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Summary
The Foucauldian notions of biopower and biopolitics concern themselves with the intersection of life and politics through strategies for management of populations. These ideas have been applied to cities in the field of urban biopolitics in which various urban processes such as planning, sanitation and transport are considered to be interventions for the improvement of the lives of the city’s inhabitants. However, despite their worldwide presence in cities, nonhuman populations are rarely included in such biopolitical analyses of cities, neither as urban populations, nor as significant factors in the improvement or degradation of human wellbeing. In this thesis, I bring together this field of urban biopolitics with human-animal studies to argue that urban biopolitics has an anthropocentric focus and should be extended to include urban animals. By looking at crows in Tokyo and gulls in The Hague, I consider how urban avian pest management is a form of biopower over both human populations and bird populations. Using interviews with residents and municipal employees, surveys about birds, participant observation and source research, this research shows that in both cities, urban avian pest management is imbued with biopower over both human populations and bird populations. Although the decrease or displacement of urban avian pests may seem as mere interventions to improve human wellbeing by decreasing human-animal conflicts, crows and gulls are thought to benefit from this as well. Truth discourses regarding human-nature relations position them as forms of nature that, to some extent, suffer in urban environments. Thus, biopower prescribes residents and municipalities in both cities to cooperate and ensure the wellbeing of humans and of birds by limiting their reasons for presence in the city. Furthermore, the animal perspective in urban biopolitics here reveals that failure to meet biopower’s demands results in social differentiation as certain demographic groups receive disproportionate amounts of accusations about noncompliance to urban avian pest management. Essentially, human-animal studies may move the field of
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urban biopolitics further by extending its scope to include animals. While animals are perceived to be a threat to human wellbeing, such analyses may just as well reveal that truth discourses regarding animal wellbeing underly ostensibly human-centered biopolitical measures. Care for and harm to urban avian pests are thus entangled with each other when seemingly harsh interventions upon some are thought to benefit human and bird populations as a whole.
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Contents
Summary ... 1
1. Introduction ... 4
2. An animal perspective on urban biopolitics ... 6
3. Methodology ... 16
4. Urban avian pest management in Tokyo & The Hague ... 23
5. Good nature, bad nature ... 32
6. Managing populations ... 46
7. Subjectification and accusation ... 60
8. Conclusion ... 72
9. References ... 78
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1. Introduction
When walking through a typical residential neighborhood in Tokyo, it does not take long for one to notice blue nets hanging over garden fences or guardrails next to the sidewalk. Twice a week these nets are draped over heaps of garbage bags lined along the road to later be picked up by waste collectors. The idea behind these nets: to prevent large-billed crows from picking open garbage bags in their search for food. It is not uncommon to see an otherwise tidy lawn or sidewalk be cluttered with plastic packages, crumpled pieces of paper and the occasional leftovers after the large birds have taken their share. Nine-thousand kilometers across the globe, two species of gull are making their daily commute from the port of Rotterdam to the inner city of The Hague to scavenge for food in a similar manner. This behavior is being met with varying levels of hospitality or hostility, as shown by the reactions of humans living in the same urban centers. Across the globe, birds have become disruptive users of urban spaces, effectively creating a sub-category of urban avian pests.
Human-animal studies have long picked up on such examples of conflict through multispecies cohabitation. By considering animal populations and the myriad of ways in which their lives intersect with those of humans, this field aims to decenter the position of humans by asking critical questions. One field of scholarship that, as I will argue, undertheorizes the position of animals is that of urban biopolitics. Moving from the Foucauldian notions of biopower and biopolitics, the field of urban biopolitics considers urban processes such as planning, sanitation and transport to be interventions aimed at improving the population’s health and wellbeing. What urban biopolitics rarely acknowledges, however, is that animals may pose a threat to human vitality while animals could simultaneously be considered urban populations with lives worth fostering.
Using the example of urban avian pest management in Tokyo and The Hague, this research explores how care for human populations is connected with care for crows in Tokyo
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and gulls in The Hague by answering the question ‘How is urban avian pest management entwined with urban biopolitical discourses and practices regarding human-animal relations?’. By conducting interviews, distributing surveys, doing observations and reviewing documents in both cities, this thesis investigates how ostensibly harsh ideas about the reduction of crows and the displacement of gulls do not merely serve human wellbeing, but are simultaneously imbued with care for bird populations.
To adequately make sense of biopower underlying urban avian pest management and to explore its intricacies and outcomes in Tokyo and The Hague, this research answers three sub-questions. Because, as will later be explained, biopower must be based on biopolitical truth discourses, the first empirical chapter will deal with the question ‘What role do perceptions about the city and nature play in urban biopolitics?’. If humans have identified the need to manage urban avian pest populations, what does this say about their normative conceptions regarding nature and the city? The second empirical chapter explores how these truth discourses are translated into strategies for intervention upon the health of human and animal populations by answering ‘How are human-nonhuman relations reflected in biopolitical urban avian pest management?’. Despite the countermeasures that are taken, crows and gulls have remained in Tokyo and The Hague, respectively. Clearly, urban avian pest management as biopower is not complete and thus the third and last empirical chapter explores who takes the blame for this. By answering ‘How do the processes of subjectification associated with urban avian pest management result in social differentiation?’, this chapter traces how accusations of noncompliance to waste disposal regulation lead to social differentiation as specific demographical groups are considered to be perpetuating problems for human and bird populations.
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2. An animal perspective on urban biopolitics
The aim of this research is to explore what an animal perspective adds to the field of urban biopolitics. A number of concepts must be properly defined before we can talk about urban avian pest management and biopolitics. In this theoretical framework, I will first lay out Michel Foucault’s thinking regarding biopolitics and biopower. Afterwards I shall present the field of urban biopolitics which gives biopolitics and biopower a spatial focus. By then turning to human-animal studies, I will argue for a broader urban biopolitics that considers the lives of more populations than merely humans. This effectively allows us to look at urban avian pest management and reveal truth discourses and power relations embedded therein, as well as additional effects of noncompliance to biopower by both humans and animals.
