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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn takes us to the edge of biology's latest frontier: our own homes. Every house is a wilderness -- from the Egyptian meal moths in our kitchen cupboards and the yeast in a sourdough starter, to the camel crickets living in the basement, to the thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants live literally under our noses. Our reaction, too often, is to sterilize. As we do, we unwittingly cultivate an entirely new playground for evolution. Unfortunately, this means that we have created a range of new parasites, from antibiotic-resistant microbes to nearly impossible to kill cockroaches, to threaten ourselves with, and destroyed helpful housemates. If we're not careful, the "healthier" we try to make our homes, the more likely we'll be putting our own health at risk. A rich natural history and a thrilling scientific investigation, Never Home Alone shows us that if are to truly thrive in our homes, we must learn to welcome the unknown guests that have been there the whole time.
This book advances current literature on the role and place of animals in sport and society. It explores different forms of sporting spaces, examines how figures of animals have been used to racialize the human athlete, and encourages the reader to think critically about animal ethics, animals in space, time and place, and the human-animal relationship. The chapters highlight persistent dichotomies in the use of and collaboration with animals for sport, and present strategies for moving forward in the study of interspecies relations.
Is it acceptable to kill an animal that has been granted a pleasant life? This book rigorously explores the moral basis of the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry. Utilitarianism is recognised as being the moral theory that, historically, has contributed most to the recognition of animal suffering as an evil. This book sheds new light on utilitarian moral theory by pointing out the assumptions and implications of two different versions of utilitarianism. One version, total utilitarianism, can indeed morally justify the routine killing of animals, provided that they have been granted pleasant lives. The other version, prior existence utilitarianism, implies a much stronger protection for animals, both human and non-human. Hence, in opposition to what is typically brought forward in the classrooms and in the literature, the utilitarian concern with animals need not be restricted to the avoidance of suffering. Utilitarianism has the resources to oppose the routine killing of animals, as practiced in animal husbandry and many other common practices of animal use.
Drawing on anthropological and historical data, this book examines human-wildlife relations in China, Tibet, Japan, Bhutan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Thailand and Vietnam. The volume initially focuses on the various ways in which wild animals are exploited as a resource, for food, medicine and crop-picking labour, before examining animals termed as pests or predators that are deemed to be harmful and dangerous. Bringing together anthropologists and historians, this book analyses the range, variability and historical mutability of human sensibilities towards animals in Asia and will be of interest to Asianists and anthropologists alike.
Elizabeth Sutton, using a phenomenological approach, investigates how animals in art invite viewers to contemplate human relationships to the natural world. Using Rembrandt van Rijn's etching of The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1640), Joseph Beuys's social sculpture I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), archaic rock paintings at Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, and examples from contemporary art, this book demonstrates how artists across time and cultures employed animals to draw attention to the sensory experience of the composition and reflect upon the shared sensory awareness of the world.
This edited collection testifies to the fact that the animal liberation movement is now entering its political phase, after a period dominated by ethical approaches that undermined the paradigm of human supremacy and demanded justice for nonhuman beings. The contributors of this book collectively confront and take on questions of social transformation, guided by the idea that philosophy has an important role to play even at such a new level. They start from such diverse perspectives as critical theory, left liberalism, and biopolitical thought. The result is an articulated picture in which, beyond any principled divergence, it is possible to detect the emergence of a relevant set of shared political preoccupations. This exploration of those offers fresh theoretical insights and suggestions for praxis.
This collection includes twelve provocative essays from a diverse group of international scholars, who utilize a range of interdisciplinary approaches to analyze "real" and "representational" animals that stand out as culturally significant to Victorian literature and culture. Essays focus on a wide range of canonical and non-canonical Victorian writers, including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Anna Sewell, Emily Bronte, James Thomson, Christina Rossetti, and Richard Marsh, and they focus on a diverse array of forms: fiction, poetry, journalism, and letters. These essays consider a wide range of cultural attitudes and literary treatments of animals in the Victorian Age, including the development of the animal protection movement, the importation of animals from the expanding Empire, the acclimatization of British animals in other countries, and the problems associated with increasing pet ownership. The collection also includes an Introduction co-written by the editors and Suggestions for Further Study, and will prove of interest to scholars and students across the multiple disciplines which comprise Animal Studies.
