Multispecies contact zones: The entangled interior grounds of domestic livestock keeping

Abstract

This study explores the interiority of traditional domestic livestock keeping, in which humans and animals cohabit and produce interior conditions created by the interdependence between the two. In investigating such a setting of cohabitation, this study appropriates Donna Haraway’s proposition of contact zones as spatial and material entanglements created through encounters between multispecies. This study argues that contact zones reflect a new form of interiority that decenters the human perspective in understanding space. This article explores the interiority of human–animal cohabitation by investigating domestic livestock-keeping practices in seven dwellings across three different areas of Central Java, Indonesia. This study focuses on the interior grounds of these dwellings, expanding the previous multispecies discourse that is often limited to the physical boundaries between humans and animals. The multispecies interior is revealed through narrating the caring encounters that alter the material grounds of these dwellings. This study identifies caring encounters created by the direct and indirect contact between dwellers, animals, and animal materials, as well as the spatial and material entanglements produced by these encounters. It concludes that the interiorization of encounters is influenced by the purposes of human–animal relations and the subsequent acts of encounter that create patterns of interdependencies. Such acts alter the experience, configuration, and flow of the material environment, informing the domestic interior programming of the multispecies dwellings.

Keywords:

• Multispecies
• contact zones
• livestock keeping
• material grounds
• human–animal cohabitation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Directorate of Research and Community Engagement, Universitas Indonesia, through Grant PUTI Q2 2022 (contract number: NKB-696/UN2.RST/HKP.05.00/2022). The authors would like to thank Reyna Ananda Harsono for assistance in the data analysis and production of the illustrations.

Notes on contributors

Kristanti Dewi Paramita

Kristanti Dewi Paramita is a lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Universitas Indonesia. Her works address the spatial and material practices of various architectural agencies, currently focusing on architecture and the posthuman. She is the chief editor of ARSNET, an emerging journal focusing on architectural design methods. Email: [email protected]

Yandi Andri Yatmo

Yandi Andri Yatmo is a professor of architecture and leader of architectural design research cluster at Universitas Indonesia. His works focus on design approaches rooted in society’s everyday life and community participation. He is the co-editor of Interiority journal, and the chief editor of ASEAN Journal of Community Engagement.

Paramita Atmodiwirjo

Paramita Atmodiwirjo is a professor of architecture at Universitas Indonesia. Her research interests lie between architecture, interior and the users’ behaviour and creative architectural learning methods. She has been awarded the FuturArc Green Leadership Award 2019 and Holcim Awards Asia Pacific 2011. She is the chief editor of Interiority journal.

Rini Suryantini

Rini Suryantini is a lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Universitas Indonesia. Her research interests are in domestic architecture and ecology, especially in the vernacular context. She co-founded LDAV, a database of Indonesian vernacular architecture in 2020. She is the managing editor of ASEAN Journal of Community Engagement.