The power of stories to raise our concern for animals has been postulated throughout history by countless scholars, activists, and writers, including such greats as Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy. This is the first book to investigate that power and explain the psychological and cultural mechanisms behind it. It does so by presenting the results of an experimental project that involved thousands of participants, texts representing various genres and national literatures, and the cooperation of an internationally-acclaimed bestselling author. Combining psychological research with insights from animal studies, ecocriticism and other fields in the environmental humanities, the book not only provides evidence that animal stories can make us care for other species, but also shows that their effects are more complex and fascinating than we have ever thought. In this way, the book makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of relations between literature and the nonhuman world as well as to the study of how literature changes our minds and society. "As witnessed by novels like Black Beauty and Uncle Tom's Cabin, a good story can move public opinion on contentious social issues. In Human Minds and Animal Stories a team of specialists in psychology, biology, and literature tells how they discovered the power of narratives to shift our views about the treatment of other species. Beautifully written and based on dozens of experiments with thousands of subjects, this book will appeal to animal advocates, researchers, and general readers looking for a compelling real-life detective story." - Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat : Why It's So Hard To Think Straight About Animals

Beginning with the very origins of life on Earth, Woolfson considers pre-historic human-animal interaction and traces the millennia-long evolution of conceptions of the soul and conscience in relation to the animal kingdom, and the consequences of our belief in human superiority. She explores our representation of animals in art, our consumption of them for food, our experiments on them for science, and our willingness to slaughter them for sport and fashion, as well as examining concepts of love and ownership. Drawing on philosophy and theology, art and history, as well as her own experience of living with animals and coming to know, love and respect them as individuals, Woolfson examines some of the most complex ethical issues surrounding our treatment of animals and argues passionately and persuasively for a more humble, more humane, relationship with the creatures who share our world.

An exploration of the various ways animals and their relations to humans have been depicted throughout the ages. This volume delves into the realm between representative images and real animals. It is a historical inquiry into human interaction with the animals we eat, pamper, experiment on, and imagine, as they have been variously domesticated, slaughtered, loved, studied, and made into icons of human invention. Common assumptions and experiences with animals have entered into the functioning and conceptualizing of life, yet these are historically and culturally contingent. The essays in this volume unveil the ways in which human-animal relationships reveal the interhuman structures of the cultures in which they are formed. By using animals as a lens, they refocus our awareness of the ways in which humans have allotted resources, gathered knowledge, and structured families. The treatment of animals is often a guide to the treatment of people within a society, while the perceived 'stewardship' of humans over animals has helped shape the broader environment that both human and nonhuman animals share. The authors tackle their subject from a variety of levels -- popular, scientific, and economic. The essays explore the vast borderland between human ideas and physical nature regarding animal representation. Contributors include Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., Jonathan Burt, Ken C. Erickson, Katherine C. Grier, Richard C. Hoffmann, Andrew C. Isenberg, JacquelineMilliet, John Solomon Otto, Karen A. Rader, Harriet Ritvo, Nigel Rothfels, Kenneth J. Shapiro, and Edward I. Steinhart. Mary Henninger-Voss is an Associate of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University.

This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on "what" zoos do, few people consider "how" they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland.
"Zooland" begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and education.
Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register, track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals, deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire. "Zooland" takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the human and the nonhuman.

This is the first book in the UK or the US to set on record the recent cultural phenomenon of the use of certain dog breeds - both legal and illegal - to 'convey status' to their owners. Such dogs are easily visible on social housing estates and provide acquired authority, respect, power and control. However, they are increasingly linked to urban street gangs as 'weapon dogs' and present a danger to the general public. Local and statutory authorities are now seeking to address the issue through action plans and interventions. Written in a fresh, engaging and accessible style, this unique book contextualises the phenomenon in terms of sociology, criminology and public policy. It makes essential reading for academics and policy makers in criminology and criminal justice and those working with animal rights/animal welfare groups.

As Julie Urbanik vividly illustrates, non-human animals are central to our daily human lives. We eat them, wear them, live with them, work them, experiment on them, try to save them, spoil them, abuse them, fight them, hunt them, buy and sell them, love them, and hate them. Placing Animals is the first book to bring together the historical development of the field of animal geography with a comprehensive survey of how geographers study animals today. Urbanik provides readers with a thorough understanding of the relationship between animal geography and the larger animal studies project, an appreciation of the many geographies of human-animal interactions around the world, and insight into how animal geography is both challenging and contributing to the major fields of human and nature-society geography. Through the theme of the role of place in shaping where and why human-animal interactions occur, the chapters in turn explore the history of animal geography and our distinctive relationships in the home, on farms, in the context of labor, in the wider culture, and in the wild.

The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History provides an up-to-date guide for the historian working within the growing field of animal-human history. Giving a sense of the diversity and interdisciplinary nature of the field, cutting-edge contributions explore the practices of and challenges posed by historical studies of animals and animal-human relationships. Divided into three parts, the Companion takes both a theoretical and practical approach to a field that is emerging as a prominent area of study. Animals and the Practice of History considers established practices of history, such as political history, public history and cultural memory, and how animal-human history can contribute to them. Problems and Paradigms identifies key historiographical issues to the field with contributors considering the challenges posed by topics such as agency, literature, art and emotional attachment. The final section, Themes and Provocations, looks at larger themes within the history of animal-human relationships in more depth, with contributions covering topics that include breeding, war, hunting and eating. As it is increasingly recognised that nonhuman actors have contributed to the making of history, The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History provides a timely and important contribution to the scholarship on animal-human history and surrounding debates.

The ethical treatment of non-human animals is an increasingly significant issue, directly affecting how people share the planet with other creatures and visualize themselves within the natural world. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics is a key reference source in this area, looking specifically at the role religion plays in the formation of ethics around these concerns. Featuring thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the handbook is divided into two parts. The first gives an overview of fifteen of the major world religions' attitudes towards animal ethics and protection. The second features five sections addressing the following topics: Human Interaction with Animals Killing and Exploitation Religious and Secular Law Evil and Theodicy Souls and Afterlife This handbook demonstrates that religious traditions, despite often being anthropocentric, do have much to offer to those seeking a framework for a more enlightened relationship between humans and non-human animals. As such, The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, theology, and animal ethics as well as those studying the philosophy of religion and ethics more generally.

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: the symbolic role of birds in early modern writing; hunting rites and animal rights; the domestication of animals; the popularity of performing animals; the development of illustrated works of natural history; changing philosophical views of animal nature; and artistic practice in the visual representation of animals. 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