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to business organisation and administration. Written in a straightforward, readable style this textbook covers all the major aspects of the subject. Starting with the organisational background it goes on to cover the functions of the important departments within the firm, the role of the administrative officer, and other areas of knowledge vital to the smooth running of a business. There are self-assessment questions at the end of each section, past exam questions, study and exam tips and a full index.
Despite its inherent interdisciplinarity, the Communication discipline has remained an almost entirely anthropocentric enterprise. This book represents early and prominent forays into the subject of human-animal communication from a Communication Studies perspective, an effort that brings a discipline too long defined by that fallacy of division, human or nonhuman, into conversation with animal studies, biosemiotics, and environmental communication, as well as other recent intellectual and activist movements for reconceptualizing relationships and interactions in the biosphere. This book is a much-needed point of entry for future scholarship on animal-human communication, as well as the whole range of communication possibilities among the more-than-human world. It offers a groundbreaking transformation of higher education by charting new directions for communication research, policy formation, and personal and professional practices involving animals.
For thousands of years, in the myths and folktales of people around the world, animals have spoken in human tongues. Western and non-Western literary and folkloric traditions are filled with both speaking animals, some of whom even narrate or write their own autobiographies. Animals speak, famously, in children's stories and in cartoons and films, and today, social networking sites and blogs are both sites in which animals-primarily pets-write about their daily lives and interests. Speaking for Animals is a compilation of chapters written from a variety of disciplines that attempts to get a handle on this cross cultural and longstanding tradition of animal speaking and writing. It looks at speaking animals in literature, religious texts, poetry, social networking sites, comic books, and in animal welfare materials and even library catalogs, and addresses not just the "whys" of speaking animals, but the implications, for the animals and for ourselves.
This book surveys a broad range of contemporary texts to show how representations of human-animal relations challenge the anthropocentric nature of fiction. By looking at the relation between language and suffering in twenty-first-century fiction and drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches, Baker suggests new opportunities for exploring the centrality of nonhuman animals in recent fiction: writing animal lives leads to new narrative structures and forms of expression. These novels destabilise assumptions about the nature of pain and vulnerability, the burden of literary inheritance, the challenge of writing the Anthropocene, and the relation between text and image. Including both well-known authors and emerging talents, from J.M. Coetzee and Karen Joy Fowler to Sarah Hall, Alexis Wright, and Max Porter, and texts from experimental fiction to work for children, Writing Animals offers an original perspective on both contemporary fiction and the field of literary animal studies.
Is God a Vegetarian? is one of the most complete explorations of vegetarianism in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Young, a linguistics and New Testament scholar, attempts to answer the question being asked with greater and greater frequency: "Are Christians morally obligated to be vegetarians?" Many people are confused about the apparent mixed messages within the Bible. On the one hand, God prescribes a vegetarian diet in the Garden of Eden and the apocalyptic visions of Isaiah and John imply the restoration of a vegetarian diet. However, it is also clear that God permits, Jesus partakes in, and Paul sanctions the eating of flesh. Does the Bible give any clear guidance? Close readings of key biblical texts pertaining to dietary customs, vegetarianism, and animal rights make up the substance of the book. Rather than ignoring or offering a literal, twentieth-century interpretation of the passages, the author analyzes the voices of these conflicting dietary motifs within their own social contexts. Interwoven throughout these readings are discussions of contemporary issues, such as animal testing and experimentation, the fur industry, raising animals in factories, and the effects of meat-eating on human health. Thirteen chapters cover such topics as The author provides two vegetarian recipes at the end of each chapter. An epilogueincludes guidelines for becoming a vegetarian and a recommended reading list. Insightful and challenging, Is God a Vegetarian? poses provocative questions for vegetarians, Christians, and anyone reflecting upon her personal choices and ethical role in our world today.
The RSPB's Book of the Season The distinctive white-tailed sea eagle was driven to extinction in Britain more than 200 years ago, but this immense predator is making a return to our skies, thanks to Roy Dennis, an ornithologist, conservationist and arguably the driving force behind the UK's reintroduction agenda. Roy was instrumental in returning the Osprey, red kite and golden eagle to the British Isles, but the road to reintroduction isn't an easy one. In what will surely be the seminal book on British reintroductions, Roy details the painstaking process of returning the Goldeneye to Scotland, one duckling at a time, the die-hard determination needed to make a dazzling success of the red kite reintroduction and the leap of faith we will all need to make to accept sharing our forests and skies with large carnivores again. He also illustrates all that we have to gain by restoring our ecosystems to balance. Filled with a lifetime's worth of stories from the front lines of conservation, Reintroduction offers an eye-opening insight into the complexities of reintroducing extinct animals to Britain. It's also an intimate portrait of these apex predators and a reminder of why we need them.
