Rosemary-Claire Collard, Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade – Duke University Press, September 2020. The Introduction is open access here.

Update: there is a discussion on the New Books podcast here.

Parrots and snakes, wild cats and monkeys—exotic pets can now be found everywhere from skyscraper apartments and fenced suburban backyards to roadside petting zoos. In Animal Traffic Rosemary-Claire Collard investigates the multibillion-dollar global exotic pet trade and the largely hidden processes through which exotic pets are produced and traded as lively capital. Tracking the capture of animals in biosphere reserves in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize; their exchange at exotic animal auctions in the United States; and the attempted rehabilitation of former exotic pets at a wildlife center in Guatemala, Collard shows how exotic pets are fetishized both as commodities and as objects. Their capture and sale sever their ties to complex socio-ecological…