"In this brilliant study of cloned wild life, Carrie Friese adds a whole new dimension to the study of reproduction, illustrating vividly and persuasively how social and biological reproduction are inextricably bound together, and why this matters."--Sarah Franklin, author of Dolly Mixtures: the Remaking of Genealogy The natural world is marked by an ever-increasing loss of varied habitats, a growing number of species extinctions, and a full range of new kinds of dilemmas posed by global warming. At the same time, humans are also working to actively shape this natural world through contemporary bioscience and biotechnology. In Cloning Wild Life, Carrie Friese posits that cloned endangered animals in zoos sit at the apex of these two trends, as humans seek a scientific solution to environmental crisis. Often fraught with controversy, cloning technologies, Friese argues, significantly affect our conceptualizations of and engagements with wildlife and nature. By studying animals at different locations, Friese explores the human practices surrounding the cloning of endangered animals. She visits zoos--the San Diego Zoological Park, the Audubon Center in New Orleans, and the Zoological Society of London--to see cloning and related practices in action, as well as attending academic and medical conferences and interviewing scientists, conservationists, and zookeepers involved in cloning. Ultimately, she concludes that the act of recalibrating nature through science is what most disturbs us about cloning animals in captivity, revealing that debates over cloning become, in the end, a site of political struggle between different human groups. Moreover, Friese explores the implications of the social role that animals at the zoo play in the first place--how they are viewed, consumed, and used by humans for our own needs. A unique study uniting sociology and the study of science and technology, Cloning Wild Life demonstrates just how much bioscience reproduces and changes our ideas about the meaning of life itself. Carrie Friese is Lecturer in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Animal spectacles are vital to a holistic appreciation of Spanish culture. In Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain, Beusterien christens five previously unnamed animals, each of which was a protagonist in a spectacle: Abada, the rhinoceros; Hawa'i, the elephant; Fuleco, the armadillo; Jarama, the bull; and Maghreb, the lion. In presenting and analyzing their stories, Beusterien enriches our understanding of the role of animals in the development of commercial theater in Spain and in the modern bullfight. He also contributes to growing scholarly conversations on the importance of Spain in the history of science by examining how animal spectacles had profound repercussions on the emergence of the modern zoo and natural history museum. Combining scholarly content analysis and pedagogical sagacity, the book has a broad appeal for scholars of the early modern Spanish Empire, animal studies scholars, and secondary and postsecondary instructors looking for engaging exercises and information for their Spanish language, culture, and history students.

Wild animals form an integral component of the human leisure experience. They are a significant part of the leisure industry and are economically valuable entities. However, as sentient beings, animals also have rights and welfare needs, and, like humans, may also have their own leisure desires and requirements. This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the rights and welfare of humans and wild animals as the two relate to one another within the sphere of leisure studies. It examines a wide array of animals, such as wolves, elephants, dolphins and apes, in a diverse range of leisure settings in international locations, from captive wild animals in zoos, hunting, swimming with dolphins and animals used as educators and for tourist entertainment. This book provides a forum for future considerations of wild animals and leisure and a voice for animal welfarist agendas that seek to improve the conditions under which wild animals interact with and are engaged with by humans.

This book explores issues raised by past and present practices of animal enhancement in terms of their means and their goals, clarifies conceptual issues and identifies lessons that can be learned about enhancement practices, as they concern both animals and humans.

'Animals and Sociology' challenges traditional assumptions about the nature of sociology. Sociology often centres on humans; however, other animals are everywhere in society. Kay Peggs explores the significant contribution that sociology can make to our understanding of human relations with other animals.

This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on "what" zoos do, few people consider "how" they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland.
"Zooland" begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and education.
Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register, track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals, deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire. "Zooland" takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the human and the nonhuman.

What is the role of government in protecting animal welfare? What principles should policy makers draw on as they try to balance animal welfare against human liberty?
Much has been written in recent years on our moral duties towards animals, but scholars and activists alike have neglected the important question of how far the state may go to enforce those duties. Kimberly K. Smith fills that gap by exploring how liberal political principles apply to animal welfare policy. Focusing on animal welfare in the United States, Governing Animals begins with an account of the historical relationship between animals and the development of the American liberal welfare state. It then turns to the central theoretical argument: Some animals (most prominently pets and livestock) may be considered members of the liberal social contract. That conclusion justifies limited state intervention to defend their welfare - even when such intervention may harm human citizens. Taking the analysis further, the study examines whether citizens may enjoy property rights in animals, what those rights entail, how animals may be represented in our political and legal institutions, and what strategies for reform are most compatible with liberal principles. The book takes up several policy issues along the way, from public funding of animal rescue operations to the ethics of livestock production, animal sacrifice, and animal fighting.
Beyond even these specific policy questions, this book asks what sort of liberalism is suitable for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Smith argues that investigating the political morality of our treatment of animals gives us insight into how to design practices and institutions that protect the most vulnerable members of our society, thus making of our shared world a more fitting home for both humans and the nonhumans to which we are so deeply connected.

