|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
Animal lovers who feed meat to other animals are faced with a
paradox: perhaps fewer animals would be harmed if they stopped
feeding the ones they love. Animal diets do not raise problems
merely for individuals. To address environmental crises, health
threats, and harm to animals, we must change our food systems and
practices. And in these systems, animals, too, are eaters. Moving
beyond what humans should eat and whether to count animals as food,
Just Fodder answers ethical and political questions arising from
thinking about animals as eaters. Josh Milburn begins with
practical dilemmas about feeding the animals closest to us, our
pets or animal companions. The questions grow more complicated as
he considers relationships with more distance - questions about
whether and how to feed garden birds, farmland animals who would
eat our crops, and wild animals. Milburn evaluates the nature and
circumstances of our relationships with animals to generate a novel
theory of animal rights. Looking past arguments about what we can
and cannot do to other beings, Just Fodder asks what we can,
should, and must do for them, laying out a fuller range of our
ethical obligations to other animals.
'A do-er, not a dreamer, Gow has become one of our most outspoken
rewilders.' Countryfile Magazine 'In this warm and funny
autobiography, [Gow] writes with a whimsical fluency about the
moments of humour and pathos in an unusual life.' Country Life 'Gow
reinvents what it means to be a guardian of the countryside.'
Guardian 'Courageous, visionary, funny.' Isabella Tree, author of
Wilding Tearing down fences literally and metaphorically, Birds,
Beasts and Bedlam recounts the adventures of Britain's most
colourful rewilder, Derek Gow. How he raised a sofa-loving wild
boar piglet, transported a raging bison bull across the UK, got
bitten by a Scottish wildcat and restored the ancient white stork
to the Knepp Estate with Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree. After a
Shetland ewe captured a young Derek's heart, he grew up to become a
farmer with a passion for ancient breeds. But when he realised how
many of our species were close to extinction, even on his own land,
he tore up his traditional Devon farm and transformed it into a
rewilding haven for beavers, water voles, lynx, wildcats, harvest
mice and more. Birds, Beasts and Bedlam is the story of a rewilding
maverick and his single-minded mission to save our wildlife.
As seen on Channel 4's Steph's Packed Lunch! No Life Too Small is
the joyful and inspiring story of the world's first animal hospice,
celebrating the power and beauty of nature, the strength of the
human and animal spirit, and the importance of love, friendship and
community. It will leave you with a tear in your eye, a smile on
your face and a renewed belief in human kindness. A few years ago
Alexis Fleming was bedridden with a chronic illness. Things became
so bad that she wanted to end her life many times during this
period - but her beloved dog, Maggie, kept her going, especially
when doctors gave her just six weeks to live. Incredibly, Alexis
fought her way back to health with Maggie by her side, only for
Maggie to die of lung cancer two years later on a vet's operating
table. Alexis was devastated that Maggie had died without her and
decided to start an animal hospice in her name in the hope that she
could ensure other animals nearing the end of their life would not
have to die alone. Six months later, the Maggie Fleming Animal
Hospice was launched. Alexis has turned a dilapidated farm in rural
Scotland into a haven for animals to live out their last days in
comfort and at peace. With the help of the local community, despite
many challenges, the hospice came to life. Meanwhile , Alexis' own
health was deteriorating again and she needed life-threatening
surgery. Alexis came through the operation and the road to her
recovery was paved with companionship from the animals in her care,
particularly Bran, a dog who had been dumped with terminal cancer
and given six weeks. He recovered alongside Alexis and went on to
live for two more years. Dogs, however old and mangy, chickens,
sheep, goats, pigs, cockerels and even turkeys : The Maggie Fleming
Hospice is a place where all manner of terminally-ill, abandoned
animals come to live out their last days in comfort and are treated
with love. Looking after dying animals has taught Alexis what
really matters in life - kindness, compassion and love.
This accessible and cutting-edge work offers a new look at the
history of western 'civilization,' one that brings into focus the
interrelated suffering of oppressed humans and other animals.
Nibert argues persuasively that throughout history the exploitation
of other animals has gone hand in hand with the oppression of
women, people of color, and other oppressed groups. He maintains
that the oppression both of humans and of other species of animals
is inextricably tangled within the structure of social
arrangements. Nibert asserts that human use and mistreatment of
other animals are not natural and do little to further the human
condition. Nibert's analysis emphasizes the economic and
elite-driven character of prejudice, discrimination, and
institutionalized repression of humans and other animals. His
examination of the economic entanglements of the oppression of
human and other animals is supplemented with an analysis of
ideological forces and the use of state power in this sociological
expose of the grotesque uses of the oppressed, past and present.
Nibert suggests that the liberation of devalued groups of humans is
unlikely in a world that uses other animals as fodder for the
continual growth and expansion of transnational corporations and,
conversely, that animal liberation cannot take place when humans
continue to be exploited and oppressed.
Thomas Hardy and Animals examines the human and nonhuman animals
who walk and crawl and fly across and around the pages of Hardy's
novels. Animals abound in his writings, yet little scholarly
attention has been paid to them so far. This book fills this gap in
Hardy studies, bringing an important author within range of a new
and developing area of critical inquiry. It considers the way
Hardy's representations of animals challenged ideas of human-animal
boundaries debated by the Victorian scientific and philosophical
communities. In moments of encounter between humans and animals,
Hardy questions boundaries based on ideas of moral sense or moral
agency, language and reason, the possession of a face, and the
capacity to suffer and perceive pain. Through an emphasis on
embodied encounters, his writings call for an extension of empathy
to others, human or nonhuman. In this accessible book Anna West
offers a new approach to Hardy criticism.
Why our failure to consider the power of animals is to our deep
detriment Animals are staging a revolution-they're just not telling
us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming
battleships, this book threads together news accounts and more in a
powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that
imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of
it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that
we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and
how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate,
provocative, cogent call for us to do so. Ron Broglio reveals how
fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our
social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as
environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or
biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our
comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal
world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings
and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of
communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and
diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental
injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems. A witty,
informative, and captivating work-at the juncture of posthumanism,
animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies-Broglio
reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism.
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).
The Bureaucracy of Empathy revolves around two central questions:
What is pain? And how do we recognize, understand, and ameliorate
the pain of nonhuman animals? Shira Shmuely investigates these
ethical issues through a close and careful history of the origins,
implementation, and enforcement of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act
of Parliament, which for the first time imposed legal restrictions
on animal experimentation and mandated official supervision of
procedures "calculated to give pain" to animal subjects. Exploring
how scientists, bureaucrats, and lawyers wrestled with the problem
of animal pain and its perception, Shmuely traces in depth and
detail how the Act was enforced, the medical establishment's
initial resistance and then embrace of regulation, and the
challenges from anti-vivisection advocates who deemed it
insufficient protection against animal suffering. She shows how a
"bureaucracy of empathy" emerged to support and administer the
legislation, navigating incongruent interpretations of pain. This
crucial moment in animal law and ethics continues to inform laws
regulating the treatment of nonhuman animals in laboratories,
farms, and homes around the worlds to the present.
This thought-provoking book will ask what it is to be human, what
to be animal, and what are the natures of the relationships between
them. This is accomplished with philosophical and ethical
discussions, scientific evidence and dynamic theoretical
approaches. Attitudes to Animals will also encourage us to think
not only of our relationships to non-human animals, but also of
those to other, human, animals. This book provides a foundation
that the reader can use to make ethical choices about animals. It
will challenge readers to question their current views, attitudes
and perspectives on animals, nature and development of the
human-animal relationship. Human perspectives on the human-animal
relationships reflect what we have learned, together with spoken
and unspoken attitudes and assumptions, from our families,
societies, media, education and employment.
In the Company of Animals is an original and very readable study of human attitudes to the natural world. It contrasts the way we love some animals while ruthlessly exploiting others; it provides a detailed and fascinating account of ways in which animal companionship can influence our health; and it provides a key to understanding the moral contradictions inherent in our treatment of animals and nature. Its scope encompasses history, anthropology, and animal and human psychology. Along the way, the author uncovers a fascinating trail of insights and myths about our relationship with the species with which we share the planet. James Serpell is the editor of The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior and Interactions With People (CUP, 1995).
Obaysch: A Hippopotamus in Victorian London tells the remarkable
story of Obaysch the hippopotamus, the first 'star' animal to be
exhibited in the London Zoo. In 1850, a baby hippopotamus arrived
in England, thought to be the first in Europe since the Roman
Empire, and almost certainly the first in Britain since prehistoric
times. Captured near an island in the White Nile, Obaysch was
donated by the viceroy of Egypt in exchange for greyhounds and
deerhounds. His arrival in London was greeted with a wave of
'hippomania', doubling the number of visitors to the Zoological
Gardens almost overnight. Delving into the circumstances of
Obaysch's capture and exhibition, John Simons investigates the
phenomenon of 'star' animals in Victorian Britain against the
backdrop of an expanding British Empire. He shows how the entangled
aims of scientific exploration, commercial ambition, and imperial
expansion shaped the treatment of exotic animals throughout the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Along the way, he
uncovers the strange and moving stories of Obaysch and the other
hippos who joined him in Europe as the trade in zoo animals grew.
'A fascinating microscopic and telescopic look at the life of
Victorian England's most famous animal. John Simons' richly
exhaustive account of nineteenth-century hippomania engages with
imperialism, Orientalism, progress, and the cultural history of
Europe where Obaysch, captured from an island in the Nile River,
had the misfortune to spend his life as a blockbuster attraction at
the London Zoo. Poignant and empathetic, this account of an
animal's appropriation and exploitation is one of those books that
unfurls more about its moment in time than you could have imagined
when you picked it up.' Professor Randy Malamud, Georgia State
University
From Jack London to Aldo Leopold's "fierce green fire," wolves have
been a central part of the American image. Many have even suggested
that our national symbol, the bald eagle, be replaced with this
noble creature who, like us, raises a family and is bold and loyal
in protecting the pack. Brenda Peterson blends science, history,
and memoir to dramatize the epic battle to restore wolves and thus
the landscape and ecology of the continent. From the vicious
exterminations carried out by pioneers and settlers; to the
internationally celebrated triumph of the return of wolves to
Yellowstone; to backlash, politics, and near-daily news of
successful reintroductions, this is perhaps the most inspiring
conservation story of our time. Brenda's central characters are two
famous wolves: the powerful and prolific female "067," restored to
Yellowstone only to be "legally" murdered, and Journey, a
near-miraculous transcontinental survivor. Along with these are the
scientists, ranchers, and activists who are fighting against fear,
politics, greed, and scientific ignorance to bring wild wolves home
to keep our environment whole.
 |
Wasp
(Paperback)
Richard Jones
|
R438
R399
Discovery Miles 3 990
Save R39 (9%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
|
Fear and fascination set wasps apart from other insects. Despite
their iconic form and distinctive colours, they are surrounded by
myth and misunderstanding. Often portrayed in cartoon-like
stereotypes bordering on sad parody, wasps have an unwelcome and
undeserved reputation for aggressiveness bordering on vindictive
spite. This mistrust is deep-seated in a human history that has
awarded commercial and spiritual value to other insects, such as
bees, but has failed to recognize any worth in wasps. Leading
entomologist Richard Jones redresses the balance in this
enlightening and entertaining guide to the natural and cultural
history of these powerful carnivores. Jones delves into their
complex nesting and colony behavior, their unique caste system and
their major role at the centre of many food webs. Drawing on
up-to-date scientific concepts and featuring many striking colour
illustrations, Jones successfully shows exactly why wasps are
worthy of greater understanding and appreciation.
In "Beyond Animal Rights," Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams
introduced feminist "ethic of care" theory into philosophical
discussions of the treatment of animals. In this new volume, seven
essays from "Beyond Animal Rights" are joined by nine new
articles-most of which were written in response to that book-and a
new introduction that situates feminist animal care theory within
feminist theory and the larger debate over animal rights.
Contributors critique theorists' reliance on natural rights
doctrine and utilitarianism, which, they suggest, have a masculine
bias. They argue for ethical attentiveness and sympathy in our
relationships with animals and propose a link between the
continuing subjugation of women and the human domination of nature.
Beginning with the earliest articulation of the idea in the
mid-1980s and continuing to the theory's most recent revisions,
this volume presents the most complete portrait of the evolution of
the feminist-care tradition.
|
|