Becoming Nature: Classifying Encounters in Interspecies Contact Zones

Abstract

Nature affords transformations to consumers’ social, embodied, and temporal experiences. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human–fish interactions as encounters in interspecies contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering processes of interspecies becoming that transform both species. We discuss how these transformations are ordered by power relationships that classify roles for entities enrolled in consumption assemblages. Often, humans exert power over other living entities by classifying them as resources for consumption. Yet, we also discover more reciprocal expressions of power between humans and other species. With consumption as a major contributor to the decline of wild species populations, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of our work that are intended to stimulate further research.