Relations between nature and capital have been a longstanding concern in the social sciences. Going beyond antinomies of posthumanist and political economic enquiry, this paper advances a set of relational analytics for incorporating liveliness into critical analyses of capital. Firstly, developing the concept of animal work, it shows how metabolic, ecological and affective labour become a productive economic force. Secondly, animating the commodity, it demonstrates how lively forces influence commodification and exchange, enabling or hindering accumulation. Thirdly, tracking animal circulation, it examines the logics of rendition that transform nonhuman life into capital. In conclusion, the paper develops a relational grammar for anatomizing the nature-capital dynamic, one that reorients the economic to be co-constituted by the ecological from the outset.
BakkerK (2012) The ‘matter of nature’ in economic geography. In: SheppardEBarnesTPeckJ (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography. Oxford: Blackwell, 104–117.
5.
BakkerKBridgeG (2006) Material worlds? Resource geographies and the ‘matter of nature’. Progress in Human Geography30: 5–27.
6.
BakkerKJ (2003) An Uncooperative Commodity: Privatizing Water in England and Wales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7.
BarnesT (2005) Culture: Economy. In: ClokePJohnstonR (eds) Spaces of Geographical Thought: Deconstructing Human Geography’s Binaries. London: SAGE, 61–80.
8.
BaruaM (2014) Circulating elephants: Unpacking the geographies of a cosmopolitan animal. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers39: 559–573.
9.
BaruaM (2015) Encounter: Living lexicon for the environmental humanities. Environmental Humanities7: 265–270.
10.
BaruaM (2016) Lively commodities and encounter value. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space34: 725–744.
11.
BaruaM (2017) Nonhuman labour, encounter value, spectacular accumulation: The geographies of a lively commodity. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers42: 274–288.
BattistoniA (2017) Bringing in the work of nature: From natural capital to hybrid labor. Political Theory45: 5–31.
14.
BeldoL (2017) Metabolic labor, broiler chickens and the exploitation of vitality. Environmental Humanities9: 108–128.
15.
BiermannCMansfieldB (2014) Biodiversity, purity, and death: Conservation biology as biopolitics. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space32: 257–273.
16.
BinghamN (2006) Bees, butterflies, and bacteria: Biotechnology and the politics of nonhuman friendship. Environment and Planning A38: 483–498.
17.
BlanchetteA (2015) Herding species: Biosecurity, posthuman labor, and the American industrial pig. Cultural Anthropology30: 640–669.
18.
BonneuilC (2015) Tell me where you come from, I will tell you who you are: A genealogy of biodiversity offsetting mechanisms in historical context. Biological Conservation192: 485–491.
19.
BoydW (2001) Making meat: Science, technology, and American poultry production. Technology and Culture42: 631–664.
20.
BoydWWattsMJ (1997) The chicken industry and postwar American capitalism. In: GoodmanDWattsMJ (eds) Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring. London: Routledge, 139–165.
21.
BraunB (2008) Environmental issues: Inventive life. Progress in Human Geography32: 667–679.
22.
BraunB (2015) New materialisms and neoliberal natures. Antipode47: 1–14.
23.
BraunBWhatmoreS (2010a) Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
24.
BraunBWhatmoreS (2010b) The stuff of politics: An introduction. In: BraunBWhatmoreS (eds) Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ix-xxxv.
25.
BreezeTDGallaiNGaribaldiLALiXS (2016) Economic measures of pollination services: Shortcomings and future directions. Trends in Ecology & Evolution31: 927–939.
26.
BridgeG (2011) The economy of nature: From political ecology to the social construction of nature. In: LeyshonALeeRMcDowellLSunleyP (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Economic Geography. London: SAGE, 217–230.
27.
BridgeGSmithA (2003) Intimate encounters: Culture – economy – commodity. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space21: 257–268.
28.
BrownS (2010) Where the wild brands are: Some thoughts on anthropomorphic marketing. The Marketing Review10: 209–224.
29.
BuckinghamKCDavidJNWJepsonP (2013) Diplomats and refugees: Panda diplomacy, soft ‘cuddly’ power and the new trajectory of panda conservation. Environmental Practice15: 1–9.
CastreeN (1995) The nature of produced nature: Materiality and knowledge construction in Marxism. Antipode27: 12–48.
32.
CastreeN (2001) Commodify fetishism, geographical imaginations and imaginative geographies. Environment and Planning A33: 1519–1525.
33.
CastreeN (2002) False antitheses? Marxism, nature and actor-networks. Antipode34: 111–146.
34.
CastreeN (2003) Commodifying what nature?Progress in Human Geography27: 273–297.
35.
CollardR-C (2013a) Panda politics. The Canadian Geographer57: 226–232.
