ANIMAL TRAFFIC: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade

Abstract

It seemed unfortunately fitting that, just before I began to write this review of Rosemary-Claire Collard’s important book, Animal Traffic, I read a story about five monkeys spotted in a Cincinnati, Ohio, neighborhood. Police believed they were not from the zoo, but privately owned. Witnesses reported that the monkeys were tall, with very long, skinny arms, and I immediately thought of the spider monkeys Collard describes. This news story illustrates one of most basic, yet significant, things communicated in this book—that exotic pets are not just in the domain of sensationalist documentaries like Netflix’s wildly popular (and disturbing) Tiger King, or found snarling and slithering somewhere on the estates of drug kingpins. There are untold multitudes of these animals existing in more mundane settings throughout the United States and globally, and we only occasionally get a glimpse of this world when there are “escapees.” In Animal Traffic, Collard informs us of the only partially accounted for magnitude of the global exotic pet trade, but of course she does much more. Her project is to theorize these animals as what she calls “lively capital,” to demonstrate the global pet trade’s effects on these sentient beings’ lives and communities, and to project her analysis onto the effects of capitalism on noncaptive wild animals and the natural world more broadly. Collard draws on Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theory/theorists in crafting her analysis, deftly applying elements originally focused on inanimate objects to the living subjects of her work. Throughout, Collard also provides details of her experiences in the field in Mexico and Central America at biosphere reserves and a rehabilitation facility for former exotic pets, and in various North American locations at exotic pet auctions and sanctuaries. In these sections she shows herself to be not only a thoughtful scholar, but also an exceptionally engaging writer, employing beautifully descriptive prose to recount details from her fieldwork. Not absent from this book are Collard’s recognition of her positionality as a Global North academic, and her emotional responses to the situations she witnesses. The book is set out in five chapters. In the introduction, Collard discusses her goals and arguments, and gives an overview of the global exotic pet trade. As a foundation for her analysis, she establishes a set of traits—”individual, controllable, and encounterable” (p. 29)—with which a wild animal must be imbued to ultimately transform into a living, yet thing-like, commodity (“lively capital”). These traits are what provide “use value” for humans, and Collard explains that for the commodity transformation to happen, exotic animals “are subject to