Chris Bear

Cardiff University, Geography and Planning, Faculty Member

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My research interests centre on the relationships between humans, animals and technologies. These interests have been developed through a wide range of empirical contexts, ranging from recreational fisheries to dairy farming. I recently completed ESRC-funded research on the adoption of robotic milking technologies in the dairy sector, developing my long-standing interest in the place of animals within food production systems. This interest took a new direction in 2017, since when I have been carrying out research on insect farming in the UK, with a particular focus on insects for human consumption. While much of my current work relates to land-based and air-borne animals, I am also one of relatively few human geographers to have a focus on aquatic environments.

I am currently involved in the supervision of six PhD students and am always keen to discuss potential PhD topics that relate to my research interests.

I am Associate Editor of the journal Society and Animals, on the Editorial Board of Sustainability, and regularly referee for all the major Human Geography journals.

My current research on edible insects has led me to become a Director of the Woven Network - the UK's network for insects as food and feed.

My undergraduate teaching currently focuses on the history and philosophy of geography; I also give lectures on geographies of nature and the environment. I am Director of Learning and Teaching at Cardiff University's School of Geography and Planning.
Address: School of Geography and Planning
Cardiff University
Glamorgan Building
King Edward VII Avenue
Cardiff
Wales
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Papers by Chris Bear

Posthumanism and geography

The Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2024

Continental philosophy and critical theory responded to the acknowledgement of anthropocentrism i... more Continental philosophy and critical theory responded to the acknowledgement of anthropocentrism in the twentieth century with a new philosophical framework, posthumanism. This framework questions both the primacy of the human and the necessity of the human as a category. Posthumanism has been influential across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, bringing to the fore the activities, effects, and performances of “nonhuman” subjects (animals, vegetables, minerals, technologies, and forces). Geography has been at the forefront of posthuman research, examining the vitality and agency of these diverse subjects from a spatial perspective. Work in posthuman geography has increasingly attended to the framework’s methodological implications, attending to the liveliness of “more-than-human” relations and moving away from the focus on language, texts, human actions, and social meanings.

More-Than-Human Research Methodologies

Key Methods in Geography, 2023

The emergence of the field of research called ‘more-than-human geography’ is part of a much large... more The emergence of the field of research called ‘more-than-human geography’ is part of a much larger movement in the social sciences, the humanities, arts and natural sciences that proposes to abandon a human-centric, ‘human-exceptionalist’ worldview, and to bring to the foreground the actions, effects and behaviours of ‘nonhuman’ entities. With this outlook, the world becomes filled with active beingsis composed of lively entities and actants as disparate as scallops, dogs, microbes, forests, data, shopping trolleys and machines, and a growing number of nonhuman subjects become objects of analysis. The vocabulary of this approach uses terms such as ‘vibrancy’ and ‘material vitalism’, and it suggests that ‘agency’ is a relational achievement that occurs across a range of things (Bennett, 2010). This perspective replaces the attention to previously purely human-focused research on ‘discourse,’ ‘textuality,’ ‘language,’ and ‘meaning’ (Salter, 2015). The chapter is organised into the following sections: • Introduction • The development of more-than-human geographies • More-than-human methodologies • Make things talk, give voice to neglected subjects • Conclusions • Summary

Geography and Posthumanism

by Mara Miele and Chris Bear

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, May 1, 2022

Geography has often been characterised as a unifying discipline, drawing together the social and ... more Geography has often been characterised as a unifying discipline, drawing together the social and natural through a focus on the composition of space and place. As such, it might be expected to have a close and productive relationship with critical posthumanism, rejecting the essentialisation of humanity and exploring critically the entanglement of nonhumans such as animals and technologies in the co-production of space. However, geographers have often preferred the nomenclature of ‘more-than-human’ over posthuman. In this chapter, we begin by reviewing the nature of geography’s engagement with posthumanism, contextualising this in relation to its disciplinary history. Throughout the chapter, we focus especially on the field of animal geographies, where the ‘performative turn’ and the methodological innovations that it led to have become significant gestures for expressing posthumanist sensibilities. We examine these methodological innovations in relation to two approaches that have been especially influential over the past two decades: actor-network theory and multispecies ethnographies. We refer to key papers in animal geographies and the geohumanities that illustrate what these methodological innovations might produce and, in the conclusions, we underline the role of performative research methods in creating the possibility for different subjectivities, new ethical questioning and political action to emerge.