The scientific, political, and industrial revolutions of the Romantic period transformed the status of humans and redefined the concept of species. This book examines literary representations of human and non-human animality in British Romanticism. The book's novel approach focuses on the role of aesthetic taste in the Romantic understanding of the animal. Concentrating on the discourses of the sublime, the beautiful, and the ugly, Heymans argues that the Romantics' aesthetic views of animality influenced-and were influenced by-their moral, scientific, political, and theological judgment. The study reveals how feelings of environmental alienation and disgust played a positive moral role in animal rights poetry, why ugliness presented such a major problem for Romantic-period scientists and theologians, and how, in political writings, the violent yet awe-inspiring power of exotic species came to symbolize the beauty and terror of the French Revolution. Linking the works of Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, Erasmus Darwin, and William Paley to the theories of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, this book brings an original perspective to the fields of ecocriticism, animal studies, and literature and science studies.
This book examines the ethics, politics and aesthetics of veganism in contemporary culture and thought. Traditionally a lifestyle located on the margins of western culture, veganism has now been propelled into the mainstream, and as agribusiness grows animal issues are inextricably linked to environmental impact as well as to existing ethical concerns. This collection connects veganism to a range of topics including gender, sexuality, race, the law and popular culture. It explores how something as basic as one's food choices continue to impact on the cultural, political, and philosophical discourse of the modern day, and asks whether the normalization of veganism strengthens or detracts from the radical impetus of its politics. With a Foreword by Melanie Joy and Jens Tuidor, this book analyzes the mounting prevalence of veganism as it appears in different cultural shifts and asks how veganism might be rethought and re-practised in the twenty-first century.
In this book, Daniel K. Miller articulates a new vision of human and animal relationships based on the foundational love ethic within Christianity. Framed around Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, Animal Ethics and Theology thoughtfully examines the shortcomings of utilitarian and rights-based approaches to animal ethics. By considering the question of animals within the Christian concept of neighbourly love, Miller provides an alternative narrative for understanding the complex relationships that humans have with other animals. This book addresses significant theological questions such as: Does being created in the image of God present a meaningful distinction between humans and other animals? What does it mean for humans to have dominion (Gen. 1:28) over animals? Is meat eating a moral problem for Christians? In addition to drawing out the significance of Christian theology for field of animal ethics this book also engages environmental and feminist ethics. Miller brings a theological perspective to such questions as: Should care for animals be distinguished from care for the environment, and what role should human emotions play in our ethical dealings with other animals? As the title suggests, this book provides fresh insight into the theological significance of human relationships with other animals.
This book analyses the animal images used in William Hogarth's art, demonstrating how animals were variously depicted as hybrids, edibles, companions, emblems of satire and objects of cruelty. Beirne offers an important assessment of how Hogarth's various audiences reacted to his gruesome images and ultimately what was meant by 'cruelty'.
With a new introduction by the author Some thousands of years ago, the world was home to an immense variety of large mammals. From wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to giant ground sloths and armadillos the size of automobiles, these spectacular creatures roamed freely. Then human beings arrived. Devouring their way down the food chain as they spread across the planet, they began a process of voracious extinction that has continued to the present. Headlines today are made by the existential threat confronting remaining large animals such as rhinos and pandas. But the devastation summoned by humans extends to humbler realms of creatures including beetles, bats and butterflies. Researchers generally agree that the current extinction rate is nothing short of catastrophic. Currently the earth is losing about a hundred species every day. This relentless extinction, Ashley Dawson contends in a primer that combines vast scope with elegant precision, is the product of a global attack on the commons, the great trove of air, water, plants and creatures, as well as collectively created cultural forms such as language, that have been regarded traditionally as the inheritance of humanity as a whole. This attack has its genesis in the need for capital to expand relentlessly into all spheres of life. Extinction, Dawson argues, cannot be understood in isolation from a critique of our economic system. To achieve this we need to transgress the boundaries between science, environmentalism and radical politics. Extinction: A Radical History performs this task with both brio and brilliance.