This is the first book in the UK or US to set on record the recent cultural phenomenon of the use of certain dog breeds - both legal and illegal - to 'convey status' upon their owners. Such dogs are easily visible on social housing estates throughout the UK and in projects in the USA and provide acquired authority, respect, power and control. However they are increasingly linked to urban street gangs as 'Weapon Dogs' and present a danger to the ordinary public especially those using parks and open spaces with increased injuries being presented at UK hospitals. Though initially slow to react, local and statutory authorities are now seeking to address the issue through action plans and interventions. Written in a fresh, engaging and accessible style, this unique book contextualizes the phenomenon in terms of sociology, criminology and public policy. It considers a complex mix of urban and social deprivation, social control of public space and the influence of contemporary media imagery and 'gangsta' culture. It will make essential reading for academics and policy makers in criminology and criminal justice and those working with animal rights/animal welfare groups.

This book critically examines the many ways in which tourism and animals intersect, whether as tourist attractions, wildlife conservation tools, as travel companions or as meat to be eaten. It aims to make a meaningful contribution to the growing body of knowledge concerning the relationships between animals, tourists and the tourism industry. The chapters are organised into three themes: ethics and welfare; conflict, contradiction and contestation; and shifting relationships. Theoretically informed and empirically rich, the chapters examine topics such as whale watching, animal performances, the objectification and commodification of animals and stakeholder conflict among a range of others. It is hoped that the book will help to highlight key research questions and stimulate other researchers and students to reflect critically on the place of animals within tourism spaces, experiences, practices and structures.

In 2008 a clip was posted on YouTube which became a worldwide sensation. The clip, known as the Christian the Lion reunion, showed an emotional reunion between two men and a lion. They had purchased the lion cub at Harrods in London, kept him as a pet, then rehomed him in Kenya on George Adamson's Kora Reserve. Key themes of the essays in Captured: the Animal within Culture are encapsulated in Christian's story: the implications of the physical and cultural capture of animals. As commodities trafficked for profit or spectacle, as subjects of scientific endeavour, the invisibility of animal capture and the suffering it invariably brings takes place in the context of a proliferation of representations of animals in all aspects of human culture. Leading scholars discuss films, novels, popular culture, performance and histories of animal capture and several of the essays provide compelling accounts of animal lives.

'This is an unexpectedly funny and moving book. You might not expect to laugh when reading about ISIS-held Mosul, but through the story of a man who loves both lions and life, Louise Callaghan shows how humour and defiance can counter cruelty, and why both humans and animals crave freedom' Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor, Channel 4 News and author of In Extremis: the life of war correspondent Marie Colvin.

Between 2014 and 2017, the 'Islamic State' ruled the city of Mosul, in northern Iraq, killing 'traitors', destroying books and oppressing women. But miraculously, in a park on the eastern edge of the Tigris, a zoo was kept open.

Father of Lions is the story of Mosul Zoo. It survived under the stern hand of Abu Laith, the zookeeper, a man with an interesting past and a lifelong animal lover. His real name was Imad, but for as long as he could remember everyone had called him by his nickname, Abu Laith – 'Father of Lions'. And the lions and bears survived not only two years of Isis occupation, but starvation and bombardment by liberating forces.

As the animals began to starve, Abu Laith and his family and helpers went hungry to keep them alive. They risked their lives to pick through bins for leftovers in Isis-occupied neighbourhoods. In a final heroic effort, the surviving animals were smuggled out of Iraq in a daring rescue operation.

This is a story of human decency in the midst of barbarism.

An intrepid investigation of the criminal world of wildlife trafficking ― the poachers, the traders, and the customers ― and of those fighting against it.

Journalist Rachel Love Nuwer plunges the reader into the underground of global wildlife trafficking, a topic she has been investigating for nearly a decade. Our insatiable demand for animals ― for jewellery, pets, medicine, meat, trophies, and fur ― is driving a worldwide poaching epidemic, threatening the continued existence of countless species. Illegal wildlife trade now ranks among the largest contraband industries in the world, yet compared to drug, arms, or human trafficking, the wildlife crisis has received scant attention and support, leaving it up to passionate individuals fighting on the ground to try to ensure that elephants, tigers, rhinos, and more are still around for future generations.

