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Bad Nature: How Rat Control Shapes Human and Nonhuman Worlds
Offers insights into the social and cultural implications of humans’ relationships with rats and the natural world.
Apart from the occasional pet owner who has rats, most people regard rats as disease-carrying nocturnal pests, scurrying around dumpsters and dragging slices of pizza through New York City subways. Since rats are seemingly omnipresent in human life, why do we harbor such negative feelings about them, and why are they among the creatures most frequently targeted for systematic extermination?
In Bad Nature, sociologist Andrew McCumber draws out the cultural underpinnings of rat extermination across three countries and two continents. Drawing from ethnographic, interview, and textual data from the frigid prairie of Alberta, Canada; the heart of downtown Los Angeles, California; and the iconic Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, McCumber studies how humans have sought to suppress and exterminate rat populations in a variety of environmental, social, and political situations. He shows how, in these disparate locations, rat control is a social practice that draws and clarifies the spatial and symbolic boundaries between “good” and “bad” forms of nature. Rats are near the bottom of a symbolic hierarchy of species that places human life at the top, companion animals and majestic wildlife just below them, and the “invasive species” that call for systematic extermination at the very bottom. This hierarchy of living things that places rats at the bottom, McCumber argues, mirrors human systems of social inequalities and power dynamics.
Both original and engaging, Bad Nature urges readers to consider, when charting a just and sustainable future, where will the rats be placed in the worlds we envision?
Apart from the occasional pet owner who has rats, most people regard rats as disease-carrying nocturnal pests, scurrying around dumpsters and dragging slices of pizza through New York City subways. Since rats are seemingly omnipresent in human life, why do we harbor such negative feelings about them, and why are they among the creatures most frequently targeted for systematic extermination?
In Bad Nature, sociologist Andrew McCumber draws out the cultural underpinnings of rat extermination across three countries and two continents. Drawing from ethnographic, interview, and textual data from the frigid prairie of Alberta, Canada; the heart of downtown Los Angeles, California; and the iconic Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, McCumber studies how humans have sought to suppress and exterminate rat populations in a variety of environmental, social, and political situations. He shows how, in these disparate locations, rat control is a social practice that draws and clarifies the spatial and symbolic boundaries between “good” and “bad” forms of nature. Rats are near the bottom of a symbolic hierarchy of species that places human life at the top, companion animals and majestic wildlife just below them, and the “invasive species” that call for systematic extermination at the very bottom. This hierarchy of living things that places rats at the bottom, McCumber argues, mirrors human systems of social inequalities and power dynamics.
Both original and engaging, Bad Nature urges readers to consider, when charting a just and sustainable future, where will the rats be placed in the worlds we envision?
233 pages, Paperback
Published April 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 29, 2025
Not enough rats.
This book is about the human relationship with rats, specifically in terms of humans looking to kill them off. Two things become obvious in the case studies here (Alberta, Los Angeles, and the Galapagos): the cultural relationship towards extermination is an effective mirror for a more general in/out of culture, mostly around nature - what we preserve versus what we kill - but also in terms of humans and human society, in the sorts of metaphors that appear but also in the direct application of those metaphors. The metaphors of vermin are used against people, but there is an overlap between in the practices of when something like rat extermination becomes an important point.
It is a neat argument, and it works in a variety of capacities. It is a vivid example of the title, and the division between the way that culture splits things into good nature and bad nature, along with the equally cultural city and nature division. The history and cultural studies are good, and the author does a great job of interjecting himself into his studies with interviews and working alongside people involved in the different projects.
The weakness here is that some of the methodologies feel like justifications of themselves rather than vital research, and tend not to produce more revelatory information than the more basic ethnographic work, or what they do prove do not seem to justify the effort and page space. My big problem here may be more of expectation. The focus on unusual or otherwise extraordinary situations does work to answer the core question, but without more basic or infrastructural analysis of rat control in general, I do not know how to assess these examples. So it is good, but I feel like a missed opportunity in the focus of the study to get to a more comprehensive answer.
This book is about the human relationship with rats, specifically in terms of humans looking to kill them off. Two things become obvious in the case studies here (Alberta, Los Angeles, and the Galapagos): the cultural relationship towards extermination is an effective mirror for a more general in/out of culture, mostly around nature - what we preserve versus what we kill - but also in terms of humans and human society, in the sorts of metaphors that appear but also in the direct application of those metaphors. The metaphors of vermin are used against people, but there is an overlap between in the practices of when something like rat extermination becomes an important point.
It is a neat argument, and it works in a variety of capacities. It is a vivid example of the title, and the division between the way that culture splits things into good nature and bad nature, along with the equally cultural city and nature division. The history and cultural studies are good, and the author does a great job of interjecting himself into his studies with interviews and working alongside people involved in the different projects.
The weakness here is that some of the methodologies feel like justifications of themselves rather than vital research, and tend not to produce more revelatory information than the more basic ethnographic work, or what they do prove do not seem to justify the effort and page space. My big problem here may be more of expectation. The focus on unusual or otherwise extraordinary situations does work to answer the core question, but without more basic or infrastructural analysis of rat control in general, I do not know how to assess these examples. So it is good, but I feel like a missed opportunity in the focus of the study to get to a more comprehensive answer.
December 27, 2025
The focus of the book was much broader than the title implies. it was interesting throughout, but given that this was such a slim volume some of the theorizing feels like it was spread a little thin
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews