The Plastic Magician, Holmberg Charlie N.

This book draws on a number of case studies to explore urban controversies around human/animal relations, in particular companion animals: free-ranging dogs, homeless and feral cats, urban animal hoarding, and "crazy cat ladies." The book explores "zoocities," the theoretical framework in which animal studies meets urban studies, resulting in a reframing of urban relations and space. Through the expansion of urban theories beyond the human, and the resuscitation of sociological theories through animal studies literature, the book seeks to uncover the phenomenon of "humanimal crowding," both as threats to be policed and as potentially subversive. In this book, a number of urban controversies and crowding technologies are analyzed, finally pointing at alternative modes of trans-species urban politics through the promises of humanimal crowding--of proximity and collective agency. The exclusion of animals may be an urban ideology, aiming at social order, but close attention to the level of practice reveals a much more diverse, disordered, and perhaps disturbing experience.