“Hit them hard and hit them well.” Possums, Pollution, and the Past in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Authors

  • Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU), Germany

Abstract

Referring to a newspaper article on an incident in 2015, the paper sheds light on the public representation of possums as polluters and threats to native biodiversity in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Their status as “pests” draws on the distinction between native and non-native nature and reflects how the ideal state of the environment is normatively framed.

Author Biography

Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU), Germany

Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer, MA is a research fellow in the interdisciplinary research group Urban Ethics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Her anthropological project “Auckland: Environmental Pollution, Urban Ethics and Cultural Practice,” supervised by Eveline Dürr, considers different ideas, practices and models of how to live a “good life”—understood in environmental terms—in urban contexts.

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Published

2017-04-20

Issue

2017

Section

Spring

License

Copyright (c) 2017 CC BY 4.0 Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.