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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
A unique and compelling exploration of why humans need animal
companions - from dogs and cats to horses, birds and reptiles - as
seen through the eyes of bestselling author Jacky Colliss Harvey.
In The Animal's Companion, the acclaimed author of Red: A Natural
History of the Redhead explores the human desire to share our
everyday life with pets, a history that can be traced back to a
cave in France where evidence has been unearthed of a boy and his
dog taking a walk together, some 26,000 years ago. From those
preserved foot and paw prints, Colliss Harvey draws on literary,
artistic and archaeological artefacts to sweep readers through
centuries and across continents to examine how our relationships
with our pets have developed, but also stayed very much the same.
Through delightful stories of the most famous, endearing and
sometimes eccentric pet owners throughout history, she suggests
fascinating new insights into one of the most long-standing of all
human love affairs.
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Alberta
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Marcus McGee
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R524
R468
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Animals are everywhere. They inhabit our forests, our fields, our
imaginations, our dreams, and our stories. Making appearances in
advertisements, television programs, movies, books, Internet memes,
and art, symbolic animals do tremendous work for us selling goods,
services, and ideas, as well as acting as stand-ins for our
interests and ideas. Yet, does knowing animals only symbolically
impact their lived experiences? Seeing Species: Re-presentations of
Animals in Media & Popular Culture examines the use of animals
in media, tracking species from appearances in rock art and picture
books to contemporary portrayals in television programs and movies.
Primary questions explored include: Where does thinking of other
beings in a detached, impersonal, and objectified way come from? Do
the mass media contribute to this distancing? When did humans first
think about animals as other others? Main themes include examining
the persistence of the human-animal divide, parallels in the
treatment of otherized human beings and animals, and the role of
media in either liberating or limiting real animals. This book
brings together sociological, psychological, historical, cultural,
and environmental ways of thinking about nonhuman animals and our
relationships with them. In particular, ecopsychological thinking
locates and identifies the connections between how we re-present
animals and the impact on their lived experiences in terms of
distancing, generating a false sense of intimacy, and stereotyping.
Re-presentations of animals are discussed in terms of the role the
media do or do not play in perpetuating status quo beliefs about
them and their relationship with humans. This includes theories and
methods such as phenomenology, semiotics, textual analysis, and
pragmatism, with the goal of unpacking re-presentations of animals
in order to learn not only what they say about human beings but
also how we regard members of other species.
A central thinker on the question of the animal in continental
thought, Elisabeth de Fontenay moves in this volume from Jacques
Derrida's uneasily intimate writing on animals to a passionate
frontal engagement with political and ethical theory as it has been
applied to animals-along with a stinging critique of the work of
Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri as well as with other
"utilitarian" philosophers of animal-human relations. Humans and
animals are different from one another. To conflate them is to be
intellectually sentimental. And yet, from our position of
dominance, do we not owe them more than we often acknowledge? In
the searching first chapter on Derrida, she sets out "three levels
of deconstruction" that are "testimony to the radicalization and
shift of that philosopher's argument: a strategy through the
animal, exposition to an animal or to this animal, and compassion
toward animals." For Fontenay, Derrida's writing is particularly
far-reaching when it comes to thinking about animals, and she
suggests many other possible philosophical resources including
Adorno, Leibniz, and Merleau-Ponty. Fontenay is at her most
compelling in describing philosophy's ongoing indifference to
animal life-shading into savagery, underpinned by denial-and how
attempts to exclude the animal from ethical systems have in fact
demeaned humanity. But Fontenay's essays carry more than
philosophical significance. Without Offending Humans reveals a
careful and emotionally sensitive thinker who explores the
unfolding of humans' assessments of their relationship to
animals-and the consequences of these assessments for how we define
ourselves.
Most livestock in the United States currently live in cramped and
unhealthy confinement, have few stable social relationships with
humans or others of their species, and finish their lives by being
transported and killed under stressful conditions. In Livestock,
Erin McKenna allows us to see this situation and presents
alternatives. She interweaves stories from visits to farms,
interviews with producers and activists, and other rich material
about the current condition of livestock. In addition, she mixes
her account with pragmatist and ecofeminist theorizing about
animals, drawing in particular on John Dewey's account of
evolutionary history, and provides substantial historical
background about individual species and about human-animal
relations. This deeply informative text reveals that the animals we
commonly see as livestock have rich evolutionary histories,
species-specific behaviors, breed tendencies, and individual
variation, just as those we respect in companion animals such as
dogs, cats, and horses. To restore a similar level of respect for
livestock, McKenna examines ways we can balance the needs of our
livestock animals with the environmental and social impacts of
raising them, and she investigates new possibilities for humans to
be in relationships with other animals. This book thus offers us a
picture of healthier, more respectful relationships with livestock.
'Modest, down to earth and full of humour, this is one of the best
books about filming I've ever read.' MICHAEL PALIN 'Extraordinary:
Gavin's easy prose and gasp-making encounters make for a gripping
and very funny read. It's a rollercoaster ride with a complete
professional. I loved it.' JOANNA LUMLEY '[Gavin is] a great
cameraman with infinite patience, but also a writer with great
powers of observation and expression. Brilliant!' ALAN TITCHMARSH
_________ From Gavin Thurston, the award-winning Blue Planet II and
Planet Earth II cameraman with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough
comes extraordinary and adventurous true stories of what it takes
to track down and film our planet's most captivating creatures.
Gavin has been a wildlife photographer for over thirty years.
Against a backdrop of modern world history, he's lurked in the
shadows of some of the world's remotest places in order to capture
footage of the animal kingdom's finest: prides of lions, silverback
gorillas, capuchin monkeys, brown bears, grey whales, penguins,
mosquitoes - you name it he's filmed it. Come behind the camera and
discover the hours spent patiently waiting for the protagonists to
appear; the inevitable dangers in the wings and the challenges
faced and overcome; and the heart-warming, life-affirming moments
the cameras miss as well as capture. What other readers are saying
about Journeys in the Wild: 'It's touching, it's thought provoking
and its emotional...Go pick it up. It's an absolute inspiration of
a book.' Goodreads 'Full of unbelievable anecdotes from decades of
work, some absolutely hilarious, this book left me in complete
wonder.' Goodreads 'An amazing read and I would heartily recommend
it to everyone I know.' Goodreads
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