Therefore, such contestations and negotiations unfold across a three-pronged analytical framework that considers human-animal relations in the city, sensory transgressions and contestations of sensory and physical spaces, and rights to such urban residential and living spaces as forming a part of sensory citizenship.