Living with nonhuman animals in the city: Street cat caretaking in metropolitan South Korea
(2025) SGEM08 20251Department of Human Geography
- Abstract
- Urban environments have historically been viewed as exclusively human spaces, a notion-challenged by animal and more-than-human geography, which highlights the active roles of-nonhuman animals in shaping life. This research investigates the complex human-nonhuman-animal nexus in urban South Korea by exploring the experiences of street cat caretakers.Their care practices disrupt conventional spatial orders and human-nonhuman relational-understandings. The study aims to understand how caretakers encounter both humans and-nonhuman animals, their perceptions through these socio-spatially embedded encounters, and-how these views contrast with competing media portrayals of street cats. Using a conceptual-framework that critiques nature-society... (More)
- Urban environments have historically been viewed as exclusively human spaces, a notion-challenged by animal and more-than-human geography, which highlights the active roles of-nonhuman animals in shaping life. This research investigates the complex human-nonhuman-animal nexus in urban South Korea by exploring the experiences of street cat caretakers.Their care practices disrupt conventional spatial orders and human-nonhuman relational-understandings. The study aims to understand how caretakers encounter both humans and-nonhuman animals, their perceptions through these socio-spatially embedded encounters, and-how these views contrast with competing media portrayals of street cats. Using a conceptual-framework that critiques nature-society dualisms and employs relational nonhuman agency-and embodied encounter, the study utilizes in-depth interviews with eighteen caretakers and-qualitative media discourse analysis.Media analysis reveals an evolution in Korean public discourse regarding street cats. From-being "thief cats" in the 1990s, portrayals shifted to "manageable nuisances" and "members-of the urban ecosystem" in the 2000s and 2010s. More recently, however, a contrasting-"ecosystem menace" frame, often backed by scientific claims of ecological harm, has-intensified. These diverse media frames frequently reflect underlying nature-society dualisms-and abstract spatial orderings for street cats.In stark contrast, caretakers' perceptions, shaped by embodied and relational encounters, offer-a cross-boundary understanding. Through sustained interactions, they form relationships with-street cats, seeing them as unique individuals with distinct personalities, histories, and-complex social ties to other cats and specific urban spaces, moving beyond abstract collective-portrayals. These encounters transform caretakers' daily lives, heightening their senses to the-urban environment and fostering deeper connections with both cats and other urban animals.However, caretaking also brings social alienation and conflict, leading caretakers to feel they-embody the cats' marginalized status, a phenomenon I termed "becoming-street cat."This research highlights the profound impact of embodied encounters in challenging abstract,-often negative, mainstream representations of urban feral animals. It underscores how-caretaking fosters relational ethics and contributes to a nuanced understanding of-multispecies urbanism. By illuminating caretakers' experiences, this study helps deconstruct-simplistic human-animal and nature-society binaries, advocating for an urban politics that-recognizes and makes space for more-than-human dwellers, thus paving the way for more-inclusive, adaptive, and just multispecies cities. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9199273
- author
- Yoo, Chaewon LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SGEM08 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- More-than-human, Nonhuman agency, Encounter, Urban nature, Street casts, Feral animals
- language
- English
- id
- 9199273
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-16 08:29:17
- date last changed
- 2025-06-16 08:29:17
@misc{9199273,
abstract = {{Urban environments have historically been viewed as exclusively human spaces, a notion-challenged by animal and more-than-human geography, which highlights the active roles of-nonhuman animals in shaping life. This research investigates the complex human-nonhuman-animal nexus in urban South Korea by exploring the experiences of street cat caretakers.Their care practices disrupt conventional spatial orders and human-nonhuman relational-understandings. The study aims to understand how caretakers encounter both humans and-nonhuman animals, their perceptions through these socio-spatially embedded encounters, and-how these views contrast with competing media portrayals of street cats. Using a conceptual-framework that critiques nature-society dualisms and employs relational nonhuman agency-and embodied encounter, the study utilizes in-depth interviews with eighteen caretakers and-qualitative media discourse analysis.Media analysis reveals an evolution in Korean public discourse regarding street cats. From-being "thief cats" in the 1990s, portrayals shifted to "manageable nuisances" and "members-of the urban ecosystem" in the 2000s and 2010s. More recently, however, a contrasting-"ecosystem menace" frame, often backed by scientific claims of ecological harm, has-intensified. These diverse media frames frequently reflect underlying nature-society dualisms-and abstract spatial orderings for street cats.In stark contrast, caretakers' perceptions, shaped by embodied and relational encounters, offer-a cross-boundary understanding. Through sustained interactions, they form relationships with-street cats, seeing them as unique individuals with distinct personalities, histories, and-complex social ties to other cats and specific urban spaces, moving beyond abstract collective-portrayals. These encounters transform caretakers' daily lives, heightening their senses to the-urban environment and fostering deeper connections with both cats and other urban animals.However, caretaking also brings social alienation and conflict, leading caretakers to feel they-embody the cats' marginalized status, a phenomenon I termed "becoming-street cat."This research highlights the profound impact of embodied encounters in challenging abstract,-often negative, mainstream representations of urban feral animals. It underscores how-caretaking fosters relational ethics and contributes to a nuanced understanding of-multispecies urbanism. By illuminating caretakers' experiences, this study helps deconstruct-simplistic human-animal and nature-society binaries, advocating for an urban politics that-recognizes and makes space for more-than-human dwellers, thus paving the way for more-inclusive, adaptive, and just multispecies cities.}},
author = {{Yoo, Chaewon}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Living with nonhuman animals in the city: Street cat caretaking in metropolitan South Korea}},
year = {{2025}},
}