What are the priority questions for digital agriculture?

by Julie Ingram, Chris Bear, and Caitlin Hafferty

Land Use Policy, 2022

There is a need to identify key existing and emerging issues relevant to digitalisation in agricu... more There is a need to identify key existing and emerging issues relevant to digitalisation in agricultural production that would benefit from a stronger evidence base and help steer policy formulation. To address this, a prioritisation exercise was undertaken to identify priority research questions concerning digital agriculture in the UK, but with a view to also informing international contexts. The prioritisation exercise uses an established and effective participatory methodology for capturing and ordering a wide range of views. The method involves identifying a large number of participants and eliciting an initial long list of research questions which is reduced and refined in subsequent voting stages to select the top priorities by theme. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and snowballing to represent a number of sectors, organisations, companies and disciplines across the UK. They were each invited to submit up to 10 questions according to certain criteria, and this resulted in 195 questions from a range of 40 participants (largely from England with some representation from Scotland and Wales). Preliminary analysis and clustering of these questions through iterative analysis identified seven themes as follows: data governance; data management; enabling use of data and technologies; understanding benefits and uptake of data and technologies; optimising data and technologies for performance; impacts of digital agriculture; and new collaborative arrangements. Subsequent stages of voting, using an online ranking exercise and a participant workshop for in-depth discussion, refined the questions to a total of 27 priority research questions categorised into 15 gold, 7 silver and 5 bronze, across the 7 themes. The questions significantly enrich and extend previous clustering and agenda setting using literature sources, and provide a range of new perspectives. The analysis highlights the interconnectedness of themes and questions, and proposes two nexus for future research: the different dimensions of value, and the social and institutional arrangements to support digitalisation in agriculture. These emphasise the importance of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, and the need to tackle the binary nature of current analytical frames. These new insights are equally relevant to contexts outside the UK. This paper highlights the need for research actions to inform policy, not only instrumentally by strengthening the evidence base, but also conceptually, to prompt new thinking. To our knowledge this methodology has not been previously applied to this topic.

Exploring the human–animal–technology nexus: power relations and divergent conduct

A research agenda for animal geographies, 2021

This chapter develops an agenda for discussing less-than-convivial more-than-human relations. It ... more This chapter develops an agenda for discussing less-than-convivial more-than-human relations. It reviews existing work on such relations before developing a terminology of ‘divergent conduct’ aiming to better express such relationships. The chapter uses an empirical case study of automated or robotic milking systems, and focuses on the relationships these establish between machines, humans, and cows in specific places. Divergent conduct aims to express how humans and nonhumans co-produce activities which are likely to differ from accounts of trouble-free introductions of technologies. The concept emphasises the agency of animals while paying attention to their relationships with people and machines. As such, it emphasises how farming is constituted in relation to multiple human and nonhuman requirements, and their related conducts, which may pull in different directions. The chapter argues that divergent conduct provides a way of exploring problematic entanglements in which inequalities of power can be many-layered and intersectional.

Making insects tick: Responsibility, attentiveness and care in edible insect farming

Environment and Planning E, 2020

Insects are increasingly promoted as a sustainable and nutritious source of protein, with ‘edible... more Insects are increasingly promoted as a sustainable and nutritious source of protein, with ‘edible insect’ sectors emerging in many countries not traditionally associated with their consumption. A number of studies have examined the attitudes of potential consumers to eating insects but the understandings and practices of farmers have largely been ignored. This article expands nature-society scholarship’s engagement with the edible insect sector by investigating how farmers make sense of their responsibilities to insects through their everyday practices. Drawing on a qualitative study of the UK’s edible insect farmers, the article contributes to wider ongoing debates within science and technology studies and animal studies around multispecies companionship involving apparently ‘awkward’ creatures, and around the relationship between ‘care’ and ‘ethical regard’ in more-than-human relations. Such debates are especially pertinent here, as insects have often been understood as lacking sentience and beyond moral considerability, resulting in their exclusion from animal welfare codes and regulation. Insect farmers are therefore faced with questions not only about how to care for their ‘minilivestock’ but also whether to care. Following an outline of the UK’s edible insect production sector, and framed by a discussion of literature on awkward creatures, attentiveness and practices of care, the article reports on: (1) the relationship between sentience and farmers’ constructions of insects’ moral significance; (2) farmers’ motives for, and approaches to, becoming attentive to their insects; and (3) how farmers respond to the actions of insects. It concludes by reflecting on the nature of attentiveness encountered in edible insect farming, arguing that it offers a promising yet unstable basis for the development of harmonious more-than-human relations.

