Animal Traffic

“This is an immensely important book for anybody concerned with capitalist natures and traffics in the nonhuman. Combining scrupulous fieldwork with stunning theorizations of ‘lively capital’, Collard adapts Marxist and feminist thought to the double task of analyzing and contesting a global trade in exotic pets. By following how wild-caught species get made into thinglike forms of capital, this book spurs a profound rethinking of commodified and noncommodified life, fetishism, enclosure, and social-ecological reproduction.” — Nicole Shukin, author of Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times

“Animal Traffic brings the spaces and circuits of the exotic pet trade to life, casting light on an important aspect of defaunation in the tropics and an underappreciated way that animals are being commodified. Rosemary-Claire Collard presents rich ethnographic accounts of key sites of the exotic pet trade and weaves these together with a compelling discussion of the values, practices, and complications involved in reducing wild animals to ‘lively capital’ as well as the great barriers to decommodifying animals after their lives have been wrested from them. This is a moving and beautifully written book and a major contribution to the fields of critical animal studies, political ecology, and biodiversity conservation.” — Tony Weis, author of The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock