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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
Jeremy Rich uses the eccentric life of R. L. Garner (1848-1920) to examine the commercial networks that brought the first apes to America during the Progressive Era, a critical time in the development of ideas about African wildlife, race, and evolution. Garner was a self-taught zoologist and atheist from southwest Virginia. Starting in 1892, he lived on and off in the French colony of Gabon, studying primates and trying to engage U.S. academics with his theories. Most prominently, Garner claimed that he could teach apes to speak human languages and that he could speak the languages of primates. Garner brought some of the first live primates to America, launching a traveling demonstration in which he claimed to communicate with a chimpanzee named Susie. He was often mocked by the increasingly professionalized scientific community, who were wary of his colorful escapades, such as his ill-fated plan to make a New York City socialite the queen of southern Gabon, and his efforts to convince Thomas Edison to finance him in Africa. Yet Garner did influence evolutionary debates, and as with many of his era, race dominated his thinking. Garner's arguments--for example, that chimpanzees were more loving than Africans, or that colonialism constituted a threat to the separation of the races--offer a fascinating perspective on the thinking and attitudes of his times. "Missing Links" explores the impact of colonialism on Africans, the complicated politics of buying and selling primates, and the popularization of biological racism.
A fascinating exploration of humanity's eternal bond with animals, and an urgent call to answer the needs of millions of at-risk creatures A landmark work, "The Bond" is the passionate, insightful, and comprehensive examination of our special connection to all creatures, written by one of America's most important champions of animal welfare. Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States, unveils the deep links of the human-animal bond, as well as the conflicting impulses that have led us to betray this bond through widespread and systemic cruelty to animals.
What are the links between people's beliefs and the foods they choose to eat? In the modern Western world, dietary choices are a topic of ethical and political debate, but how can centuries of Christian thought and practice also inform them? And how do reasons for abstaining from particular foods in the modern world compare with earlier ones? This book will shed new light on modern vegetarianism and related forms of dietary choice by situating them in the context of historic Christian practice. It will show how the theological significance of embodied practice may be retrieved and reconceived in the present day. Food and diet is a neglected area of Christian theology, and Christianity is conspicuous among the modern world's religions in having few dietary rules or customs. Yet historically, food and the practices surrounding it have significantly shaped Christian lives and identities. This collection, prepared collaboratively, includes contributions on the relationship between Christian beliefs and food practices in specific historical contexts. It considers the relationship between eating and believing from non-Christian perspectives that have in turn shaped Christian attitudes and practices. It also examines ethical arguments about vegetarianism and their significance for emerging Christian theologies of food.
Animal rights is one of the fastest growing social movements today. Women greatly outnumber men as activists, yet surprisingly, little has been written about the importance and impact of gender on the movement. Women and the Animal Rights Movement combats stereotypes of women activists as mere sentimentalists by exploring the political and moral character of their advocacy on behalf of animals. Emily Gaarder analyzes the politics of gender in the movement, incorporating in-depth interviews with women and participant observation of animal rights organizations, conferences, and protests to describe struggles over divisions of labor and leadership. Controversies over PETA advertising campaigns that rely on women's sexuality to ""sell"" animal rights illustrate how female crusaders are asked to prioritize the cause of animals above all else. Gaarder underscores the importance of a paradigm shift in the animal liberation movement, one that seeks a more integrated vision of animal rights that connects universally to other issues--gender, race, economics, and the environment--highlighting that many women activists recognize and are motivated by the connection between the oppression of animals and other social injustices.
There may be a town called Santa Catalina, but the one in this book is creation of the author. What is real and happens all over the world is the problem of dogs living on the street. They, like human beings, suffer and their life is a bit similar to the homeless people. This is not a beautiful picture and many turn to look the other way as if not looking would avoid feelings of remorse for not trying to help them. The truth is that many problems could be prevented if we all worked together to help those beings that, for various reasons, end up living without a roof over their heads. We all try to live a life without hardship, however there are many reasons that lead us to failure and we use all necessary means to not fall too low. But dogs, after being domesticated and living for many years with human beings, have learned to depend on them for survival and deserve to live with respect.
Underground: The Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s compiles the rare first 15 issues of "Underground, the magazine of the North American Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group." With over 500 pages of A.L.F. news and action reports, this landmark compilation offers the most comprehensive look available on the Animal Liberation Front at the end of the 20th century. Included in "Underground" *A.L.F. interviews For most of the 1990s, Underground proudly documented the work of the Animal Liberation Front, a clandestine group that carries out illegal raids to rescue animals and sabotage the businesses that profit from their exploitation. A.L.F. activity peaked in the 1990s, and for that decade Underground was the #1 source for A.L.F. news. Compiled from rare copies of the legendary magazine, this massive collection serves as a powerful animal rights movement history lesson and in-depth look at the Animal Liberation Front. Underground: The Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s is a vital read for anyone interested in the animal rights movement, and the misunderstood work of those who risk their freedom to save animals.
A far-reaching, urgent, and thoroughly engaging exploration of our relationship with animals - from the acclaimed Financial Times journalist. This might be the worst time in history to be an animal. But is there a happier way? Factory farms, climate change, deforestation and pandemics have made our relationship with the other species unsustainable. In response, Henry Mance sets out on a personal quest to see if there is a fairer way to live alongside the animals we love. He goes to work in an abattoir and on a farm to investigate the reality of eating meat and dairy. He explores our dilemmas around over-fishing the seas, visiting zoos and owning pets, and he meets the chefs, activists, scientists and tech visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals. A Times Book of the Year
Asked to head up Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s environmental organization's "hog campaign," Nicolette Hahn Niman embarked upon a fascinating odyssey through the inner workings of the "factory farm" industry. Whatshe discovered transformed her into an intrepid environmental lawyer determined to lock horns with the big business farming establishment. She even, unexpectedly, found love along the way. A searing account of an industry gone awry and one woman's passionate fight to remedy it, Righteous Porkchop chronicles Niman's investigation and her determination to organize a national reform movement to fight the shocking practices of industrial animal operations. She offers necessary alternatives, showing how livestock farming can be done in a better way--and she details both why and how to choose meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, and fish from traditionally farmed sources.
Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics could be characterized as a new poetics of species, forcing a rethinking of the body's significance, both human and animal. Exploring the "logic of flesh" and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a "creaturely" approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Reintroducing Weil's elaboration of such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. In her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008. The Renaissance was an extraordinary period of change in the West, fuelled by changing cultural formations, shifting empires, the growth in exploration, and developments in science and technology." A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance" presents a broad overview of the changing role of animals in the economy, culture and thinking of the period. Covering the period 1400 to 1600, the volume explores a wide range of topics, from the symbolic role of birds in early modern writing to the development of illustrated works of natural history. As with all the volumes in the illustrated "Cultural History of Animals," this volume presents an overview of the period and continues with essays on the position of animals in contemporary Symbolism, Hunting, Domestication, Sports and Entertainment, Science, Philosophy, and Art. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Animals edited by Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008. "A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Empire" explores the cultural position of animals in the period from 1800 to 1920. This was a time of extraordinary social, political and economic change as the Western world rapidly industrialised and modernised. The Enlightenment had attempted to define the human self; the Age of Empire pulled animals and humans further apart. As with all the volumes in the illustrated" Cultural History of Animals," this volume presents an overview of the period and continues with essays on the position of animals in contemporary Symbolism, Hunting, Domestication, Sports and Entertainment, Science, Philosophy, and Art. Volume 5 in the "Cultural History of Animals" edited by Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl.
Presents perspectives on animal welfare and includes speeches and government documents, essays from international magazines, and news sources.
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008 A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age investigates the changing roles of animals in medieval culture, economy and society in the period 1000 to 1400. The period saw significant changes in scientific and philosophical approaches to animals as well as their representation in art. Animals were omnipresent in medieval everyday life. They had enormous importance for medieval agriculture and trade and were also hunted for food and used in popular entertainments. At the same time, animals were kept as pets and used to display their owner's status, whilst medieval religion attributed complex symbolic meanings to animals. A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period and continues with essays on the position of animals in contemporary symbolism, hunting, domestication, sports and entertainment, science, philosophy, and art.
From vegetarianism to scientific experimentation, this book is an ethical exploration of our responsibilities to the animals with whom we share the planet. Issues to do with animal ethics remain at the heart of public debate. In "Beyond Animal Rights", Tony Milligan goes beyond standard discussions of animal ethics to explore the ways in which we personally relate to other creatures through our diet, as pet owners and as beneficiaries of experimentation. The book connects with our duty to act and considers why previous discussions have failed to result in a change in the way that we live our lives. The author asks a crucial question: what sort of people do we have to become if we are to sufficiently improve the ways in which we relate to the non-human? Appealing to both consequences and character, he argues that no improvement will be sufficient if it fails to set humans on a path towards a tolerable and sustainable future. Focussing on our direct relations to the animals we connect with the book offers guidance on all the relevant issues, including veganism and vegetarianism, the organic movement, pet ownership, and animal experimentation. "Think Now" is a new series of books which examines central contemporary social and political issues from a philosophical perspective. These books aim to be accessible, rather than overly technical, bringing philosophical rigour to modern questions which matter the most to us. Provocative yet engaging, the authors take a stand on political and cultural themes of interest to any intelligent reader.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008. The period of the Enlightenment saw great changes in the way animals were seen. The codifying and categorizing impulse of the age of reason saw sharp lines drawn between different animal species and between animals and humans. In 1600, "beasts" were still seen as the foils and adversaries of human reason, by 1800, animals had become exemplars of sentiment and compassion, the new standards of truth and morals. A new age had dawned, a time when humans admired animals and sought to recover their own animality. As with all the volumes in the illustrated "Cultural History of Animals," this volume presents an overview of the period and continues with essays on the position of animals in contemporary Symbolism, Hunting, Domestication, Sports and Entertainment, Science, Philosophy, and Art. Volume 4 in the Cultural History of Animals edited by Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl.
The author has been a pescetarian for 20 years. In this book he reflects on the reasons why he became a pescetarian by considering a range of reasons why one might want to become a vegetarian, a pescetarian or a vegan. The main themes covered are the belief that it is not right to eat animals, the belief that eating meat is bad for one's health, the belief that eating meat results in an increase in violence in human society, and the belief that eating animals is in principle acceptable but that industrialised agriculture is not acceptable.
Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first
popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of
insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed
insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In "Insect
Media," Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social
organization-swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence-have
been used to structure modern media technologies and the network
society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection
of biology and technology.
Humans are primates, and our closest relatives are the other African apes - chimpanzees closest of all. With the mapping of the human genome, and that of the chimp, a direct comparison of the differences between the two, letter by letter along the billions of As, Gs, Cs, and Ts of the DNA code, has led to the widely vaunted claim that we differ from chimps by a mere 1.6% of our genetic code. A mere hair's breadth genetically! To a rather older tradition of anthropomorphizing chimps, trying to get them to speak, dressing them up for 'tea parties', was added the stamp of genetic confirmation. It also began an international race to find that handful of genes that make up the difference - the genes that make us uniquely human. But what does that 1.6% really mean? And should it really lead us to consider extending limited human rights to chimps, as some have suggested? Are we, after all, just chimps with a few genetic tweaks? Is our language and our technology just an extension of the grunts and ant-collecting sticks of chimps? In this book, Jeremy Taylor sketches the picture that is emerging from cutting edge research in genetics, animal behaviour, and other fields. The indications are that the so-called 1.6% is much larger and leads to profound differences between the two species. We shared a common ancestor with chimps some 6-7 million years ago, but we humans have been racing away ever since. One in ten of our genes, says Taylor, has undergone evolution in the past 40,000 years! Some of the changes that happened since we split from chimpanzees are to genes that control the way whole orchestras of other genes are switched on and off, and where. Taylor shows, using studies of certain genes now associated with speech and with brain development and activity, that the story looks to be much more complicated than we first thought. This rapidly changing and exciting field has recently discovered a host of genetic mechanisms that make us different from other apes. As Taylor points out, for too long we have let our sentimentality for chimps get in the way of our understanding. Chimps use tools, but so do crows. Certainly chimps are our closest genetic relatives. But relatively small differences in genetic code can lead to profound differences in cognition and behaviour. Our abilities give us the responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world, including endangered primates. But for the purposes of human society and human concepts such as rights, let's not pretend that chimps are humans uneducated and undressed. We've changed a lot in those 12 million years.
NOW IN PAPERBACK A true story that reads like a mystery.--Tony
Hillerman A suspenseful page-turner and a tale of true
courage.
This pioneering work collects an amazing assemblage of court cases in which animals have been named as defendants--chickens, rats, field mice, bees, gnats, and (in 34 recorded instances) pigs, among others-- providing insight into such modern issues as animal rights, capital punishment, and social and criminal theory. Evans suggests an intriguing distinction between trials of specific animals or particular crimes, such as the "murder" of an infant by a pig, and trials for larger, catastrophic events, such as plagues and infestations. In the latter case, Evans suggests a parallel to witchcraft. Edward Payson Evans 1831-1917], a historian, linguist and associate of Ralph Waldo Emerson, taught at the University of Michigan before moving to Germany, where he became a specialist in Oriental languages and German literature. A prolific author, his other Animal-related books are Animal Symbolism in Art and Literature and Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture, both published in 1887. CONTENTS Introduction 1. Bugs and Beasts before the Law 2. Medi]val and Modern Penology Appendix Bibliography Index |
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