36.
CollardR-C (2013b) Putting animals back together, taking commodities apart. Annals of the Association of American Geographers104: 151–165.
37.
CollardR-CDempseyJ (2013) Life for sale? The politics of lively commodities. Environment and Planning A45: 2682–2699.
38.
CollardR-CDempseyJ (2017) Capitalist natures in five orientations. Capitalism Nature Socialism28: 78–97.
39.
ColombinoAGiaccariaP (2016) Dead liveness/living deadness: Thresholds of non-human life and death in biocapitalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space34: 1044–1062.
40.
CooperME (2011) Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
41.
CoulterK (2015) Animals, Work and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
42.
CoulterK (2016) Beyond human to humane: A multispecies analysis of care work, its repression, and its potential. Studies in Social Justice10: 199–219.
43.
CrangP (1997) Introduction: Cultural turns and the (re)constitution of economic geography. In: WillisJLeeR (eds) Geographies of Economies. London: Arnold, 3–15.
44.
CresswellT (2014) Mobilities III: Moving on. Progress in Human Geography38: 712–721.
45.
DailyGC (1997) Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press.
46.
DaviesG (2000) Virtual animals in electronic zoos: The changing geographies of animal capture and display. In: PhiloCWilbertC (eds) Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations. New York: Routledge, 243–246.
47.
DempseyJ (2016) Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets, and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
48.
DuffyR (2014) Interactive elephants: Nature, tourism and neoliberalism. Annals of Tourism Research44: 88–101.
49.
FedericiS (2004) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
50.
FoucaultM (1970) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge.
51.
GhazoulJ (2005) Buzziness as usual? Questioning the global pollination crisis. Trends in Ecology & Evolution20: 367–373.
52.
GillespieK (2014) Sexualized violence and the gendered commodification of the animal body in Pacific Northwest US dairy production. Gender, Place & Culture21: 1321–1337.
53.
GillespieK (2015) Nonhuman animal resistance and the improprieties of live property. In: BravermanI (ed.) Animals, Biopolitics, Law. London: Routledge, 137–154.
54.
GinnF (2013) Sticky lives: Slugs, detachment and more-than-human ethics in the garden. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. DOI: 10.1111/tran.12043.
55.
GuthmanJ (2011) Bodies and accumulation: Revisiting labour in the ‘production of nature’. New Political Economy16: 233–238.
56.
HarawayD (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.
HarawayD (2008) When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
59.
HarawayD (2012) Value-added dogs and lively capital. In: Sunder RajanK (ed.) Lively Capital: Biotechnologies, Ethics and Governance in Global Markets. Durham: Duke University Press, 93–120.
60.
HardtMNegriA (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
61.
HartsockNCM (1983) The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In: HardingSHintikkaMB (eds) Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 283–310.
62.
HarveyD (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
63.
HarveyD (2010) A Companion to Marx’s Capital. New York: Verso Books.
64.
HarveyDHarawayD (1995) Nature, politics and possibilities: A debate and discussion with David Harvey and Donna Haraway. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space13: 507–527.
65.
HelmD (2015) Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
HribalJ (2003) ‘Animals are part of the working class’: A challenge to labor history. Labor History44: 435–453.
68.
IngoldT (1983) The architect and the bee: Reflections on the work of animals and men. Man18: 1–20.
69.
IngoldT (1988) Hunters, Pastoralists and Ranchers: Reindeer Economies and Their Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
70.
IngoldTHallamE (2014) Making and growing: An introduction. In: HallamEIngoldT (eds) Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts. Farnham: Ashgate, 1–24.
71.
JohnsonER (2017) At the limits of species being: Sensing the anthropocene. South Atlantic Quarterly116: 275–292.
72.
KallisGSwyngedouwE (2017) Do bees produce value? A conversation between an ecological economist and a Marxist geographer. Capitalism Nature Socialism. DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2017.1315830.
KosekJ (2010) Ecologies of empire: On the new uses of the honeybee. Cultural Anthropology25: 650–678.
75.
LainéN (2016) Conduct and collaboration in human-elephant working communities of Northeast India. In: LockePBuckinghamJ (eds) Rethinking Human-Elephant Relations in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 180–204.
76.
LemkeT (2018) An alternative model of politics? Prospects and problems of Jane Bennett’s Vital Materialism. Theory, Culture & Society. DOI: 10.1177/0263276418757316.
77.
Martinez-AlierJSchlüpmannK (1990) Ecological Economics: Energy, Environment and Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
78.
MarxK (1976) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I. London: Penguin Books.
79.
MarxK (1978) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume II. London: Penguin Books.
80.
MarxK (1981) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume III. London: Penguin Books.
