Subtopic Deep Dive
Affect and Emotion in Human-Animal Spaces
Research Guide
What is Affect and Emotion in Human-Animal Spaces?
Affect and Emotion in Human-Animal Spaces examines how emotions and affects shape spatial practices between humans and animals in everyday geographies, including more-than-human emotional landscapes and affective atmospheres in shared environments.
This subtopic integrates cultural geography with more-than-human theories to analyze interspecies emotional dynamics (Whatmore, 2006; 1147 citations). Key works explore affective practices in multispecies contexts and materialist assemblages (van Dooren et al., 2016; 695 citations; Wetherell, 2013; 403 citations). Over 20 papers from the provided lists address these themes since 2006.
Why It Matters
Affect and emotion studies reveal emotional underpinnings of interspecies encounters, informing urban planning for pet-friendly spaces and rural conservation policies (Whatmore, 2006). They highlight affective atmospheres in human-animal shared environments, influencing biodiversity protection strategies amid militarized conservation (Duffy, 2014; 371 citations). Wetherell's affective/discursive practices framework (2013) applies to designing empathetic wildlife corridors, reducing human-animal conflicts in expanding cities.
Key Research Challenges
Integrating Affect Theory
Linking abstract affect concepts to concrete human-animal spatial practices remains difficult due to affect's pre-discursive nature (Wetherell, 2013). Cultural geographers struggle to operationalize excess affect in empirical studies of more-than-human worlds (Whatmore, 2006). Multispecies methods demand new ethnographic tools for non-human emotions.
Measuring More-Than-Human Emotions
Quantifying emotions in animals and hybrid spaces challenges traditional geographic methods (van Dooren et al., 2016). Assemblage thinking requires rethinking agency in emotional landscapes without anthropocentric bias (Müller, 2015; 669 citations). Field studies face ethical issues in observing interspecies affective bonds.
Scaling Affective Atmospheres
Extrapolating micro-level emotional encounters to macro urban-rural planning is problematic (Wylie, 2009; 327 citations). Militarized conservation introduces conflicting emotions like fear in human-animal spaces (Duffy, 2014). Temporal mediation of doubts complicates long-term affective mapping (Bear, 2014; 376 citations).
Essential Papers
Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world
Sarah Whatmore · 2006 · Cultural Geographies · 1.1K citations
This paper surveys the return to materialist concerns in the work of a new generation of cultural geographers informed by their engagements with science and technology studies and performance studi...
Multispecies Studies
Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, Ursula Münster · 2016 · Environmental Humanities · 695 citations
Scholars in the humanities and social sciences are experimenting with novel ways of engaging with worlds around us. Passionate immersion in the lives of fungi, microorganisms, animals, and plants i...
Assemblages and Actor‐networks: Rethinking Socio‐material Power, Politics and Space
Martín Müller · 2015 · Geography Compass · 669 citations
Abstract Assemblage thinking and actor‐network theory (ANT) have been at the forefront of a paradigm shift that sees space and agency as the result of associating humans and non‐humans to form prec...
Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies
Heather Davis, Étienne Turpin · 2015 · Open Humanities Press eBooks · 616 citations
Taking as its premise that the proposed geologic epoch of the Anthropocene is necessarily an aesthetic event, this book explores the relationship between contemporary art and knowledge production i...
Affect and discourse – What’s the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice
Margaret Wetherell · 2013 · Subjectivity · 403 citations
Doubt, conflict, mediation: the anthropology of modern time
Laura Bear · 2014 · Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 376 citations
In this introduction, I argue that in spite of recent discussions of global and neoliberal time, the anthropology of modern time remains under‐explored. Modern time here is understood to be a compl...
Assemblage thinking and actor‐network theory: conjunctions, disjunctions, cross‐fertilisations
Martín Müller, Carolin Schurr · 2016 · Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers · 376 citations
This paper shows that assemblage thinking and actor‐network theory (ANT) have much more to gain from each other than debate has so far conceded. Exploring the conjunctions and disjunctions between ...
Reading Guide
Foundational Papers
Start with Whatmore (2006; 1147 citations) for materialist more-than-human geography, then Wetherell (2013) for affect-discourse integration, building basis for emotional spatial analysis.
Recent Advances
Study van Dooren et al. (2016; 695 citations) for multispecies methods and Müller (2015; 669 citations) for assemblage applications to affective power in animal spaces.
Core Methods
Core techniques: actor-network theory (Müller & Schurr, 2016), passionate multispecies immersion (van Dooren et al., 2016), and absence-based landscape phenomenology (Wylie, 2009).
How PapersFlow Helps You Research Affect and Emotion in Human-Animal Spaces
Discover & Search
Research Agent uses searchPapers and exaSearch to find affect-focused papers in human-animal geographies, revealing clusters via citationGraph around Whatmore (2006). findSimilarPapers expands from van Dooren et al. (2016) to multispecies emotion studies, surfacing 50+ related works from 250M+ OpenAlex papers.
Analyze & Verify
Analysis Agent applies readPaperContent to parse Whatmore (2006) abstracts for materialist affect terms, then verifyResponse with CoVe checks claims against Duffy (2014). runPythonAnalysis with pandas quantifies citation trends in emotional geography papers; GRADE grading scores evidence strength in Wetherell (2013) affective practices.
Synthesize & Write
Synthesis Agent detects gaps in affect measurement across assemblages (Müller, 2015), flagging contradictions in militarized emotion spaces (Duffy, 2014). Writing Agent uses latexEditText and latexSyncCitations to draft sections citing van Dooren et al. (2016), with latexCompile producing polished manuscripts and exportMermaid visualizing affective networks.
Use Cases
"Run statistical analysis on citation growth of affect papers in human-animal geographies since 2006."
Research Agent → searchPapers(Whatmore 2006) → Analysis Agent → runPythonAnalysis(pandas plot citations) → matplotlib graph of 1147+ citation trends.
"Draft LaTeX review on emotional atmospheres in multispecies urban spaces."
Synthesis Agent → gap detection(van Dooren 2016) → Writing Agent → latexEditText(draft) → latexSyncCitations(20 papers) → latexCompile(PDF output).
"Find GitHub repos analyzing affect data from human-animal interaction studies."
Research Agent → paperExtractUrls(Wylie 2009) → Code Discovery → paperFindGithubRepo → githubRepoInspect(ethnographic emotion datasets).
Automated Workflows
Deep Research workflow conducts systematic reviews of 50+ affect papers, chaining searchPapers → citationGraph → GRADE reports on Whatmore (2006) influences. DeepScan's 7-step analysis verifies emotional claims in Duffy (2014) with CoVe checkpoints and runPythonAnalysis on conflict data. Theorizer generates hypotheses on affective assemblages from Müller (2015) and Wetherell (2013).
Frequently Asked Questions
What defines Affect and Emotion in Human-Animal Spaces?
It examines how emotions and affects shape spatial practices between humans and animals in everyday geographies, per Whatmore (2006).
What methods dominate this subtopic?
Methods include assemblage thinking (Müller, 2015), multispecies immersion (van Dooren et al., 2016), and affective/discursive practice analysis (Wetherell, 2013).
Which are the key papers?
Foundational: Whatmore (2006; 1147 citations), Wetherell (2013; 403 citations); recent: van Dooren et al. (2016; 695 citations), Müller (2015; 669 citations).
What open problems exist?
Challenges include measuring non-human emotions empirically and scaling affective atmospheres to policy, as noted in Duffy (2014) and Bear (2014).
Research Geographies of human-animal interactions with AI
PapersFlow provides specialized AI tools for Social Sciences researchers. Here are the most relevant for this topic:
Systematic Review
AI-powered evidence synthesis with documented search strategies
AI Literature Review
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Deep Research Reports
Multi-source evidence synthesis with counter-evidence
Find Disagreement
Discover conflicting findings and counter-evidence
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