Biopolitics & biopower
In its simplest sense and as the word itself suggests, biopolitics is about relations between “life” and “politics” (Campbell & Sitze, 2013). For Michel Foucault, this intersection of life and politics referred to the role of the modern state “to ensure, sustain, and multiply life, to put this life in order” (Foucault, 1978, p. 138). He traces this historically, counterposing it to the sovereign power prevalent before the 18th century, in which the sovereign assumed the right to take life to perpetuate their own reign. The ability to take lives of potential enemies ensured the continuity of the sovereign’s rule. The sovereign effectively had the right to “take life or let live” (Foucault, 1978, p. 136, emphasis in original), but in biopolitics this was replaced by the “power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death” (p. 138). Fostering life through biopolitics “embrace[s] all the specific strategies and contestations over problematizations of collective human vitality, morbidity and mortality; over the forms of knowledge, regimes of authority and practices of intervention that are desirable, legitimate and efficacious” (Rabinow and Rose, 2006, pp. 196-197). Biopolitics concerns
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the underlying and normative conceptions about a population1, its health and well-being, and how to ensure its survival.
Biopolitics, thus, refers to a political rationality vis-à-vis a population’s health, but how does the concept of biopower fit in this? Although some authors use both terms seemingly interchangeably, my operationalization puts the difference between biopolitics and biopower in the form it takes. Biopolitics refers to the ideology or underlying motivation and is thus more abstract, whereas biopower refers to the actual exertion of power over life and can take multiple forms in social reality. This operationalization positions biopower as the real-world exertion and implementation of “forms of power aimed at supporting life” of a pre-defined population (Hannah, 2010, p. 1036). Biopower can take different forms and is built on a recognition that populations must be “administered, optimized and multiplied” through “precise controls and comprehensive regulations” (Foucault, 1978, p. 137). According to Foucault, the idea of biopower reflects a shift away from analyses of power as primarily repressive and negative that typically frame power’s effect as “tak[ing] the form of limit and lack” (Foucault, 1978, p. 83). Based on this operationalization, I would argue that biopolitics without the exertion of biopower is possible, but the reverse is not. When biopower is applied as concrete interventions, it is always based on biopolitics – normative conceptions about a population’s health. The difference is thus subtle, but it clarifies the ostensibly interchangeable use of these Foucauldian notions.
Analytically, approaching interventions into population health and well-being as biopower can reveal underlying power relations and normative biopolitical conceptions that otherwise may remain unquestioned. To identify these biopolitical conceptions, one has to recognize biopower – the application of biopolitics – and for this purpose Nikolas Rose and
1 Although this theoretical framework discusses management of populations, it is worth noting that Foucault
developed this strand of thinking along with disciplinary power which takes the individual body as site of subjectification
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Paul Rabinow propose “that the concept of biopower designates a plane of actuality that must include, at a minimum [three] elements” (2006, p. 197): first, truth discourses about the ‘vital’ character of living human beings disseminated by authorities considered competent to speak that truth. The second essential element of biopower involves concrete strategies for intervention upon collective existence in the name of life and health addressed to populations of a nation, society or pre-given community – including urban communities. Third, Rabinow & Rose propose that biopower must contain modes of subjectification, through which individuals are brought to work on themselves, under certain forms of authority, in relation to truth discourses, by means of practices of the self, in the name of their own life or health, that of their family or some other collectivity, or indeed in the name of the life or health of the population as a whole (p. 197).
For biopower to be exerted, there needs to be a clear, pre-defined population deemed worthy of fostering life. Defining the population and determining the best course of action regarding the population’s health is never value-free. Censuses are the main instrument through which urban populations are tracked and categorized, enabling biopower. Per definition, a census requires the notation of categories such as name, occupation, age, race, caste, ethnic background, et cetera but deciding which categories to tally is a political decision in itself. Numbers have become immensely important in this process, as calculations give way to knowledge which allows for management of vitality (Rose, 1991). A list of people and their characteristics does not always equate to a population fit for biopower. Often, populations are subjected to “dividing practices” (Foucault, 1982, p. 777), creating two groups of which each groups’ population is ‘situated in a milieu that could be as large as a metropolitan region or as small as a family’ (Rutherford & Rutherford, 2013, p. 415). In the most extreme cases, dividing practices frame a part of the urban population
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“normal” and another part as “pathological”, differentiating management accordingly (Rutland, 2015, p. 2) or even considering the pathological part as a threat to biopower.
Biopolitics thus entails normative ideas regarding a population and it’s health, and biopower refers to the means through which a population is managed towards this ideal. This research makes use of Rabinow & Rose’s model which delineates three specific elements of biopower that need to be present. They propose that biopower needs truth discourses regarding the health and wellbeing of a population, strategies for intervention towards this goal, and subjectification on the side of the population to alleviate institutions of the task of governing as the population would be self-governing. This thesis will adhere to Rabinow & Rose’s model of biopower in order to identify human-animal relations and surrounding processes and discourses. However, before doing so it is important to discuss how biopolitics and biopower operate on the urban scale by turning to the field of urban biopolitics.
Urban biopolitics
Expanding the discussion of biopower to the urban can be considered not only as a possibility, but, given the recent fragmentation of state power, a requirement if we want to talk about power in cities (Gandy, 2006, 498). Foucault’s conception of biopower and biopolitics mostly concerned a “state-administered rationality concerned with the health and wellbeing of national populations” (Hannah, 2010, p. 1039). This does not mean that Foucault did not think along lines of other scales than that of the nation-state; in fact he did recognize that particular geographies emerge on a variety of scales and that each geography is informed by other scales (Curtis, 2002). Still, it can be argued that such conceptions of the state as authoritative biopolitical center of “power-over have now taken a more marginal position” (Rose, 2001). Biopolitical programmes can thus be state-wide interventions
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covering a specific theme, but they can also take shape in a city’s government or a group of organized citizens in a neighborhood discussing garbage removal2.
If we consider biopolitics to concern the intersection of life and politics, it is only logical that the field of urban biopolitics predominantly applied this view to public health issues. Urban environments pose a variety of potential dangers to human health, such as infectious diseases (Brown, 2009), noise, (Stansfield et al., 2000), and air pollution (Schwela, 2000). Many municipalities have a public health department or related organization with the sole purpose of maintaining the health of urban populations by preventing disease. The elements of biopower are clear in the field of urban public health: scientific knowledge serves as a basis for interventions such as pre-emptive vaccinations, noise reduction, and limiting cars and heavy industry in residential areas. What is important to note here is that biopower of urban public health is highly dependent on ‘responsible citizenship’ (Howson, 1998, p. 235) in which residents ensure their own health but also that of their community or neighborhood by mobilizing other individuals to participate in health promotion strategies (Brown & Duncan, 2002, p. 366). Residents are expected to behave in prescribed ways and to regulate one another, ultimately to prevent outbreak of diseases by (re)producing a healthy environment.
