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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society
The sight, sound and smell of animals are a part of the story of
every great city - and are also part of its hidden history. The
royal standard of Scotland features a lion rampant, and Edinburgh
can trace its earliest depiction of the beast to the Roman
occupation - long before Scotland evolved into a nation. As marks
of prestige and respect, animals are highlighted in many public
sculptures, bas-reliefs and other artworks throughout the city. For
centuries animals such as horses were a crucial part of the
economy. Horses transported goods and people in and out of the
city, while the growth in ownership created a demand for saddlers,
coach makers, grooms, fodder suppliers, horse trainers, farriers,
smiths and riding schools. Animals were also a source of wonder and
amusement, such as the elephant housed in a tenement in the 1700s
and the legendary Greyfriars Bobby, who spent fourteen years
guarding the grave of his owner and is now immortalised in words,
films and monuments. The travelling menagerie of the Regency era
gave the ordinary citizen a taste of the exotic and within a few
decades Zoological Gardens Association landscaped gardens and built
structures to house animals for the city's latest attraction.
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.
The domestication of plants and animals is central to the familiar
and now outdated story of civilization's emergence. Intertwined
with colonialism and imperial expansion, the domestication
narrative has informed and justified dominant and often destructive
practices. Contending that domestication retains considerable value
as an analytical tool, the contributors to Domestication Gone Wild
reengage the concept by highlighting sites and forms of
domestication occurring in unexpected and marginal sites, from
Norwegian fjords and Philippine villages to British falconry cages
and South African colonial townships. Challenging idioms of animal
husbandry as human mastery and progress, the contributors push
beyond the boundaries of farms, fences, and cages to explore how
situated relations with animals and plants are linked to the
politics of human difference-and, conversely, how politics are
intertwined with plant and animal life. Ultimately, this volume
promotes a novel, decolonizing concept of domestication that
radically revises its Euro- and anthropocentric narrative.
Contributors. Inger Anneberg, Natasha Fijn, Rune Flikke, Frida
Hastrup, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Knut G. Nustad, Sara Asu Schroer,
Heather Anne Swanson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Mette Vaarst, Gro B.
Ween, Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme
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.
For centuries whales have captured our imaginations and ignited our
emotions. We have revered and mythologised them, hunted them to the
brink of extinction and passionately protected them. But how much
do we really know about whales? Based on the hugely popular,
internationally touring exhibition Whales Tohora (a.k.a. Whales:
Giants of the Deep), this all-new book brings these majestic marine
mammals and their underwater world to life, with a special focus on
the whales and dolphins of the South Pacific. From the first richly
illustrated, entertaining chapter, readers are immersed in the
salty sea, the home of the whales, to explore their amazing
diversity, biology and adaption to life in the oceans. Throughout
the book, literally hundreds of breath-taking photographs,
historical pictures, astonishing facts and figures and informative
illustrations and diagrams bring the whale world to life. Here,
too, are stories from people whose lives have been inextricably
linked with whales - from legendary South Pacific whale riders to
international whale scientists to conservationists to former
whalers and their families.Powerfully, Whales Tohora combines
storytelling, science, and culture to tell the story of the
relationship between the humans and these fascinating creatures
throughout history and into the future.
Christine M. Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of humans'
moral relationships to the other animals. She defends the claim
that we are obligated to treat all sentient beings as what Kant
called "ends-in-themselves". Drawing on a theory of the good
derived from Aristotle, she offers an explanation of why animals
are the sorts of beings for whom things can be good or bad. She
then turns to Kant's argument for the value of humanity to show
that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of
ends-in-ourselves, in two senses. Kant argued that as autonomous
beings, we claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we claim the standing
to make laws for ourselves and each other. Korsgaard argues that as
beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends-in-ourselves when
we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and
so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with
other autonomous beings in relations of moral reciprocity. The
second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient
creature as something of absolute importance. Korsgaard argues that
human beings are not more important than the other animals, that
our moral nature does not make us superior to the other animals,
and that our unique capacities do not make us better off than the
other animals. She criticizes the "marginal cases" argument and
advances a new view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal
subjects of lives. She criticizes Kant's own view that our duties
to animals are indirect, and offers a non-utilitarian account of
the relation between pleasure and the good. She also addresses a
number of directly practical questions: whether we have the right
to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us and fight
in our wars, and keep them as pets; and how to understand the wrong
that we do when we cause a species to go extinct.
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