FRONTCAT | Frontier Cats: Reimagining Multispecies Governance and Care Ethics beyond Post-politics

As we face the sixth mass extinction and unprecedented socio-ecological challenges, cats—both cherished companions and devastating predators—stand at the center of escalating tensions between biodiversity conservation and animal welfare. Existing governance models, reliant on technocratic, post-political, and expert-driven solutions, fail to capture the cultural, ethical, and emotional dimensions of socio-ecological cat-related conflicts, leaving unreconciled divergent knowledges, values, and practices attached to urban and rural livelihoods. FRONTCAT addresses these gaps by asking:

1. How do cats’ dual role as pets and pests illuminate tensions between conservation efforts, animal care, and rural livelihoods?
2. How can cat-related issues help bridge socio-ecological conflicts shaped by rural-urban divides and populist narratives?
3. How might governance frameworks better integrate rural perspectives, conservation goals, and gendered dimensions of animal caregiving?

FRONTCAT advances a groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach to multispecies governance, integrating political ecology, feminist care ethics, Science and Technology Studies, environmental history, and participatory visual anthropology. Anchored in Spain—a biodiversity hotspot with entrenched rural-urban divides and strong animal welfare movements—I will explore how cat conflicts mediate human-animal-environment relations, the historical roots of cat conflicts, the rise of rural populism, and the gendered dimensions of care. These insights reshape how we address socio-ecological conflicts in a more-than-human world. FRONTCAT sets a paradigm shift by understanding multispecies coexistence and advancing the frontiers of socio-ecological research. Its theoretical innovations and participatory methodologies offer replicable, context-sensitive strategies for reconciling cultural values, ecological imperatives, and ethical commitments, providing key insights for navigating global sustainability challenges.

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