The School of Humanities and Languages invite you to A deference to preference: The metabolic relations of pest control in Aotearoa – a talk with Dr Courtney Addison of Victoria University, Wellington New Zealand.
Abstract
The ngāhere (forests) of Aotearoa New Zealand are busy with life, and most of it is eating something. A vast eradication effort now aims to eliminate three varieties of introduced pests, whose status as national problem is secured in terms of their gustatory excesses. Indeed, the question of who eats who and with what consequence is at the heart of conservation here. More than simply ‘matter out of place’, the pest as eater emerges as a key protagonist in Aotearoa’s multispecies politics. These gustatory logics now inform pest control research and practice, which relies largely on toxins that target species need to eat, or traps that they need to interact with, usually attracted by an edible lure. Accordingly, ‘pest tech’ harnesses animal appetites through timing (e.g. to coincide with food scarcity) and attention to animal preferences (e.g. for differently scented lures). This talk centres on the metabolic relations that both order Aotearoa’s multispecies worlds, and provide grounds for local pest control efforts. Attending to one particular poison, 1080, I explore how practices of food, feeding and eating widen and complicate the attachments between pests, people, and the places they share.
Dr Courtney Addison is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand. Situated between STS and anthropology, her current research explores the multispecies politics of poison use and the innovation turn in New Zealand conservation. She is one of the editors of Science, Technology, & Human Values.