A clear example of urban biopower can be found in Michael Brown’s description of Seattle’s campaign to fight venereal disease (2009). Seattle was coping with a particularly high number of venereal disease cases and to combat this they considered this disease to be both a biomedical one as well as a social one due to its sexually transmittable nature. Its venereal nature spawned differentiated interventions of a biomedical kind and a social kind
2 Of course, biopower may also be present in other institutions (e.g. neoliberal corporations, NGO’s,
religious organizations, etc.) but since these are generally not concerned with urban avian pest management they fall outside of the scope of this research.
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of which the latter were aimed at specific demographical groups that were considered to be ‘risky’. This categorization along lines of race, occupation, marital status and age, ‘guided policy and determined which bodies needed disciplining’ (Brown, 2009, 12), effectively forming a truth discourse about what groups are considered dangerous to the greater population. Because public health is largely administered by city or county governments in the United States (Brown, 2009, p. 23), this a clear example of urban biopolitics. The added value of a biopolitical perspective here lies in its ability to reveal political decision-making upon populations and the truth discourses on which these are based. In Seattle’s case, these truth discourses were structured along lines of social differentiation, stigmatizing particular groups and opening up further discussions in the field of urban political geography (Brown, 2009).
Urban planning may be less directly associated with biopower and biopolitics than public health and wellbeing issues, but there are strong linkages to be made. Biopolitics ‘seeks to understand the processes that shape human existence and devise interventions that both protect and improve this existence at the aggregate level (Rutland, 2015, p. 2). Because urban planning implicitly makes promises of a better life for an urban population, it is tightly linked to biopolitics (Rutland, 2015, p. 2). Historically, in the early nineteenth century a connection was made between the lives of humans and their socio-physical environments which developed into urban planning (Rabinow, 1995). Planning indirectly influences populations in what is believed to be the most optimal way, not through direct intervention upon human bodies but through spatial changes. However, a side note has to be made here because, as is characteristic of biopower, certain lives are deemed less important or deemed not part of the population at all, resulting in different planning practices or a lack thereof (Foucault, 2003, p. 256). These ideas led to many empirical studies on how an array of urban planning practices govern health of populations, such as sanitation (McFarlane, 2008),
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recreational spaces (Fusco, 2007) and housing (Legg, 2008). Thus, biopower is not only applied directly to populations, but also to the environments they inhibit.
The animal perspective
Biopower and biopolitics thus operate on urban scales through mechanisms in which governments aim to improve the health and wellbeing of their populations via practices such as sanitation, urban design, and planning. However, this field has a certain focus on human populations whereas cities are also sites where a significant amount of nonhuman populations reside (Elmqvist et al, 2008). If urban biopolitics is concerned with health, we should not turn a blind eye to cases in which animals are considered to be damaging or detrimental to human wellbeing. Simultaneously, animal populations are subjected to biopower themselves through population management or animal wellbeing practices. These animal populations are thus not to be ignored as they are an integral part of our social and political systems (Srinivasan, K. 2016). However, urban animals generally remain unseen and unacknowledged, both in academic fields such as urban biopolitics and in broader societal discourses. This marginalization of animals in urban settings often leads to their exclusion through practices imbued with anthropocentrism, such as urban planning (Houston et al., 2017). Animals are often marginalized by a human/animal dualism that positions them as not deserving of proper justice (Srinivasan, 2015, p. 300), nor consideration, in the case of urban biopolitics. This research thus aims to add an animal perspective to the field of urban biopolitics, arguing that urban animals may comprise of both a challenge to and subjects of urban biopower.
In the last decades, human-animal studies has developed into a well-established field presenting empirical cases and theoretical works to consider the role of animals in contemporary societies. Part of this field has deconstructed the dualism that positions nature
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– and animals – as something separate from social lives, and cities in particular. An analysis of Melbourne’s bats, for example, helps to reveal discourses positioning the city as antithetical to the wild (Thomson, 2007) while Singapore’s macaques show that animal transgression into the city blur these dualisms despite urban theory’s anthropocentric tensions (Yeo & Neo, 2010). These studies show that looking at the position animals hold in cities allows us to problematize taken-for-granted notions. The broader field of animal geographies similarly argues that thinking with animals creates a more radical politics that decenters the human and takes animals to be political actors through their agency (Buller, 2014). However, the power relations that both create and sustain the nature-city dualism and the marginalization of animals remain out of view.
As discussed before, biopolitics and biopower are effective at deconstructing power relations, so a biopolitical analysis may also help identify the (re)production of human-animal relations and conflicts. Foucault originally theorized biopolitics and biopower with human lives in mind, but biopolitics can equally be applied to populations of other sentient beings rather than only human populations (Hannah, 2010, p. 1044). A number of scholars have concerned themselves with how this takes shape, although a specific urban animal biopolitics remains absent. What the works on animal biopolitics have in common is that they apply Rabinow & Rose’s three elements of biopower to trace power relations between humans and animals and to identify truth discourses. The limited research done on animal biopower finds that pointing out truth discourses and strategies for intervention is a relatively straightforward practice, but the third element – that of subjectification – is more complex. One could argue that they are inherently incapable of internalizing motivations and values laid upon them by humans. To elaborate on the value of animal biopolitics and to address the problem of subjectification, I would like to discuss three works that consider human-animal relations as a form of biopower.
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Works on animal biopower have focused on numerous processes and phenomena, such as management of stray dogs or street dogs (Srinivasan, 2013), implementation of genetic technologies in cattle breeding (Holloway & Morris, 2012) and the global biodiversity census (Youatt, 2008). While these authors aptly managed to portray these practices as strategies for intervention based on truth discourses regarding the health and wellbeing of animals, all authors dealt with the issue of subjectification in a slightly different way. What all approaches have in common is that they position humans to have a significant role in the self-governing of animals. Recognizing that animals are inherently unable of internalizing the linguistic particularities of biopower that is being exerted onto them, these works emphasize the fact that subjectification in that sense is unnecessary. They call upon earlier works by Foucault that write about the production of self-governing subjects rather than subjects that self-govern through internalization of biopolitical norms. In this sense, Srinivasan shows that humans subjectify biopolitical norms through which they structure animal behavior, Holloway and Morris argue that animals become the embodiment of human subjectification (or resistance to it), and Youatt shows that animals become self-governing in the sense that they have the agency to act upon biopower, thereby restructuring it. For the sake of this research, I will follow a similar approach to Srinivasan’s in chapter 7 where I argue that animals unintentionally become self-governing subjects towards biopolitical objectives as a response to human subjectification and intervention. In essence, I propose that subjectification may just as well result from the intersection of biopower over human populations and biopower over animal populations.