Approaching Insect Death: Understandings and Practices of the UK’s Edible Insect Farmers

Society and Animals, 2019

While insects are eaten by around two billion people globally, they are a relatively new addition... more While insects are eaten by around two billion people globally, they are a relatively new addition to the UK’s culinary landscape. A domestic production sector has begun to emerge to supply this new appetite for insects. Social scientists have been quick to explore consumer attitudes to “edible insects” but insect farmers have thus far been largely ignored. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on interviews with the UK’s current and recent edible insect farmers to explore their understandings of, and approaches to, insect death, something about which all participants expressed concern. The paper examines: 1) reasons for farmers’ concerns around how they kill their insects, ranging from anxieties around insect pain to perceived consumer attitudes; and 2) farmers’ ideas about what constitutes a “good” death for insects, and how they incorporate this in their practices.

The ocean exceeded: Fish, flows and forces

Dialogues in Human Geography, 2019

The ongoing conceptualisation of oceans and the hydrosphere by Peters and Steinberg is to be welc... more The ongoing conceptualisation of oceans and the hydrosphere by Peters and Steinberg is to be welcomed. They continue to challenge geography’s historical tendency to focus on and from terrestrial spaces, exploring how oceans exceed their material, discursive and imagined boundaries along with their liquid form. This short commentary responds specifically to their assertion that ‘The ocean is fish’. Using the example of Atlantic salmon, it questions the directionality at the heart of Peters and Steinberg’s paper. It focuses particularly on the complex spatialities of salmonid life, and the ability of salmon to blur aquatic boundaries. The commentary argues that if oceans exceed, they are also exceeded, whether through the extra-planetary forces that guide salmonid migration and affect tides, or the inward flows of water from rivers. It ends by questioning the space given to non-human life in the more-than-wet ontology, asking how such actants might be implicated in oceanic excess, particularly when the ocean’s intrinsic voluminous excess renders them beyond human awareness or understanding.

Beyond resistance: Geographies of divergent more-than-human conduct in robotic milking

Geoforum, 2019

This paper begins to develop a terminology for discussing less-than-convivial more-than-human ent... more This paper begins to develop a terminology for discussing less-than-convivial more-than-human entanglements. The paper reviews existing work on such relations, showing how they tend to have been conceptualised in terms of animal transgression and resistance. It then develops critiques of these terms, focusing on their problematic representations of animals' actions and subjectivities, and engaging with arguments that non-living nonhumans also need to be considered in conceptualisations of problematic more-than-human situations. Drawing on empirical material from research into automated (or robotic) milking systems (AMS), and the associated relations between machines, humans and cows in specific places, the paper proposes and outlines the concept of divergent conduct. It argues that this is a way of exploring how heterogeneous entities co-produce activity which is likely to differ from accounts of trouble-free introductions of technologies and practices. The concept draws together an emphasis on the 'lively' nature of machines with a focus on the agency of nonhuman animals and the topological relationships involved in attempts to establish AMS in UK dairy farming. It suggests that the characteristics and capacities of heterogeneous entities make multiple and relational differences to situations. As such, the concept emphasises the constitution of AMS in relation to multiple human and nonhuman requirements, and their related conducts, which may pull in different directions. The paper argues that divergent conduct provides a way of exploring problematic and politicised entanglements in which inequalities of power can be many-layered and intersectional.

Redistributing Labour in Automated Milking Systems and the More-Than-Human (Co)Production of Dairy Farming

Sage Handbook of Nature, Apr 12, 2018

This chapter explores the more-than-human redistribution of productive labour in Automated Milkin... more This chapter explores the more-than-human redistribution of productive labour in Automated Milking Systems (AMS). The chapter explores such systems in two specific ways, examining: 1) how ‘productive labour’ on dairy farms is re-imagined by actors such as farmers and AMS manufacturers in relation to the installation of AMS; and 2) how AMS are not simply installed as finished technological objects, but rather emerge, or are co-produced, through ongoing encounters with humans and cows – encounters which are sometimes opposed to the intentions of, or unimagined by, farmers and AMS manufacturers. As such, we propose a conceptualisation of dairy farming that moves away from a utilitarian focus on yield, where cows are manipulated by humans as the tools of production, and towards a perspective that views productivity as emerging through collaboration and negotiation between heterogeneous farm workers, whether human or nonhuman. This productivity extends beyond the material production of milk to the co-production of farming systems and technologies. We finish the chapter by discussing the methodological implications of focusing on animal-technology relations, and by highlighting potential avenues for future research.

Assembling ocean life: More-than-human entanglements in the Blue Economy

Dialogues in Human Geography, Mar 28, 2017

While welcoming the intervention of Winder and Le Heron (2006) as opening up a space for critical... more While welcoming the intervention of Winder and Le Heron (2006) as opening up a space for critical – and practical – engagement with ‘Blue Economy’ thinking, their employment of assemblage approaches could be extended. Doing so might produce a different conceptualization of the Blue Economy, while concurrently establishing new challenges for blue economic practices. In this commentary, I focus on three key areas: (1) the ontological separation of land and sea and the conceptualization of ‘marine space’; (2) the ‘liveliness’ of oceans; and (3) practical possibilities for Blue Economy policies to draw on and engage with ‘wet ontologies’. I argue that future geographical research on the Blue Economy would benefit from moving away from the categorizations of the ‘ecological’ or ‘bio’ and towards a fuller engagement with the diversity of actants and forces that contribute to the emergence of new practices, policies and (de)territorializations.

Socio-nature

International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, 2017

Socio-nature is a concept that is used to argue that society and nature are inseparable and shoul... more Socio-nature is a concept that is used to argue that society and nature are inseparable and should not be analyzed in abstraction from each other. The concept is rooted in – but operates as a critique of – Marxist approaches such as historical materialism and poststructural approaches such as actor-network theory. Drawing on the former, it emphasizes temporality and processes of becoming, while its engagement with poststructural thought leads to a focus on ontological hybridity. At the heart of research on socio-natures is an interest in processes of their production, and especially on the labor that is involved and the uneven power relationships that emerge.

Bovine and human becomings in histories of dairy technologies: robotic milking systems and remaking animal and human subjectivity

British Journal of the History of Science: Themes, Mar 2, 2017

This paper positions the recent emergence of robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) in relati... more This paper positions the recent emergence of robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) in relation to discourses surrounding the longer history of milking technologies in the UK and elsewhere. The mechanization of milking has been associated with sets of hopes and anxieties which permeated the transition from hand to increasingly automated forms of milking. This transition has affected the relationships between humans and cows on dairy farms, producing different modes of cow and human agency and subjectivity. In this paper, drawing on empirical evidence from a research project exploring AMS use in contemporary farms, we examine how ongoing debates about the benefits (or otherwise) of AMS relate to longer-term discursive currents surrounding the historical emergence of milking technologies and their implications for efficient farming and the human and bovine experience of milk production. We illustrate how technological change is in part based on understandings of people and cows, at the same time as bovine and human agency and subjectivity are entrained and reconfigured in relation to emerging milking technologies, so that what it is to be a cow or human becomes different as technologies change. We illustrate how this results from – and in – competing ways of understanding cows: as active agents, as contributing to technological design, as ‘free’, as ‘responsible’ and/or requiring surveillance and discipline, and as efficient co-producers, with milking technologies, of milk.

Visualizing Human-Animal-Technology Relations: Field Notes, Still Photography, and Digital Video on the Robotic Dairy Farm

by Chris Bear and Lewis Holloway

Society and Animals, Jun 12, 2017

This paper explores the potential for less anthropocentric approaches to researching human-nonhum... more This paper explores the potential for less anthropocentric approaches to researching human-nonhuman relations through visual ethnography, critically examining the conceptualization of nonhuman animals as participants. Arguing that method in animal studies has developed more slowly than theory, it proposes visual approaches as a way of foregrounding nonhuman animals’ behavior and actions in “social” research. Questioning the meaning of “participation,” this challenges underlying anthropocentric assumptions of visual ethnography. The paper presents a comparison of approaches used in studying sites, moments and movements of robotic milking on United Kingdom dairy farms: field notes, still photography, and digital video. While visual approaches are not a panacea for more-than-human research, we suggest that they offer a means through which nonhumans might “speak for themselves.” Rather than presenting definitive accounts, including video in such work also leaves the actions of nonhumans open to further interpretation, destabilizing the centrality of the researcher.

