ANIMAPOLIS

The ANIMAPOLIS project investigates how animals shape urban inequalities by examining their interactions with humans and infrastructure. Its focus is on security and public health, two domains often characterized by stark inequalities, and on the role of key “political animals” – security dogs and rats, respectively – within these domains. It seeks to highlight the significant but largely obscured role of such animals in co-producing which people and places are exposed most to security and health risks. Even if we have a sense that rats and dogs can play a political role in co-producing unequal outcomes, our knowledge of how they mediate urban inequalities is limited. Through what mechanisms might distributions of rats and rodenticides affect public health outcomes, or might security dogs co-produce practices of criminal profiling? Through multispecies ethnographies in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro, the project explores how dogs’ and rats’ interactions with humans and socio-technical systems may translate into unequal distributions of risks and resources. By adopting a "more-than-human" approach, ANIMAPOLIS aims to expand urban anthropological and geographical understandings of urban inequalities.