The multiple ways in which people relate to animals provide a revealing window through which to examine a culture. Western cultures tend to view animals either as pets or food, and often overlook the vast number of roles that they may play within a culture and in social life more generally: their use in medicine, folk traditions and rituals. This comprehensive and very readable study focuses on Malawi people and their rich and varied relationship with animals -- from hunting through to their use as medicine. More broadly, through a rigorous and detailed study the author provides insights which show how the people's relationship to their world manifests itself not strictly in social relations, but just as tellingly in their relatioships with animals -- that, in fact, animals constitute a vital role in social relations. While significantly advancing classic African ethnographic studies, this book also incorporates current debates in a wide range of disciplines -- from anthropology through to gender studies and ecology.

This book is an interdisciplinary study centred on the political and legal position of animals in liberal democracies. With due concern for both animals and the sustainability of liberal democracies, The Open Society and Its Animals seeks to redefine animals' political-legal position in the most successful political model of our time. Advancements in modern science point out that many animals are sentient and that, like humans, they have certain elementary interests. The revised perception of animals as beings with elementary interests raises questions concerning the liberal democratic institutional framework: does a liberal democracy have a responsibility towards the animals on its territory, and if so, what kind? Do animals need legal animal rights and lawyers to represent them in court, and should they also be represented in parliament? And how much change of this kind could a liberal democracy really endure? Vink addresses these and other pressing questions relating to the political and legal position of animals in this persuasive and authoritative work, compelling us to reconsider the relationship between the open society and the animals in it.

This book investigates the popularity and success of contemporary women performers in bullfighting culture, which has been framed by a discourse of 'traditionalist' masculinity. This examination of the changing situation of women in the bullfighting world is used to explore the ways in which gender is represented, enacted and negotiated in contemporary Spain.The bullfight in the 1990s is in an ambiguous position: it is a 'traditional' performance in a changing consumer society. In order to survive, it needs to adapt itself to a wider social context and, in particular, to international media coverage. It is in this context that the current success of women performers is located. However, women performers are a contested phenomenon in the bullfighting world: there is heated debate over their acceptability, much of which focuses on the body. Moreover, the entry of women into the bullfight questions existing definitions of the sport's ritual structure and of gender relations in Spain.Thoroughly researched and compelling to read, "Women and Bullfighting" addresses these issues and argues that existing traditionalist approaches to gender, bullfighting and ritual in Spain need to be revised in order to locate women bullfighters in the context of a richly varied culture which is increasingly affected by the media and contemporary patterns of consumption.This provocative book will be of interest to researchers and students of anthropology, gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, media studies and Spanish studies.

This book investigates the popularity and success of contemporary women performers in bullfighting culture, which has been framed by a discourse of 'traditionalist' masculinity. This examination of the changing situation of women in the bullfighting world is used to explore the ways in which gender is represented, enacted and negotiated in contemporary Spain.The bullfight in the 1990s is in an ambiguous position: it is a 'traditional' performance in a changing consumer society. In order to survive, it needs to adapt itself to a wider social context and, in particular, to international media coverage. It is in this context that the current success of women performers is located. However, women performers are a contested phenomenon in the bullfighting world: there is heated debate over their acceptability, much of which focuses on the body. Moreover, the entry of women into the bullfight questions existing definitions of the sport's ritual structure and of gender relations in Spain.Thoroughly researched and compelling to read, "Women and Bullfighting" addresses these issues and argues that existing traditionalist approaches to gender, bullfighting and ritual in Spain need to be revised in order to locate women bullfighters in the context of a richly varied culture which is increasingly affected by the media and contemporary patterns of consumption.This provocative book will be of interest to researchers and students of anthropology, gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, media studies and Spanish studies.

"Within a day of receiving this book, I had consumed it... Absorbing, moving, and compulsively readable."-Lydia Davis In this affectionate, heart-warming chronicle, Rosamund Young distills a lifetime of organic farming wisdom, describing the surprising personalities of her cows and other animals At her famous Kite's Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. "Fat Hat" prefers men to women; "Chippy Minton" refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; "Jake" has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and "Gemima" greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent. An organic farmer for decades, Young has an unaffected and homely voice. Her prose brims with genuine devotion to the wellbeing of animals. Most of us never apprehend the various inner lives animals possess, least of all those that we might eat. But Young has spent countless hours observing how these creatures love, play games, and form life-long friendships. She imparts hard-won wisdom about the both moral and real-world benefits of organic farming. (If preserving the dignity of animals isn't a good enough reason for you, consider how badly factory farming stunts the growth of animals, producing unhealthy and tasteless food.) This gorgeously-illustrated book, which includes an original introduction by the legendary British playwright Alan Bennett, is the summation of a life's work, and a delightful and moving tribute to the deep richness of animal sentience.

Enhanced with beautiful full-colour photographs, these true stories of camaraderie, affection, and remarkable bravery are from the author of the New York Times bestsellers Unlikely Friendships, Unlikely Loves, and Unlikely Heroes, as well as other books and calendars, with nearly two-million copies in print. Meet Rex, a Belgian Malinois who learned to love and trust again through the improbable friendship of a goose. The pit bull named Dolly, whose antics with her best friend, Sheldon the tortoise, include games of tag. For the millions of dog lovers, this heart-warming and inspirational book celebrates 39 stories of unusual canine companionship.

'Killing It combines three popular, profound topics: where our food comes from, how to achieve purpose in life and how to find lasting love' - Sunday Times

After a career spent writing about food, Camas Davis came to a realization: she had never forced herself to grapple with how it actually got to her plate. Out of love with her life and with the world she found herself in, she knew she had to make a change.

And so she set off for France. There, in the rolling countryside of Gascony, she would learn the art of butchery, and with it the art of eating and drinking well. Surrounded by farmers, producers, cooks and food-lovers, eating some of the world's least processed and most lovingly made food, Camas discovered the very authenticity she'd longed for in her old life. She just needed to return to America, and bring what she'd learnt back with her . . .

Killing It is the story of one woman's quest to understand what it means to be human and what it means to be animal too.

Food is routinely given attention in tourism research as a motivator of travel. Regardless of whether tourists travel with a primary motivation for experiencing local food, eating is required during their trip. This book encompasses an interdisciplinary discussion of animals as a source of food within the context of tourism. Themes include the raising, harvesting, and processing of farm animals for food; considerations in marketing animals as food; and the link between consuming animals and current environmental concerns. Ethical issues are addressed in social, economic, environmental, and political terms. The chapters are grounded in ethics-related theories and frameworks including critical theory, ecofeminism, gustatory ethics, environmental ethics, ethics within a political economy context, cultural relativism, market construction paradigm, ethical resistance, and the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria. Several chapters explore contradicting and paradoxical ethical perspectives, whether those contradictions exist between government and private sector, between tourism and other industries, or whether they lie within ourselves. Like the authors in Tourism Experiences & Animal Consumption: Contested Values, Morality, & Ethics, the authors in this book wrestle with a range of issues such as animal sentience, the environmental consequences of animals as food, viewing animals solely as a extractive resource for human will, as well as the artificial cultural distortion of animals as food for tourism marketing purposes. This book will appeal to tourism academics and graduate students as a reference for their own research or as supplementary material for courses focused on ethics within tourism.

This book focuses not only on the practical problems of animal control but examines related issues that have received less attention. It covers the psychological bases of resistance to spay/neuter, and discusses the sensitive subject of the animal rights attitude toward euthanasia. it explores the possibility of chemical, rather than surgical, sterilization, and proposes a humane method of dealing with feral cats under certain circumstances. It presents the possibility of early spay/neuter, and offers a glimpse of the conditions of animal shelters in some other countries and how they are beginning to be handled. The contributors include veterinarians, a philosopher, teachers, animal control and shelter personnel and directors, a psychiatrist and an attorney.

Whether their populations are perceived as too large, just right, too small or non-existent, animal numbers matter to the humans with whom they share environments. Animals in the right numbers are accepted and even welcomed, but when they are seen to deviate from the human-declared set point, they become either enemies upon whom to declare war or victims to be protected. In this edited volume, leading and emerging scholars investigate for the first time the ways in which the size of an animal population impacts how they are viewed by humans and, conversely, how human perceptions of populations impact animals. This collection explores the fortunes of amphibians, mammals, insects and fish whose numbers have created concern in settler Australia and examines shifts in these populations between excess, abundance, equilibrium, scarcity and extinction. The book points to the importance of caution in future campaigns to manipulate animal populations, and demonstrates how approaches from the humanities can be deployed to bring fresh perspectives to understandings of how to live alongside other animals.

In this ethnography of Krakowian society, Siobhan Magee explores essential questions on the relationship between fur and culture in Poland. How can wearing a fur coat indicate someone's political views in Krakow, beyond their opinion on animal rights? What kinds of associations are given to someone wearing a fur coat in Poland? And what impact does generational difference have on the fur-wearing traditions of modern day Krakowians? Magee looks further into detailed analyses of conversations held relating to fur, including why fur is an apt inheritance for a grandmother to pass on to her granddaughter; what it was like trading fur on 'black markets' during socialism, and why some anti-fur activists link fur to patriarchal power and the Roman Catholic Church. In so doing, it becomes clear how fur is an evocative textile with an uncommonly rich symbolic and historical significance."Magee's research uncovers the symbolic and historic significance that fur evokes in relation to culture in Poland. In her investigations, her ethnography becomes a means for understanding generational difference in Poland. Written with reference to extensive fieldwork, Magee goes on to show how the classification of generation can be a much more accessible indicator and measure of difference than other categories, including sexuality, class and faith. Thus, 'generation' and 'inheritance' are shown to be uniquely powerful idioms with which to discuss power and social change in Poland. A new contribution to material culture and the sensory turn, this will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, ethnography, eastern Europe and material culture and textiles.

This volume is a collection of essays concerned with the morality of hu man treatment of nonhuman animals. The contributors take very different approaches to their topics and come to widely divergent conclusions. The goal of the volume as a whole is to shed a brighter light upon an aspect of human life-our relations with the other animals-that has recently seen a great increase in interest and in the generation of heat. The discussions and debates contained herein are addressed by the contributors to each other, to the general public, and to the academic world, especially the biological, philosophical, and political parts of that world. The essays are organized into eight sections by topics, each sec tion beginning with a brief introduction linking the papers and the sec tions to one another. There is also a general introduction and an Epilog that suggests alternate possible ways of organizing the material. The first two sections are concerned with the place of animals in the human world: Section I with the ways humans view animals in literature, philosophy, and other parts of human culture, and Section II with the place of animals in human legal and moral community. The next three sections concern comparisons between human and nonhuman animals: Section III on the rights and wrongs of killing, Section IV on the humanity of animals and the animality of humans, and Section V on questions of the conflict of human and animal interests."

Masked bandits of the night, raiders of farm crops and rubbish bins, raccoons are notorious for their indifference to human property and propriety, yet they are also admired for their intelligence, dexterity and determination. Raccoons have also thoroughly adapted to human-dominated environments; they are thriving in numbers greater than at any point of their evolutionary history... including in new habitats. Raccoon surveys the natural and cultural history of this opportunistic omnivore, tracing its biological evolution, social significance, and image in a range of media and political contexts. From intergalactic misanthropes and despoilers of ancient temples to coveted hunting quarry, unpredictable pet, and symbols of wilderness and racial stereotype alike, Raccoon offers a lively consideration of this misunderstood outlaw species.

Since 2013, an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought before the New York State courts an unusual request-asking for habeas corpus hearings to determine whether Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees, should be considered legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty. While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanzees are persons on superficial and sometimes conflicting grounds. Consequently, Kiko and Tommy remain confined as legal "things" with no rights. The major moral and legal question remains unanswered: are chimpanzees mere "things", as the law currently sees them, or can they be "persons" possessing fundamental rights? In Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief, a group of renowned philosophers considers these questions. Carefully and clearly, they examine the four lines of reasoning the courts have used to deny chimpanzee personhood: species, contract, community, and capacities. None of these, they argue, merits disqualifying chimpanzees from personhood. The authors conclude that when judges face the choice between seeing Kiko and Tommy as things and seeing them as persons-the only options under current law-they should conclude that Kiko and Tommy are persons who should therefore be protected from unlawful confinement "in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice." Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief-an extended version of the amicus brief submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in Kiko's and Tommy's cases-goes to the heart of fundamental issues concerning animal rights, personhood, and the question of human and nonhuman nature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these issues.

In 1943, fierce aerial bombardment razed the Berlin zoo and killed most of its animals. But only two months after the war's end, Berliners had already resurrected it, reopening its gates and creating a symbol of endurance in the heart of a shattered city. As this episode shows, the Berlin zoo offers one of the most unusual-yet utterly compelling-lenses through which to view German history. This enormously popular attraction closely mirrored each of the political systems under which it existed: the authoritarian monarchy of the kaiser, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and the post-1945 democratic and communist states. Gary Bruce provides the first English-language history of the Berlin zoo, from its founding in 1844 until the 1990 unification of the West Berlin and East Berlin zoos. At the center of the capital's social life, the Berlin zoo helped to shape German views not only of the animal world but also of the human world for more than 150 years. Given its enormous reach, the German government used the zoo to spread its political message, from the ethnographic display of Africans, Inuit, and other "exotic" peoples in the late nineteenth century to the Nazis' bizarre attempts to breed back long-extinct European cattle. By exploring the intersection of zoology, politics, and leisure, Bruce shows why the Berlin zoo was the most beloved institution in Germany for so long: it allowed people to dream of another place, far away from an often grim reality. It is not purely coincidence that the profound connection of Berliners to their zoo intensified through the bloody twentieth century. Its exotic, iconic animals-including Rostom the elephant, Knautschke the hippo, and Evi the sun bear-seemed to satisfy, even partially, a longing for a better, more tranquil world.

This engaging volume explores and defends the claim that misanthropy is a justified attitude towards humankind in the light of how human beings both compare with and treat animals. Reflection on differences between humans and animals helps to confirm the misanthropic verdict, while reflection on the moral and other failings manifest in our treatment of animals illuminates what is wrong with this treatment. Human failings, it is argued, are too entrenched to permit optimism about the future of animals, but ways are proposed in which individual people may accommodate to the truth of misanthropy through cultivating mindful, humble and compassionate relationships to animals. Drawing on both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions David E. Cooper offers an original and challenging approach to the complex field of animal ethics.

Winner, 2020 ASCA Book Award, given by the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis A groundbreaking argument for the political rights of animals In When Animals Speak, Eva Meijer develops a new, ground-breaking theory of language and politics, arguing that non-human animals speak-and, most importantly, act-politically. From geese and squid to worms and dogs, she highlights the importance of listening to animal voices, introducing ways to help us bridge the divide between the human and non-human world. Drawing on insights from science, philosophy, and politics, Meijer provides fascinating, real-world examples of animal communities who use their voices to speak, and act, in political ways. When Animals Speak encourages us to rethink our relations with other animals, showing that their voices should be taken into account as the starting point for a new interspecies democracy.

Bringing readers from aww to awful! in a matter of seconds, I Don't Really Love You seamlessly blends images of charming pets with hilarious, soul-crushing captions about the existential dread that seems to permeate daily life. Darkly humorous one-liners, from "Birthdays don't matter" to "Inadequacy haunts me endlessly," will peek out from behind the forms of calm cats and happy-go-lucky puppies, creating an unexpected contrast that takes readers on a journey from delightful to depressing (and back again!) Pet lovers and humor lovers will be captivated in equal measure, with more than 75 full-color photographs of cats and dogs in a range of breeds, alongside an off-beat, subversive voice. With the perfect attitude for our rapidly changing world, this quirky book will make readers laugh out loud (after sending them crawling under the covers to contemplate their existence).

A train stops on the tracks in the middle of the night and a lone woman steps out, following a call from deep in the forest. In these six richly imagined short stories, Andrea Lundgren explores a liminal space where the town meets the wilderness and human consciousness meets something more animalistic. From foxes to blue whales to angels, the creatures that roam through these stories spark a desire for something more in their human counterparts: a longing for transformation. Whether dealing with familial tensions, romantic troubles, or a crisis of faith, their human anguish is explored with psychological depth and poetic insight in the earthy, evocative world of Lundgren's northern borderlands.