Animal Work: Metabolic, Ecological, Affective

Abstract

What work does the naturalization of work do? What are its political-economic implications? Trajectories of bringing nature into the ambit of capitalist accumulation have been a longstanding concern in the social sciences. Yet how might one explain capitalist logics of accumulation without placing nature’s forces and potentials squarely on the side of capital—as political-economic straightjackets tend to do? After all, these are potentials that capital presupposes but does not itself produce. I address these questions by focusing on concepts of animal work and nonhuman labor (Barua 2017; see also Blanchette 2015; Porcher 2015) that offer crucial insights into how nature is constitutive of political-economic organization.