Moving Animals: Multispecies Curation and Environmental Stewardship in Bahamian Contexts

Moving animals is an ethnography of the entangled encounters and after empire strategies that drive the conservation of Bahamian animals in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it focuses on expressions of belonging and the connectedness that emerges between people and animals as they move through curated spaces in zones of contact. It is a story about North Americans and Bahamians who seek to develop and express sensitivity towards animals and the environments in which they are found. It identifies different power relationships and strategies that I have characterized as conservation counterpoint and its different registers.

This dissertation is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in and around two zoological institutions where animals from The Bahamas, ideas about responsibilities towards them, and people invested in their care and conservation circulate. Oscillating between the interactions people have with these animals, and the ideas about conservation and obligations that emerge as a result, this dissertation explores how human-animal interactions both reflect and shape perceptions of rights and belonging. It is an ethnographic account of the blurred boundaries between people and curated animals as they navigate movements as natives, indigenes, the introduced, and the invasive through both The Bahamas and North America.