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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
Underdogs looks into the rapidly growing initiative to provide
veterinary care to underserved communities in North Carolina and
Costa Rica and how those living in or near poverty respond to these
forms of care. For many years, the primary focus of the humane
community in the United States was to control animal overpopulation
and alleviate the stray dog problem by euthanizing or sterilizing
dogs and cats. These efforts succeeded by the turn of the century,
and it appeared as though most pets were being sterilized and given
at least basic veterinary care, including vaccinations and
treatments for medical problems such as worms or mange. However, in
recent years animal activists and veterinarians have acknowledged
that these efforts only reached pet owners in advantaged
communities, leaving over twenty million pets unsterilized,
unvaccinated, and untreated in underserved communities. The problem
of getting basic veterinary services to dogs and cats in low-income
communities has suddenly become spotlighted as a major issue facing
animal shelters, animal rescue groups, animal control departments,
and veterinarians in the United States and abroad. In the past five
to ten years, animal protection organizations have launched a new
focus trying to deliver basic and even more advanced veterinary
care to the many underserved pets in the Unites States. These
efforts pose a challenge to these groups as does pet keeping to
people living in poverty across most of the world who have pets or
care for street dogs.
Nineteenth-century Britain was one of the birthplaces of modern
vegetarianism in the west, and was to become a reform movement
attracting thousands of people. From the Vegetarian Society's
foundation in 1847, men, women and their families abandoned
conventional diet for reasons as varied as self-advancement,
personal thrift, dissatisfaction with medical orthodoxy and
repugnance for animal cruelty. They joined in the pursuit of a
perfect society in which food reform combined with causes such as
socialism and land reform, stimulated by the concern that
carnivorism was in league with alcoholism and bellicosity. Gregory
provides a thorough exploration of the movement, with its often
colourful and sometimes eccentric leaders and grass-roots
supporters. He explores the rich culture of branch associations,
competing national societies, proliferating restaurants and food
stores and experiments in vegetarian farms and colonies. Of
Victorians and Vegetarians examines the wider significance of
Victorian vegetarians, embracing concerns about gender and class,
national identity, race and empire and religious authority.
Vegetarianism embodied the Victorians' complicated response to
modernity in its hostility to aspects of the industrial world's
exploitation of technology, rejecting entrepreneurial attempts to
create the foods and substitute artefacts of the future. Hostile,
like the associated anti-vivisectionists and anti-vaccinationists,
to a new 'priesthood' of scientists, vegetarians defended
themselves through the new sciences of nutrition and chemistry. Of
Victorians and Vegetarians uncovers who the vegetarians were, how
they attempted to convert their fellow Britons (and the world
beyond) to their 'bloodless diet' and the response of
contemporaries in a variety of media and genres. Through a close
study of the vegetarian periodicals and organisational archives,
extensive biographical research and a broader examination of texts
relating to food, dietary reform and allied reform movements, James
Gregory provides us with the first fascinating foray into the
impact of vegetarianism on the Victorians, the history of animal
welfare, reform movements and food history.
Birds have inspired people since the dawn of time. They are the
notes behind Mozart's genius, the colours behind Audubon's art and
ballet's swansong. In The Birds They Sang, Stanislaw Lubienski
sheds light on some of history's most meaningful bird and human
interactions, from historical bird watchers in a German POW camp,
to Billy and Kes in A Kestrel for a Knave. He muses on what exactly
Hitchcock's birds had in mind, and reveals the true story behind
the real James Bond. Undiscouraged by damp, discomfort and a reed
bunting's curse, Lubienski bears witness to the difficulties birds
face today as people fail to accommodate them in rapidly changing
times. A soaring exploration of our fascination with birds, The
Birds They Sang opens a vast realm of astonishing sounds, colours
and meanings - a complete world in which we humans are never alone.
A political scientist goes undercover in a modern industrial
slaughterhouse for this twenty-first-century update of Upton
Sinclair's The Jungle This is an account of industrialized killing
from a participant's point of view. The author, political scientist
Timothy Pachirat, was employed undercover for five months in a
Great Plains slaughterhouse where 2,500 cattle were killed per
day-one every twelve seconds. Working in the cooler as a liver
hanger, in the chutes as a cattle driver, and on the kill floor as
a food-safety quality-control worker, Pachirat experienced
firsthand the realities of the work of killing in modern society.
He uses those experiences to explore not only the slaughter
industry but also how, as a society, we facilitate violent labor
and hide away that which is too repugnant to contemplate. Through
his vivid narrative and ethnographic approach, Pachirat brings to
life massive, routine killing from the perspective of those who
take part in it. He shows how surveillance and sequestration
operate within the slaughterhouse and in its interactions with the
community at large. He also considers how society is organized to
distance and hide uncomfortable realities from view. With much to
say about issues ranging from the sociology of violence and modern
food production to animal rights and welfare, Every Twelve Seconds
is an important and disturbing work.
The very mention of Afghanistan conjures images of war,
international power politics, the opium trade, and widespread
corruption. Yet the untold story of Afghanistan's seemingly endless
misfortune is the disruptive impact that prolonged conflict has had
on ordinary rural Afghans, their culture, and the timeless
relationship they share with their land and animals. In rural
Afghanistan, when animals die, livelihoods are lost, families and
communities suffer, and people may perish. That Sheep May Safely
Graze details a determined effort, in the midst of war, to bring
essential veterinary services to an agrarian society that depends
day in and day out on the well-being and productivity of its
animals, but which, because of decades of war and the
disintegration of civil society, had no reliable access to even the
most basic animal health care. The book describes how, in the face
of many obstacles, a dedicated group of Afghan and expatriate
veterinarians working for a small non governmental organization
(NGO) in Kabul was able to create a national network of over 400
veterinary field units staffed by over 600 veterinary para
professionals. These paravets were selected by their own
communities and then trained and outfitted by the NGO so that
nearly every district in the country that needed basic veterinary
services now has reliable access to such services. Most notably,
over a decade after its inception and with Afghanistan still in
free fall, this private sector, district-based animal health
program remains vitally active. The community-based veterinary para
professionals continue to provide quality services to farmers and
herders, protecting their animals from the ravages of disease and
improving their livelihoods, despite the political upheavals and
instability that continue to plague the country. The elements
contributing to this sustainability and their application to
programs for improved veterinary service delivery in developing
countries beyond Afghanistan are described in the narrative.
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