81.
McCarthyJ (2012) Political ecology/economy. In: BarnesTJPeckJSheppardE (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography. Oxford: Blackwell, 612–625.
82.
McCarthyJPrudhamS (2004) Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism. Geoforum35: 275–283.
83.
MirowskiP (1994) Natural Images in Economic Thought: Markets Read in Tooth and Claw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
NichollsH (2011) The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China’s Political Animal. New York: Pegasus Books.
87.
ParreñasRJS (2012) Producing affect: Transnational volunteerism in a Malaysian orangutan rehabilitation center. American Ethnologist39: 673–687.
88.
ParryB (2012) Economies of bodily commodification. In: SheppardEBarnesTJPeckJ (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography. Oxford: Blackwell, 213–225.
89.
PerkinsHA (2007) Ecologies of actor-networks and (non)social labor within the urban political economies of nature. Geoforum38: 1152–1162.
90.
PlourdeL (2014) Cat cafés, affective labor, and the healing boom in Japan. Japanese Studies34: 115–133.
91.
PorcherJ (2011) The relationship between workers and animals in the pork industry: A shared suffering. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics24: 3–17.
92.
PorcherJ (2014) The work of animals: A challenge for the social sciences. Humanimalia: A Journal of Human-Animal Interface Studies6: 1–9.
93.
PorcherJ (2015) Animal work. In: KalofL (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.9780199927013.9780199927148.
94.
PorcherJSchmittT (2012) Dairy cows: Workers in the shadows?Society & Animals20: 39–60.
95.
PottsAHarawayD (2010) Kiwi chicken advocate talks with Californian dog companion. Feminism & Psychology20: 318–336.
96.
PrudhamS (2003) Taming trees: Capital, science, and nature in Pacific Slope tree improvement. Annals of the Association of American Geographers93: 636–656.
97.
RajanKS (2006) Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life, Durham: Duke University Press.
98.
ReadJ (2002) Primitive accumulation: The aleatory foundation of capitalism. Rethinking Marxism14: 24–49.
99.
RileyM (2011) ‘Letting them go’ – Agricultural retirement and human–livestock relations. Geoforum42: 16–27.
100.
SerpellJA (2002) Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphic selection: Beyond the ‘cute response’. Society & Animals10: 437–454.
101.
ShukinN (2009) Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
102.
SmithN (2007) Nature as accumulation strategy. Socialist Register, January: 1–36.
103.
SmithN (2010) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. London: Verso.
104.
SongsterEE (2004) A Natural Place for Nationalism: The Wanglang Nature Reserve and the Emergence of the Giant Panda as a National Icon. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest.
105.
SullivanS (2013) Banking nature? The spectacular financialisation of environmental conservation. Antipode45: 198–217.
106.
SwaisgoodRRZhouXZhangGLindburgDGZhangH (2003) Application of behavioral knowledge to conservation in the giant panda. International Journal of Comparative Psychology16: 65–84.
107.
ThriftNOldsK (1996) Refiguring the economic in economic geography. Progress in Human Geography20: 311–337.
108.
TsingAL (2004) Inside the economy of appearances. In: AminAThriftN (eds) The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 83–100.
109.
WacquantLJD (1995) Pugs at work: Bodily capital and bodily labour among professional boxers. Body and Society1: 65–93.
110.
WadiwelD (2018) Chicken harvesting machine: Animal labor, resistance, and the time of production. The South Atlantic Quarterly117: 527–549.
111.
WalkerR (2017) Value and nature: Rethinking capitalist exploitation and expansion. Capitalism Nature Socialism28: 53–61.
112.
WhatmoreS (1997) Dissecting the autonomous self: Hybrid cartographies for a relational ethics. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space15: 37–53.
113.
WhatmoreS (1999) Hybrid geographies: Rethinking the ‘human’ in human geography. In: MasseyDAllenJSarreP (eds) Human Geography Today. Cambridge: Polity, 22–40.
WhatmoreS (2013) Earthly powers and affective environments: An ontological politics of flood risk. Theory, Culture & Society30: 33–50.
116.
WilkieR (2005) Sentient commodities and productive paradoxes: The ambiguous nature of human–livestock relations in Northeast Scotland. Journal of Rural Studies21: 213–230.
117.
WilkieR (2015) Animals as sentient commodities In: KalofL (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.9780199927013.9780199927116.
118.
WilsonEO (1987) The little things that run the world (the importance and conservation of invertebrates). Conservation Biology1: 344–346.
119.
WilsonHF (2016) On geography and encounter: Bodies, borders, and difference. Progress in Human Geography. DOI: 10.1177/0309132516645958.
120.
WolfeC (2010) What Is Posthumanism?Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
