Elephants on the Move: Spatial Formations of Wildlife Exchange

In this paper we explore tensions between the notions and spaces of social agency mobilised in actant network theory and feminist science studies by focusing on their implications for the status and treatment of nonhuman animals, in this case the African elephant. The notion of a spatial formation of wildlife exchange (SFWE) is deployed to trace the diverse modalities and spatialities of social networks in which such creatures are caught up and the ways in which these practical orderings work through the bodies of elephants, both in the sense of their energies being variously transduced and of their experiences being reconfigured in the process. These themes are pursued through two contemporary global networks of wildlife conservation/science. The first, characterised as a mode of ordering of foresight, is a network concerned with ‘captive breeding’ and configured through the coding and exchange of computerised information on the lineages and breeding properties of animals held in zoological collections worldwide. The second, characterised as a mode of ordering of authenticity, is a network concerned with ‘in-situ’ conservation projects and configured through the recruitment of paying volunteers, corporate donors, and field scientists to a global programme of research expeditions. Our account traces three simultaneous moments in the patterning of elephants in each network—as virtual bodies, as bodies in place, and as living spaces.