Intimate Juxtaposition: Bounded Coexistence and the Making of Multispecies Home in Guangzhou

ABSTRACT This paper develops the concept of ‘intimate juxtaposition’ to theorise how urban residents cultivate connections with autonomous nature through distinctive spatial strategies. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observations with 19 reptile, amphibian and arthropod keepers in Guangzhou, I conceptualise intimate juxtaposition as the deliberate creation of a viewing interface that reconfigures domestic space. This spatial arrangement facilitates bounded multispecies coexistence—a relational mode operating along a continuum from observational intimacy to carefully managed situated interactions. I argue that this practice transforms the home into a negotiating arena where core socio‐ecological tensions—between wildness and domesticity, connection and separation—are worked out through daily material and ethical engagements. Illuminating this micro‐scale tactic, the study re‐conceptualises the domestic sphere as a vital site for the ethical renegotiation of nature–culture relations, contributing to geographical debates on more‐than‐human cohabitation.