Event report on “Multispecies Injustice: Race and Animal Advocacy in Southeast Asia and South Africa”
On February 7, The Center for Asian Studies co-sponsored the visit of Dr. Juno Salazar Parreñas. Parreñas is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University and the author of the multi-award winningbook Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke University Press 2018). Her presentation integrated insights from this research on non-human primates in rehabilitation centers in Malaysia with preliminary findings from a new project on retired circus animals on private preserves in South Africa. By connecting these settings, she was able to ask how post-colonial categories of racial difference influence human conceptions of animal vulnerability and human obligations for conservation and advocacy. While global patterns of inequality and resource extraction have undisputedly displaced animal populations, Dr. Parreñas found that the distinct historical and racial processes in these disparate settings have produced very different, although still tragic, outcomes.