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Research Sites

Rats in Amsterdam

Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro

The research takes place largely through theory-building urban case studies of animal-human-infrastructure dynamics and their outcomes, where the societal domains of security and public health, and the respective "political animals" associated with them, remain constant. Both Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro contend with challenges related to crime, policing, and sanitation; dogs and rats are permanent inhabitants of these urban landscapes and play a role in security and public health.

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While these cities share security and public health challenges, the two cases represent contrasting levels of inequalities, expressed in part through the infrastructural domain. Despite neoliberalization and intensifying gentrification, Amsterdam maintains a strong public infrastructure and relatively robust welfare policies that mitigate urban inequalities. Amsterdam’s decades of economic growth are accompanied by major investments in public infrastructure projects and inclusive social policies, aimed at integrating the city through socio-material interventions. In contrast, Rio de Janeiro is characterized by high levels of segregation and inequalities. Despite an expansion of public welfare and service provisioning in the early 2000s, recent infrastructural investments are often associated with displacement. Risks related to crime, policing, and unsanitary conditions are distributed unevenly along socio-economic and ethnoracial lines; in Amsterdam, these classed and raced patterns are less pronounced, though they are emerging, partly due to a growing housing crisis.

Dogs in Rio de Janeiro
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