Making the ‘man-eater’: Tiger conservation as necropolitics

摘要: Abstract In this article I analyze the practice and politics of classifying a tiger as ‘man-eater’ in South India to explore what doing so reveals more broadly about relations between animal life kinds human marked expendable by state. draw on Achille Mbembe's theory necropolitics order how Indian State attempts manage human-wildlife contested plantation landscape high priority for wildlife conservation. While there is large literature theorizing biodiversity conservation biopolitics, argue conservation, both typology space set ideologically malleable practices, remains under-theorized form necropolitics, mediating death. examine goes reclassifying tigers from strictly protected endangered species killable—the process making ‘man-eater’—in relation state values devalues non-human rooted colonial histories accumulation dispossession. This responds calls across political ecology geography better theorize role animals essential subjects inquiry contestations. It does through exploring spatial contours deadly encounter workers plantation-conservation necropolis.