The Human-Animal Relationship in the City: For a More-than-Human Urbanism

Abstract

From the analysis of the treatment given to animals in the context of urban transformations in the city of São Paulo, with special attention to the practices linked to the control of zoonoses, this essay reflects on the process of exclusion suffered by animals, seeking to detect practices based on hegemonic discourses. The animals played a significant role in the development of the city. However, in addition to not being recognized as agents that actively participate in the construction of cities, they also underwent persecution. As part of the urban environment, animals did not escape from the field of territorial disputes and had their presence denied by postures that restricted their circulation in the streets, with some of them even being condemned to extermination. From a historical and theoretical survey related to human-animal interaction in the urban environment, the intent of this study is to identify hegemonic practices associated with the animal presence, which were disseminated in the social imaginary, influencing the way of planning and inhabiting cities. By examining postures related to the fight against zoonoses in the urban space of São Paulo, the article seeks to open a field for the reflection about the human-animal relationship in Brazilian cities to foster a critical practice against hegemonic interests, in the light of the concepts of postcolonial studies and glimpsing possibilities of decolonizing the future, as proposed by Faranak Miraftab (2016).