To summarize, this research brings together the three theoretical fields of biopower, urban biopower and human-animal studies. The conceptual model that I am proposing considers that biopower in its urban applications can accurately trace and discuss processes of power over human populations in urban settings, but is thereby turning a blind eye to
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animal populations. To make up for this gap, I aim to expand this field by adding animal biopolitics, effectively bringing animals into view. Positioning the conceptual scheme in this manner sheds light on the way urban animals pose a challenge to human populations and can be framed as a threat to human wellbeing. An animal perspective on urban biopolitics can synchronously trace how animal populations become targeted by biopower themselves when they are brought into discourses about animal wellbeing. To show how human health and wellbeing intersect with animal health and wellbeing, I will consider the dynamics of all three elements of biopower proposed by Rabinow & Rose by looking at urban avian pest management in Tokyo and The Hague. Each empirical chapter discusses how each element ties in to the intersection of human and animal biopower. Before this, however, the next chapter outlines and justifies the methods that I applied and explains the case study locations in which I conducted fieldwork.
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3. Methodology
The aim of this research project is to explore how urban avian pest management intersects with urban biopolitical frameworks regarding human-animal relations. Answering this question required investigation from multiple perspectives and groups of actors and accordingly I applied a number of methods. I set out a survey, conducted interviews with municipal workers, ornithologists and other professionals concerned with animal wellbeing, conducted interviews with residents of Tokyo and The Hague, studied policy documents and publications and conducted some participant observation. In this methodology section, I explain how I selected my fieldwork locations, and provide detail on the choice of methods on how I put them into practice during my fieldwork as well as how they tie in to the sub-questions that this research answers.
The main research question that I set out to answer is ‘How is urban avian pest management entwined with urban biopolitical discourses and practices regarding human-animal relations?’ and to answer this I compared strategies for urban avian pest management in Tokyo, Japan and in The Hague, the Netherlands. To accurately employ comparative methods I aimed to find a starting point of similarities. In both cases there needed to be both an urban population of birds that are perceived to be pests, as well as specific strategies aimed at the management of these populations. Because Tokyo has been dealing with crow-related problems for many years and because one visit to Japan’s capital is enough to see that countermeasures have been taken, I selected Tokyo to be my first case study. Gulls in The Hague are causing very similar challenges to human wellbeing as crows are in Tokyo so I chose The Hague as my second case. Framing urban avian pest management as forms of biopower allowed me to put both cities on equal footing from where further differences in underlying politics and cultural values would reveal itself. Eventually and as will be shown in later chapters, the similarities between these cases of urban avian pest management
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were larger than differences as they both follow similar patterns of biopower over human and animal populations. I conducted fieldwork in Tokyo from September 2019 until January 2020, and I spent March until May 2020 conducting fieldwork in The Hague. A more elaborate description of fieldwork sites follows in the next chapter.
Given that biopower often creates a new category of ‘problematic persons’ who reject to subjectify biopower’s aims (Rose, 2007), I decided to look into potential inter-human conflicts arising from avian pest management by adding an additional comparative element. Expecting these tensions to be the most evident in urban areas that differ significantly from each other, I specifically analyzed avian pest management within two residential areas in both cities of which one is characterized by a low economic status and one by a high economic status. The result of this decision is that I conducted all fieldwork specifically in four areas: Adachi and Bunkyo in Tokyo, and Laak and Scheveningen in The Hague. Further descriptions of these areas can be found in the next chapter while appendix 1 offers a more elaborate explanation of case selection using ArcMap.
Methods
The sub-questions that aim to contribute to answering the main research question all follow the conceptual model outlined in the theoretical framework, and for that reason the applied methods followed suit. Most methods contributed to multiple sub-questions, although some methods have proven to be more relevant to specific questions. Despite this overlap, this section uses each sub-question to introduce my main research methods of interviews, surveys, policy document research and participant observation and how each method connects with the sub-questions.
The first research question relates to Rabinow & Rose’s first element of biopower, that of truth courses upon the health and wellbeing of a population. To determine whether the
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presumed species, crows and gulls, were indeed perceived to be pests, I created and distributed a survey among residents of selected areas. The questions on this survey (of which a full list can be found in appendix 2) asked the respondent what birds they regularly see in their daily lives, as well as whether they are ever bothered by any of those. The following questions asked what type of bird-related problems they are experiencing and the frequency in which this happened. To move beyond this confirmation or refutation of crows and gulls as pest species, the questions thereafter concerned avian pest management and asked whose responsibility it is to manage bird populations, if any. The survey results provided me with a sense of how crows and gulls are perceived and to what extent truth claims are made about their presence in cities. In Tokyo, 129 people filled in my survey in Tokyo and in The Hague, 124 people filled in the survey.
Answering the second sub-question, asking how truth discourses are translated into biopower through urban avian pest management, was mainly done through elite interviews. This question moves beyond understandings and perceptions about the city and animals into a more tangible sphere with interventions upon the health and wellbeing of populations. Here, conducting interviews with experts was important for my research in order to thoroughly understand crows and gulls and to obtain more factual knowledge about their presence and, most of all, their management in Tokyo and The Hague. For this purpose I conducted semi-structured elite interviews with two main categories of interviewees (see Table 1 for overview and appendix 3 for topic list). The first category of experts on birds includes biologists, ornithologists, ecologists and others who can be considered an authority when it comes to bird behavior and ecology. The questions that I asked experts of this category were mainly centered around bird behavior, although I also asked this group questions regarding human-animal relations and the ethical dimension of urban animal management. The second group of experts consists of municipal workers. This group
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included those working at any municipal organization on either the city level or sub-area level (e.g. Tokyo Municipal Government, or Laak Quarter Office). During these interviews, I asked about the actual state of policy in order to get a better sense of how urban avian pest management was done and why, based on the municipality’s perspective. There were two interviews that I had trouble categorizing as these were neither municipal workers nor experts on bird behavior but rather people who professionally aim for the betterment of animal lives. Experts on birds Municipal workers Animal wellbeing Total per case Tokyo 4 9 0 13 The Hague 3 4 2 9
Table 1: Number of experts interviewed per category and per case study.
The third and last sub-question concerns processes of subjectification regarding urban avian pest management and how this leads to social differentiation. Subjectification entails the internalization of biopower on the side of the population, and thus it was necessary to get an in-depth view into how residents of Tokyo and The Hague acted upon biopower. For this purpose, I could rely on the surveys in which residents could leave behind their contact information if they were prepared to do an in-depth interview. In Tokyo, 27 respondents agreed to a follow-up interview of which 5 interviews could actually take place. In The Hague, 36 were willing to do a follow-up interview of which 20 interviews were conducted (see Table 2 for overview). Apart from this, I gathered interviewees through snowball sampling and by making posts on Facebook groups dedicated to the areas in which I was conducting fieldwork. Similar to the elite interviews, the interviews were semi-structured and followed a similar topic list related to urban avian pests, their management, and underlying ideas regarding cities and nature (see appendix 3). Conversations with
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residents could often build upon their answers to the survey but had to move beyond those to reveal patterns of non-subjectification as this third sub-question relates to social differentiation.