Tracing Bacterial Legalities: The Fluid Ecologies of the European Union’s Bathing Water Directive

This chapter explores the implications of the European Union’s (EU) 2006 Bathing Water Directive.... more This chapter explores the implications of the European Union’s (EU) 2006 Bathing Water Directive. This legislation, to be fully implemented by 2016, requires EU Member States to monitor bathing waters for levels of faecal bacteria, to communicate this information to the public, and to engender management strategies. While designed to benefit and “protect human health,” this law’s implementation has important implications for animals, especially through their definition as “polluters.” The chapter investigates how animals are made present in bathing waters, extending beyond bodily presence around beaches to becoming traces—as techniques are developed to monitor bacterial sources that involve animals topographically distant to the sea. Such new technological capacities reveal how animals’ unruly lives can complicate the identification of their activities, surfacing issues of dispersal and fluidity. The chapter also discusses how this law both assumes and undermines other vital materialities such as wind, sun, and water. Although the Directive is open to engaging with non-human actants’ actions, its associated management strategies tend to do so selectively. The chapter argues that emergent literature on “lively legalities” should not limit its attention to animal-focused legislation, and should explore unintended and unexpected implications and manifestations of regulatory forms for nonhuman others.

Country Life: Agricultural Technologies and the Emergence of New Rural Subjectivities

Geography Compass, Jun 6, 2015

Rural areas have long been spaces of technological experimentation, development and resistance. I... more Rural areas have long been spaces of technological experimentation, development and resistance. In the UK, this is especially true in the post-second world war era of productivist food regimes, characterised by moves to intensification. The technologies that have developed have variously aimed to increase yields, automate previously manual tasks, and create new forms of life. This review focuses on the relationships between agricultural technologies and rural lives. While there has been considerable media emphasis on the material modification, and creation, of new rural lives through emerging genetic technologies, the review highlights the role of technologies in co-producing new rural subjectivities. It does this through exploring relationships between agricultural technologies and gender, changing approaches to understanding and intervening in animal lives, and how automation shifts responsibility for productive work on farms. In each of these instances, even ostensibly mundane technologies can significantly affect what it is to be a farmer, a farm advisor or a farm animal. However, the review cautions against technological determinism, drawing on recent work from Science and Technology Studies to show that technologies do not simply reconfigure lives but are themselves transformed by the actors and activities with which they are connected. The review ends by suggesting avenues for future research.

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Governance of the seas: A more-than-human perspective on the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery

Waterworlds: Human Geographies of the Oceans (ed. Anderson, J. M. and Peters, K.), Jan 2014

Editorial: Animals, technologies and people in rural spaces: Introduction to a special issue on emerging geographies of animal–technology co-productions

Journal of Rural Studies, Jan 10, 2014

Animals, technologies and people in rural spaces: Introduction to a special issue on emerging geo... more Animals, technologies and people in rural spaces: Introduction to a special issue on emerging geographies of animaletechnology co-productions single, identifiable, factual disease, he demonstrates how it is enacted multiply. So, rather than exploring impacts of the disease, Mather begins by asking 'how it is we know things (like infectious diseases) before we decide what to do about them'. There is, in other words, no single, real version of avian influenza. While

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Intervention: The Impact Agenda and Human Geography in UK Higher Education

by Chris Bear and Rebecca Sandover

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Intervention: The Impact Agenda and Human Geography in UK Higher Education Published under Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works

by Rebecca Sandover and Chris Bear

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Posthumanism and geography

The Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2024

More-Than-Human Research Methodologies

Key Methods in Geography, 2023

Geography and Posthumanism

by Mara Miele and Chris Bear

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, May 1, 2022

What are the priority questions for digital agriculture?

by Julie Ingram, Chris Bear, and Caitlin Hafferty

Land Use Policy, 2022

Exploring the human–animal–technology nexus: power relations and divergent conduct

A research agenda for animal geographies, 2021

Making insects tick: Responsibility, attentiveness and care in edible insect farming

Environment and Planning E, 2020

Approaching Insect Death: Understandings and Practices of the UK’s Edible Insect Farmers

Society and Animals, 2019

The ocean exceeded: Fish, flows and forces

Dialogues in Human Geography, 2019

Beyond resistance: Geographies of divergent more-than-human conduct in robotic milking

Geoforum, 2019

Redistributing Labour in Automated Milking Systems and the More-Than-Human (Co)Production of Dairy Farming

Sage Handbook of Nature, Apr 12, 2018

Assembling ocean life: More-than-human entanglements in the Blue Economy

Dialogues in Human Geography, Mar 28, 2017

Socio-nature

International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, 2017

Bovine and human becomings in histories of dairy technologies: robotic milking systems and remaking animal and human subjectivity

British Journal of the History of Science: Themes, Mar 2, 2017

Visualizing Human-Animal-Technology Relations: Field Notes, Still Photography, and Digital Video on the Robotic Dairy Farm

by Chris Bear and Lewis Holloway

Society and Animals, Jun 12, 2017

Tracing Bacterial Legalities: The Fluid Ecologies of the European Union’s Bathing Water Directive