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, Shortlisted for the Stella Prize, Highly Commended in the Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation, and a Sunday Independent Book of the Year. How do whales experience environmental change? Has our connection to these animals been transformed by technology? What future awaits us, and them? Fathoms blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore these questions. Giggs introduces us to whales so rare they have never been named and tells us of whale 'pop' songs that sweep across hemispheres. She takes us into the deeps to discover that one whale's death can spark a great flourishing of creatures. We travel to Japan to board whaling ships, examine the uncanny charisma of these magnificent mammals, and confront the plastic pollution now pervading their underwater environment.
Although reasoned discourse on human-animal relations is often considered a late twentieth-century phenomenon, ethical debate over animals and how humans should treat them can be traced back to the philosophers and literati of the classical world. From Stoic assertions that humans owe nothing to animals that are intellectually foreign to them, to Plutarch's impassioned arguments for animals as sentient and rational beings, it is clear that modern debate owes much to Greco-Roman thought. Animals in Greek and Roman Thought brings together new translations of classical passages which contributed to ancient debate on the nature of animals and their relationship to human beings. The selections chosen come primarily from philosophical and natural historical works, as well as religious, poetic and biographical works. The questions discussed include: Do animals differ from humans intellectually? Were animals created for the use of humankind? Should animals be used for food, sport, or sacrifice? Can animals be our friends? The selections are arranged thematically and, within themes, chronologically. A commentary precedes each excerpt, transliterations of Greek and Latin technical terms are provided, and each entry includes bibliographic suggestions for further reading.
The Carol J. Adams Reader gathers together Adams's foundational and recent articles in the fields of critical studies, animal studies, media studies, vegan studies, ecofeminism and feminism, as well as relevant interviews and conversations in which Adams identifies key concepts and new developments in her decades-long work. This volume, a companion to The Sexual Politics of Meat (Bloomsbury Revelations), offers insight into a variety of urgent issues for our contemporary world: Why do batterers harm animals? What is the relationship between genocide and attitudes toward other animals? How do activism and theory feed each other? How do race, gender, and species categories interact in strengthening oppressive attitudes? In clear language, Adams identifies the often hidden aspects of cultural presumptions. The essays and conversations found here capture the decades-long energy and vision that continue to shape new ways of thinking about and responding to oppression.
Imagine going from neurologist to dermatologist, orthopaedic surgeon to obstetrician, assassin to saviour - all in one day. Welcome to the extraordinary world of veterinary medicine... In Never Work with Animals, vet Gareth Steel shares the moments of humour, horror and heroism across his 20-year career caring for creatures great and small, from bulls to stick insects. Thought-provoking, heartwarming and often laugh-out-loud funny, this unforgettable memoir reveals what life is really like for our vets.
Confronting Animal Abuse presents a powerful examination of the human-animal relationship and the laws designed to protect it. Piers Beirne, a leading scholar in the growing field of green criminology, explores the heated topic of animal abuse in agriculture, science, and sport, as well as what is known, if anything, about the potential for animal assault to lead to inter-human violence. He convincingly shows how from its roots in the Irish plow-fields of 1635 through today, animal-rights legislation has been primarily shaped by human interest and why we must reconsider the terms of human-animal relationships. Beirne argues that if violations of animals' rights are to be taken seriously, then scholars and activists should examine why some harms to animals are defined as criminal, others as abusive but not criminal and still others as neither criminal nor abusive. Confronting Animal Abuse points to the need for a more inclusive concept of harms to animals, without which the meaning of animal abuse will be overwhelmingly confined to those harms that are regarded as socially unacceptable, one-on-one cases of animal cruelty. Certainly, those cases demand attention. But so, too, do those other and far more numerous institutionalized harms to animals, where abuse is routine, invisible, ubiquitous and often defined as socially acceptable. In this pioneering, pro-animal book Beirne identifies flaws in our traditional understanding of human-animal relationships, and proposes a compelling new approach.
The third volume in the Institute of Animal Health (IAH) Biology of
Animal Infections Series, Bluetongue discusses one of the most
economically important diseases of domesticated livestock.
Affecting primarily sheep particularly the improved mutton and wool
breeds, it is now endemic in Africa, India, the Middle and Far
East, Australia and the Americas, and over the last six years has
caused a series of outbreaks throughout the Mediterranean region
and central Europe. Bluetongue represent a paradigm not only for
the other orbiviruses (such as African horse sickness virus, which
shares the same vector species) but also for other insect
transmitted diseases, including those of humans. |
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