Tokyo The Hague
High economic status area 4 9
Low economic status area 1 11
Total interviews per case 5 20
Table 2: Number of residents interviewed per high- or low economic status area per case.
All three sub-questions were thus predominantly answered using surveys and interviews with residents and elite interviews with experts on birds and municipal employees. However, two more methods proved useful to strengthen the survey and interviews. Firstly, I conducted a source analysis on policy documents and digital and physical publications by the government. Doing so allowed me to get a preliminary idea of whether the claims made by residents were considered serious enough to be translated into policy and practice on municipal levels. Additionally, these sources added onto elite interviews in the sense that they could provide me with numbers and statistics that may have not come up during interviews, or these sources added information that experts simply were not familiar with. The second added method was that of participant observation. In Tokyo, I visited fieldwork sites a number of times to take pictures or observe crows or signs of anti-crow measures. Apart from this, I could not join municipal workers, animal wellbeing activists or other individuals who somehow relate to urban avian pest management because the language barrier was far too great. There was no such language barrier in The Hague, but the COVID-19 outbreak prevented me from participating in activities related to urban avian pest management. However, I gathered respondents to my survey by delivering flyers door-to-door, and I made sure to use this time in The Hague to observe and take pictures. In the end,
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these observation sessions in both cities provided me with substantial data as I could effectively observe pest management interventions myself, as well as observe bird behavior. This allowed me to rely less on subjective opinions and claims made by interviewees and gain a more objective view of the situation that I have researched.
Reflection on methods
Within both fieldwork cases, there was certainly a response bias noticeable as certain groups were far more likely to respond to the survey or interviews than other groups. In Tokyo, nearly all residents whom I interviewed responded to the survey partly because they either were familiar with research in some way (e.g. as students or academics), or because they had a certain link with the English language or with the Netherlands. In both Tokyo and The Hague, it was more difficult to find survey respondents and interviewees in the lower socio-economic region. This resulted in a more in-depth picture of Bunkyo and Scheveningen than of Adachi and Laak. A similar gap in understanding urban avian pest management in Tokyo emerged due to the low amount of interviews I was able to conduct. Because I merely interviewed five residents there, I gained a more complete understanding of The Hague’s urban avian pest situation than that of Tokyo. Whereas I achieved theoretical saturation in The Hague, the information I gained from Tokyo’s interviewees was useful but incomplete due to the smaller number of interviews. The most influential response bias comes from the lack of survey respondents and interviewees who do dispose of their household waste improperly (or at least admit to doing so). Many interviewees mentioned certain groups and individuals who did not take responsibility for the cleanliness of their neighborhood and were thus labeled as slightly problematic. I did not reach these people themselves and thus my data is rather one-sided and speculative regarding the reasoning and motivation behind noncompliance.
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During both fieldwork cases there were sizeable challenges to overcome. My mastery of the Japanese language is lacking and thus a large section of my fieldwork was highly dependent on finding a translator. However, I was able to find two interpreters that were able to accompany me to interviews and translate survey texts and emails for me. Both translators spoke Japanese as their mother tongue and were raised in Japan, making them more capable of adding nuance and behavioral norms that I might not have been familiar with had I conducted the interviews. Finding translators meant I did not have to make significant alterations to my research design and continue fieldwork as planned. In The Hague, the COVID-19 outbreak caused the Netherlands to go into ‘intelligent lockdown’, preventing me from conducting face-to-face interviews and conducting participant observation. Although this may have influenced my findings slightly as face-to-face contact brings along benefits (e.g. more thorough interview techniques, building a better connection), conducting interviews via telephone and internet-based conversational software worked turned out to be a valid way to organize and record interviews.
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4. Urban avian pest management in Tokyo & The Hague
The term urban avian pest management implies the existence of at least two parties; avian pests and a certain entity which manages them within an urban context. Before bringing together the conceptual model of biopower with empirical findings, this chapter discusses the urban contexts, the managing entities, and the targeted avian pests for both Tokyo and The Hague. The section thereafter will build upon this foundation by outlining the state of urban avian pest populations and the forms in which they pose a threat to human wellbeing. Providing this context allows for the empirical chapters thereafter to more effectively build upon the situation as established in this chapter.
Tokyo
The governmental structure of Japan’s capital city is dependent on multiple governmental organizations operating on different scales. This may be attributed to Tokyo’s large population; the population within the city proper was estimated to be 13.5 million inhabitants in 2015 (Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 2015). The overarching administrative body is Tokyo Metropolitan Government (abbreviated: TMG). This governmental organization is concerned with all matters regarding Tokyo-to – the prefecture or province – and its residents. Since the TMG is the overarching administrative body of Tokyo, it is mainly concerned with “the administrative responsibilities of a “city,” such as water supply and sewerage services, and firefighting in order to ensure the provision of uniform, efficient services” (Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 2020). Tokyo is essentially an agglomeration of municipalities so it is the municipal governments of these municipalities (often referred to as wards) that hold responsibility for operational tasks such as welfare, education and housing. There are, however, twenty-three wards that hold a special status as they used to be included in the pre-war administrative city borders. Each ward in this Tokyo 23 Ward area is mostly regulated by their municipal government, although Tokyo Metropolitan
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Government has some additional responsibilities towards the wards in this zone. For example, although waste management has become the responsibility of wards themselves, TMG is in charge of Tokyo-wide waste management regulation and incineration plants. Figure 1 shows the Tokyo 23 Ward area in which Bunkyo and Adachi, the wards in which I conducted fieldwork, are highlighted in light blue and light green respectively.
Bunkyo
Bunkyo lies just to the north of the symbolic heart of the city, Chiyoda-ku. It houses Japan’s most prestigious university, Tokyo University, and Tokyo Dome, the baseball stadium and event venue. Apart from this, Bunkyo does not have any world-famous neighborhoods or landmarks. In fact, apart from a high number of universities and offices, Bunkyo does not offer many attractions. Nonetheless, its centrality in Tokyo makes it an attractive ward to live in. Its popularity is reflected in the taxable income per household, which is 13 percent higher than the average of the 23 ward area (Ministry of Internal Affairs and
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Communications, 2015). Similarly, the built environment and streets in Bunkyo seem to be in good physical state as street markings and houses are mostly physically intact. The streets in this ward are bustling with students, salarymen and shoppers as the day population increases with 57 percent compared to its general population (219.724 inhabitants in 2015).
Adachi
At the border of both the 23 ward area as well as the overarching prefecture lies Adachi, a ward separated by the Arakawa river in the south. Ranked the lowest out of all 23 wards in income and the highest in unemployment, Adachi has to deal with preconceptions regarding its low income and remoteness. Although Adachi is a very large ward surface-wise, it mainly serves a residential purpose which can be seen by the decrease in the day population as the population drops from 670.122 to 608.968 people during the day (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2015). The residential houses in Adachi are generally about two to three stories high, giving it a very low-rise look when seen from a distance. The contrast with other wards in which buildings tend to be much higher is striking as the low morphology gives off the sense of a village rather than a megalopolis.
Crows
In the last decades, Tokyo has increasingly become home to the large-billed crow (corvus
macrorhynchos) as 90% of the crow population in Japan now resides in cities according to
Figure 2: Bunkyo street in Honkomagome. Source: Wikipedia “本駒込”
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an ornithologist that I spoke. In cities, these monogamous birds find mates and together they choose a territory to defend as it provides them with food and nesting opportunities (Matsubara, 2007). By feeding on anthropogenic food scraps hidden among discarded household waste the large-billed crow has proven itself to be an excellent urban adapter (Kurosawa et al., 2003). Although they commute to a communal roost daily to sleep with other crows, they start nesting in their territory in March and April where they rear their young until they have developed wings and are able to fly themselves (Matsubara, 2007). The new generation of crows begins this cycle when they are approximately two years of age (Kurosawa & Matsuda, 2000). Tokyo provides plenty of territory, nesting opportunities, and safety from predators, making it a suitable environment for the large-billed crow population.
The situation in Tokyo regarding crows has changed much over the past 25 years. Whereas there was an estimated 8.700 crows in Tokyo in 1985, this number skyrocketed to an estimated 36.400 in 2001 (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Environment, 2020) because the garbage collection system switched to transparent bags as opposed to black garbage bags (Ueta et
al., 2003). Because crows could now see the contents of closed garbage bags, they moved into the city in great numbers as the garbage could sustain the crow population for a significant part. When
crows spot a suitable garbage bag, they attempt to rip it open and rummage through it in search for food scraps. In this process, they make noise, drop fecal matter, and occasionally
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attack humans during breeding season. When crows finish feeding, they leave behind all kinds of waste spread out over the street. With countermeasures that will be elaborated on in the next chapter, TMG has successfully reduced Tokyo’s crow population to an estimated 8.800 crows which is close to the crow population of 1985.
The Hague
The organizational structure of The Hague follows a similar pattern as that of Tokyo in its fragmented management. The municipality of The Hague serves as an overarching organization while the eight quarters in which the city is subdivided deal with day-to-day practicalities. Geographically, The Hague lies on the west coast of the Netherlands and is also an agglomeration of a number of smaller cities. The towns located in the elevated dune area were originally known as ‘the sand’ whereas the lower areas were referred to as ‘the peat’. These areas are associated with high and low-income, respectively, as historically the wealthier populations occupied the higher regions of the city, which were safer from potential flooding. Although flooding is no longer a threat, housing in the lower areas remains more affordable and the demographic characteristics of the lower quarters reflects this. Organizationally, the government of The Hague recognizes the heterogeneity of their population and, to provide better services according for their population they have fragmented the city’s organization. During a call with Daisy3, a municipal employee concerned with public space, environment and playgrounds in Laak, approximately 60% of civic matters are solved on the quarter level to more adequately provide tailor-made services relevant for that quarter. To further complicate this, a neighbourhood plan is created for every neighbourhood in which a long-term plan is laid out regarding issues specific for that
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area. Figure 5 shows the eight quarters that The Hague is made up of with Scheveningen and Laak - the quarters in which I conducted fieldwork – highlighted.
Scheveningen
Located in the dunes of South Holland, Scheveningen was originally a fisherman’s village, a history that is still visible in the small, flat-roofed fisherman’s houses located in the centre of Scheveningen. Nowadays this quarter is well known for its beaches, the pier and the circus theatre that attract many visitors from both the Netherlands and abroad. However, the part of Scheveningen that houses these attractions is a relatively small part of the entire quarter. The remaining areas of Scheveningen serve residential purposes, with single-family houses and the occasional shopping street. Housing prices in Scheveningen are among the highest in The Hague and as such affluent families live here. Apart from the apartment complexes closer to the coast, the majority of houses in Scheveningen were built in the first half of the twentieth century and were originally intended to harbour one family per house which is still
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the case today. Like most houses in the Netherlands that were constructed in the same period, many houses are built with brown bricks which effectively colours a great deal of the quarter in brown tints.
Laak
As a quarter positioned in ‘the peat’, Laak is stigmatized as a low-income quarter with many families that are not of Dutch descent. Statistically, average household income is the lowest in Laak and the percentage of ‘inhabitants of non-western ethnic descent’, as it is categorized in Dutch statistical registration, is the highest of The Hague with 16.9% (Gemeente Den Haag, 2019). Laak lies at the very southern border of the city and is predominantly residential in nature. The majority of the houses were constructed in the first half of the twentieth century, although the district Spoorwijk has been mostly renovated in recent years. Even though the houses in Laak were built in the same period as the houses in Scheveningen, many houses in Laak are multiple-household dwellings. It is not uncommon for buildings to be divided into two or three households, each living on a separate floor reachable by stairs that can be accessed from the façade. According William, who is a community builder active in Laak and who is, as part of his job, familiar with Laak’s neighbourhoods and their residents, the housing value in many neighbourhoods of Laak is low which attracts students,
Figure 6: Street in Scheveningen Badplaats. Source: Author.
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starters and foreign temporary workers. These groups tend to move out relatively quickly too, causing the turnover rate of Laak to be the highest of all The Hague’s quarters.
Gulls
Gulls are often referred to as seagulls because of their sea-foraging behavior. In the Netherlands, many species of gulls used to nest in the Dutch dunes but since the red fox invaded the dunes in the 1980s, gulls have been looking for alternative habitats. They have settled a number of breeding colonies throughout the coastal regions of the Netherlands, the largest of which houses over 9,000 nests in the Port of Rotterdam (Faunabeheereenheid Zuid-Holland, 2019). Over the years, two species of gulls – the lesser black-backed gull (larus fuscus) and the herring gull (larus argentatus) have found their way into cities where they forage for food and, to a lesser extent, breed. In March and April, gulls seek a place to breed where they then stay in the following months. Their fledglings need food in the rearing period so in the summer months gulls tend to take more risks when foraging in order to ensure their offspring’s survival (Huig et al., 2016). Household waste and other food scraps ensure a year-round flow of nutrients for gulls making The Hague a prime location to forage for gulls who breed either in or outside of the city.
It is exactly this behavior of foraging and breeding that is causing conflicts in The Hague. On peak days, the number of gulls in The Hague can reach almost 10.000 according to an estimation by an ecologist working at the municipality of The Hague. When gulls enter the city to forage for food, similar patterns occur as when crows forage in Tokyo. Gulls locate bags with household waste, determine whether there is food inside and rip them open before collectively feasting on the contents. In the process, they make noise, drop feces and, most importantly, they are capable of leaving behind a significant mess (Figure 8). Breeding gulls are cause for a different type of problem. After their displacement from the dunes, new
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breeding colonies have proven to be increasingly unsafe as well4, motivating hundreds of gulls to breed in The Hague. The relatively high amount of flat roofs in The Hague gives gulls the opportunity to build a nest safe from predators and without the risk of their eggs rolling off. However, breeding gulls wake early and are capable of making considerable amounts of noise, awaking human residents below and keeping them from their sleep. One ecologists and gull enthusiast, Duncan, has accumulated years of experience consulting municipalities about gull-related problems.
During a phone call, he stressed that gulls breeding on one’s roof should not be taken lightly as it can take on quite severe forms in which the residents of the house below are deprived of sleep. According to him and colleagues, the number of roof-breeding gulls in The Hague will only continue to increase in the coming years.
4 A large breeding colony in the Port of Rotterdam houses over 9.000 gull nests. However, an ecologist
working at the municipality of The Hague told me that companies housed in the port area are asking exemption from the wildlife protection laws that protect gulls in order to push the gulls out. Although gull feces can indeed prove dangerous for chemical containers made of metal, the number of nests that are sterilized is excessive. As a result, approximately 500 gulls have left the Port of Rotterdam to breed in The Hague.
Figure 8: Aftermath of foraging gulls in Laak, The Hague. Source: C. van der Meer.
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5. Good nature, bad nature
Animals are salient inhabitants of cities and seem to be welcomed with open arms in some cases while pushed out or even culled in other cases. What, then, lies behind this ambivalent perception towards animals and the forms in which these appear in the city? Building upon the framework proposed by Rabinow & Rose, this chapter delves into the first element of biopower by asking ‘What role do perceptions about the city and nature play in urban biopolitics?’. This chapter presents the truth discourses prevalent in Tokyo and The Hague with regard to the role of nature, urban animals and urban avian pests. As will be shown, animals are considered to be an inherent part of Tokyo and The Hague, although city-dwellers make a clear distinction between desirable animals and animals that they would rather live without or at least in limited ways. Municipal governments reinforce this view as their ideal version of the city is one without the avian pests in question, since it would benefit the quality of life of the residents of these cities. Simultaneously, both residents and governments of Tokyo and The Hague perceive the removal of crows and gulls to be a favorable outcome for the birds as well. This chapter presents these trains of thought and concludes with an explicit outline of the truth discourses about healthy urban populations of both humans and birds. These will reveal that there are slight differences between Tokyo and The Hague, as the former strives for a reduction of urban avian pests while the latter would rather see a complete displacement.
This chapter traces the truth discourses present in Tokyo and The Hague from two different angles. Firstly, I recognize that truth discourses can be about the health of multiple populations. Biopolitical truth discourses concern the human population as well as the animal populations within cities, and because the aim of this research is to trace exertion of biopower upon both, this chapter will discuss two truth discourses. One of which concerns human populations and how it benefits from a decrease or removal of urban avian pests. The
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other truth discourse refers to exactly these urban avian pests and how their collective lives would benefit from such a removal from the city. Secondly, although municipal governments are the actors that act upon truth discourses policy-wise, this chapter will outline the voices of residents as well as of the municipality. City-dwellers do not hold the capacity to write laws, but their conceptions about the city have significant influence on biopower as they are the ones expected to internalize truth discourses and essentially act them out. Thus, establishing truth discourses regarding urban avian pests and their position in the city (or outside of it) allows us to better understand the motivations and goals underlying biopower that will be discussed in the chapter hereafter.
Humans and nature
Prior studies on urban animals note that the city is often regarded as antithetical to nature and that the presence of animals problematizes this dualism (Thomson, 2007; Yeo & Neo, 2010). Urban avian pest management implies transgression of something ‘natural’ into a place where they do not belong. If nature is regarded as something that is located outside of cities, what happens when these categories begin to invade one another? By investigating these notions, it becomes clear how these spaces should be used and by whom. Before concretely discussing truth discourses surrounding animals, the next section first discusses the more abstract overarching discussion about the relation between humans and nature. It shows that humans have a complicated relationship to nature as the word nature was used in interview to interchangeably refer to two phenomena. The first is nature in an untouched sense, referring to greenery, animals, and other ‘natural’ elements operating free from human influence. It is this absence of human intervention that makes it nature. The second way in which nature was used was as something inherently tied in with human conduct. This idea talks about ‘urban nature’ as natural elements within cities, placed or tolerated by humans and kept or maintained for the enjoyment of humans. A slight difference between
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Tokyo and The Hague is that in Tokyo, urban nature is conceived as not only serving human wellbeing, but simultaneously being an indicator of a healthy population with a responsible balance towards urban nature.
During interviews in Tokyo, nature was often referred to as something pristine and untouched by humans. In various interviews, residents expressed their desire for certain areas to remain unscathed by human tampering as this would conserve something rare. An ornithologist working at Tama Zoo told me that “virgin nature does not exist in Japan” by which he referred to this almost mythological notion of nature as untouched wilderness. Multiple Tokyoites echoed this as they positioned nature as antithetical to the city because the main factor separating the two was the presence or absence of human influence. In a tangible sense, this idea of nature predominantly referred to forests, mountains, rivers and animals residing in those areas. Based on this definition of nature, the city cannot be a place for nature as the city was seen as a product of human influence.
Interestingly enough, the word ‘nature’ took on a meaning that was closer to ‘urban nature’ depending on the context. Interviewees who had referred to nature in the untouched sense outlined above occasionally used the word ‘nature’ later in the interview to refer to greenery and animals within the city. When interviewing a panel of three employees working at the Adachi Public Health Department, one of them told me that ‘although urbanization is putting stress on nature [in the untouched sense], urban nature is better for the residents’ souls and for a healthy lifestyle’. Thus, depending on the context, the word nature could shift from ‘untouched nature’ to ‘urban nature’. In this shift it moves from something that is unchanged by human hand and it becomes something that is both under human control and simultaneously serving human populations. This ties in with writings on Japanese dispositions towards ‘natural’ elements, such as one by John Traphagan in which he argues that “an ordered environment or surroundings is an index of ordered people” (Traphagan,
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1998, p. 50) and urban nature poses no exception. The disposition he observed was thus that humans hold a responsibility to order nature and to put it where it needs to be. Urban nature in Tokyo is thus considered to be a reflection of Tokyo’s residents, as well as a product of their collective practices of ordering.
Interviews in The Hague followed similar patterns regarding the ambiguous meaning of nature as both something outside of the city whilst appearing in other forms within cities. Many residents expressed that their definition of nature is everything that is not man-made or everything in which humans do not intervene, something that is anything but the man-made city. With merely a few exceptions, the majority of interviewees conveyed that nature is free from human interference, often adding that the Netherlands does not offer any nature in that regard. Similar to what resulted from the interviews in Tokyo, residents of The Hague claimed that there is such a thing as urban nature. Urban nature is characterized by its fragmented character as it presents itself in smaller forms (e.g. patches of greenery, parks). Residents of The Hague were hesitant to call this nature, however, because although it bears characteristics of nature – seemingly independent from humans, going and growing where it ‘wants’ – it is intrinsically linked to human interference: either urban nature is placed by humans, or it is tolerated to some extent. However urban nature may have emerged where it is, it was generally mentioned as being valuable for human health and enjoyment. Characteristics such as pleasant sounds of songbirds, vibrant colors and the oxygen-producing nature of trees frequently came up during interviews. This relates to the positioning of nature as a temporary escape as it can make people reminisce about places other than the city (Chiesura, 2004), perhaps to places associated with ‘untouched’ nature.
To summarize, interviewees in both cities communicate a separation of nature into two categories that both have drastically different relations with human life. When asked about the definition of nature, most interviewees referred to an idea of nature as wilderness,
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free of human interference where trees can grow wherever they want and where animals can live how they are supposed to live. This idea of untouched nature is considered to be antithetical to the city; pristine nature is spatially separated from the human-built city. However, in most interviews a second definition of nature presented itself. Any element originally associated with untouched nature that presents itself in fragmented and small-scale forms within the city was considered a form of nature as well. This category of urban nature is both tolerated or placed by humans but this makes it subservient to humans as well. Interviewees identified urban nature as being vastly different from untouched nature, yet very welcome in urban areas as it is a reminder of ‘real’ nature and can offer beneficial health effects. A good relation between humans and nature thus seems to entail a disinvolvement from nature outside of the city in order to keep it untouched and acting in a ‘natural’ manner. However, nature may be enjoyed and regulated if presented in urban forms through parks, canals, petting zoos, or any other phenomena that is reminiscent of nature in its untouched sense.
Picking favorites
In Tokyo and The Hague, urban nature refers to either a product of human action, or a result of human tolerance. As opposed to flowers, weeds and trees, however, animals are significantly more mobile and thus hold more transgressive capacities. Mark, a locally active resident living in Laak phrased the relation between humans and animals in cities as “It is about what we are willing to accept”. This quote is indicative of how urban animals are perceived in both Tokyo and The Hague, as some animals are considered to be inherently easier to accept than others, depending on their behavior. The interviews showed that, although urban animals are perceived to be an integral part of urban nature, they hold a far more contested position. To tie the discussion of urban nature into a biopower frame, this
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section discusses what animal presence and behavior is deemed fruitful for human wellbeing, and where do humans draw the line in their acceptance of urban animals.
Desirable animals
In both cities, animals that people were willing to accept clearly had one characteristic in common: they are considered to improve the quality of life. Interviewees from Tokyo and The Hague referred most frequently to songbirds as having a positive influence on their lives as city-dwellers. Sparrows, blackbirds, tits, and other avian critters were praised by interviewees for both their singing and their cute appearance. Arnold, a young professional who had recently moved to Laak with his partner, told me that “[songbirds] are esthetically pleasing and it is pleasant to wake up with the sound of birds singing”. Other residents brought up similar points, expressing that we should cherish songbirds and protect them as they make life in cities significantly better partly because it reminds them of untouched nature. This view is not limited to residents as municipal employees of both cities similarly recognize the positive effects of having this type of nature close by. One municipal employee who is in charge of parks and greenery in Tokyo emphasized that they attempt to create environments where residents can synthesize with nature by being close to birds.
Other animals that were less frequently mentioned but still perceived to be a welcome form of urban nature were hedgehogs, squirrels and various types of domesticated animals. Whenever these animals came up during interviews, they were talked about in a positive context in which nothing but appreciation was expressed. This, as Jeroen, who is a local councilor for the animal party in The Hague mentioned, presumably had everything to do with their “cuddly-ness”, claiming that people tend to like an animal far quicker when they are more cuddly. However, as squirrels and hedgehogs are far less commonly seen in Tokyo and The Hague, it was songbirds that took center stage in ideas about desirable urban animals.
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In human appreciation for these species, it seems obvious that urban animals are acceptable, and even desirable, when they are no threat to humans in any way and, especially, when they add value to everyday city life. Songbirds, squirrels, hedgehogs and pets are considered not only esthetically welcome as they have a cute appearance, but through their presence and, in the case of songbirds, their behavior they are essentially categorized as ‘good urban nature’. Their transgressive behavior as they roam in residents’ backyards and on their houses is excused because of their appearance and behavior. On the contrary, humans willingly enter a reciprocal relationship with desirable animals in which the animal benefits from bird feeders, suet cakes or drinking fountains in exchange for their vicinity to humans who can enjoy their presence.
Disposable animals
On the other hand there is a group of animals that interviewees are less willing to accept. Specific animals are clearly considered to be less welcome in urban environments as they behave in ways that can either indirectly affect humans by putting stress on a certain balance in the ecosystem or by posing as a more direct threat to human wellbeing and livability of the city.
Nearly all interviewees, both residents and municipal employees in both cities, referred to an ecosystem, a balance, a system of co-existence, a food chain or a harmony that is in danger of toppling over. Most interviewees, particularly in The Hague, concluded that a healthy urban ecosystem comprises of a variety of animal populations that are in balance and in which no single population becomes too large by dominating another. There seemed to be a bias towards desirable animal populations as many residents fear that these would become victimized if an undesirable animal population becomes too large.