Country Life: Agricultural Technologies and the Emergence of New Rural Subjectivities

Geography Compass, Jun 6, 2015

Download

Governance of the seas: A more-than-human perspective on the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery

Waterworlds: Human Geographies of the Oceans (ed. Anderson, J. M. and Peters, K.), Jan 2014

Editorial: Animals, technologies and people in rural spaces: Introduction to a special issue on emerging geographies of animal–technology co-productions

Journal of Rural Studies, Jan 10, 2014

Download

Intervention: The Impact Agenda and Human Geography in UK Higher Education

by Chris Bear and Rebecca Sandover

Download

Intervention: The Impact Agenda and Human Geography in UK Higher Education Published under Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works

by Rebecca Sandover and Chris Bear

Download

Negotiating robotic milking: management, welfare and experimentation on dairy farms

Robotic milking technologies are becoming increasingly important in UK dairy farming, as well as ... more Robotic milking technologies are becoming increasingly important in UK dairy farming, as well as elsewhere in Europe and in North America. Robotic milking machines milk cows automatically at any time, without the need for human workers to be present. Cows choose when to be milked, enter the robot, are milked and return to the herd. This seminar reports on recent ESRC-funded research that has explored how the introduction of robots may change the ways dairy farmers manage their farms and businesses, and might affect the farmer-cow relationship. The research drew on semi-structured interviews with robot manufacturers, dairy farmers, vets and farm advisers. The seminar will look at three central themes from the research: 1. How technologies change farm practices. 2. How farmers learn and make decisions 3. Health, welfare and agricultural ethics. In particular, the seminar focuses on how farmers negotiate the new technologies in their everyday practices, and on how robots might be seen as redefining dairy farming.

From 'background noise' to 'polluters': siting and tracing animals in the fluid ecologies of the EU Bathing Water Directive

This paper explores the implications of the European Union’s (EU) 2006 Bathing Water Directive. T... more This paper explores the implications of the European Union’s (EU) 2006 Bathing Water Directive. This legislation, to be fully implemented by 2016, requires EU Member States to monitor bathing waters for levels of fecal bacteria, to engender management strategies, and to communicate this information to the public. While designed to benefit and “protect human health,” this law’s implementation has important implications for animals, especially through their definition as “polluters.” The paper investigates how animals are made present in bathing waters, extending beyond their bodily presence on beaches and piers to becoming traces—as new techniques are developed to monitor the bacterial sources that involve animals topographically distant to the sea. Such new technological capacities reveal how the unruly lives of animals can complicate the identification of their activities, surfacing issues of dispersal and fluidity. The paper also extends to discuss how this law both assumes and undermines other vital materialities such as wind, sun, and water. The paper argues that although the Directive is open to engaging with the actions of non-human actants, its management strategies tend to do so very selectively. Such strategies demonstrate a willingness to control or eradicate certain animals in an effort to improve the “quality” of waters, but tend to ignore other forces. The paper ends by discussing the implications of this analysis for conceptualizing a lively “politics of blame” (Bennett 2005).

Reconfiguring users in automated farming: cows, farmers and robotic milking

by Chris Bear and Lewis Holloway

Robotic milking and the emergent relational geographies of livestock agriculture

This paper explores the co-constitutive practices associated with robotic milking technologies. I... more This paper explores the co-constitutive practices associated with robotic milking technologies. Introduced commercially in 1992, they have since become especially prominent in Northern Europe and the USA. Robots are sold with the promise of improved dairy cow welfare and productivity, reduced labour costs and the liberation of farmers and farm workers from the routines of conventional milking: the machines milk cows individually, at any time of a cow's choosing, without direct human involvement or presence. In this paper, we investigate the new modes of relating that emerge through the introduction of these new technologies. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with UK dairy farmers, alongside participant observation around robotic milking practices, we examine the ways in which milking practices are negotiated between cows, farmers and robots. Friction may develop here when cows struggle to adapt, robots find some cows more appropriate for their technologies than others, and farmers are confronted by new forms of information that challenge their understandings of animal welfare. The supposed benefits of robotic technology may as a result be contested, as unanticipated consequences become evident. Through this study, we critique the tendency of geographers to focus on relationships between humans and animals, or humans and technologies, foregrounding instead the complex material-semiotic assemblages that involve not only farmers, cows and robots, but politics and affects of care, productivity and disciplinary tactics. We highlight the different enactments of 'cow' and farmer that emerge and consider the implications of these new relationships for understandings of farm animal welfare.