Poached takes readers to the front lines of the trade: to killing fields in Africa, traditional-medicine black markets in China, and wild-meat restaurants in Vietnam. Through exhaustive first-hand reporting that took her to ten countries, Nuwer explores the forces currently driving demand for animals and their parts; the toll that demand is extracting on species across the planet; and the conservationists, rangers, and activists who are working to stop the impending extinctions ― people who believe this is a battle that can be won, that our animals are not beyond salvation.

Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity examines literary depictions of slaughterhouses from the development of the industrial abattoir in the late nineteenth century to today. The book focuses on how increasing and ongoing isolation and concealment of slaughter from the surrounding society affects readings and depictions of slaughter and abattoirs in literature, and on the degree to which depictions of animals being slaughtered creates an avenue for empathic reactions in the reader or the opportunity for reflections on human-animal relations. Through chapters on abattoir fictions in relation to narrative empathy, anthropomorphism, urban spaces, rural spaces, human identities and horror fiction, Sune Borkfelt contributes to debates in literary animal studies, human-animal studies and beyond.

Intensive animal agriculture wrongs many, many animals. Philosophers have argued, on this basis, that most people in wealthy Western contexts are morally obligated to avoid animal products. This book explains why the author thinks that's mistaken. He reaches this negative conclusion by contending that the major arguments for veganism fail: they don't establish the right sort of connection between producing and eating animal-based foods. Moreover, if they didn't have this problem, then they would have other ones: we wouldn't be obliged to abstain from all animal products, but to eat strange things instead-e.g., roadkill, insects, and things left in dumpsters. On his view, although we have a collective obligation not to farm animals, there is no specific diet that most individuals ought to have. Nevertheless, he does think that some people are obligated to be vegans, but that's because they've joined a movement, or formed a practical identity, that requires that sacrifice. This book argues that there are good reasons to make such a move, albeit not ones strong enough to show that everyone must do likewise.

Intersectionality of Critical Animal Studies: A Historical Collection represents the very best that the internationally scholarly Journal for Critical Animal Studies (JCAS) has published in terms of articles that are written by public critical scholar-activists-organizers for public critical scholar-activists-organizers. This move toward publishing pieces about engaging social change, rather than high-theoretical detached analysis of nonhuman animals in society, is to regain focus for liberation at all costs. The essays in this collection focus on intersectionality scholarship within the realm of Critical Animal Studies, and discuss issues related to race, gender, disability, class, and queerness. Not only are these articles historically significant within the field of Critical Animal Studies, but they are integral to the overall social justice movement. Intersectionality of Critical Animal Studies: A Historical Collection should be read by anyone interested in the Critical Animal Studies field, as we consider them to be classic writings that should be respected as foundational texts. There are many interesting and innovative texts, but these are historical, not only because they were published in JCAS, but because they were among the first to publish on a particular intersectional issue.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008 Human culture is now more dangerous to nonhuman animals than ever before. The destruction of natural habitats and the killing of animals for food, science, medicine or trophy - sometimes to the point of extinction - is the stuff of newspaper headlines. We live in a time when the idea of an animal's habitat has almost become irrelevant, except as a historical curiosity, yet also in a time when the public and philosophical acknowledgement of animal rights and environmental ethics is on the rise. Animals are enmeshed in human culture simply because people are so interested in them. Animals remain central to our sense of the natural world. Our pets are often seen as our closest companions through life. At the same time, the last century has seen the use of animals in scientific experimentation and the major changes in industrial-scale animal farming. Never has the relationship between human and non-human animals been more hotly contested. 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 6 in the Cultural History of Animals edited by Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl