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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Animals & society > General
An engaging and at times sobering look at the coexistence of humans
and animals in the 21st century and how their sometimes disparate
needs affect environments, politics, economies, and culture
worldwide. There is an urgent need to understand human-animal
interactions and relations as we become increasingly aware of our
devastating impact on the natural resources needed for the survival
of all animal species. This timely reference explores such topics
as climate change and biodiversity, the impact of animal
domestication and industrial farming on local and global
ecosystems, and the impact of human consumption of wild species for
food, entertainment, medicine, and social status. This volume also
explores the role of pets in our lives, advocacy movements on
behalf of animals, and the role of animals in art and media
culture. Authors Julie Urbanik and Connie L. Johnston introduce the
concept of animal geography, present different aspects of
human-animal relationships worldwide, and highlight the importance
of examining these interconnections. Alphabetical entries
illustrate key relationships, concepts, practices, and animal
species. The book concludes with a comprehensive appendix of select
excerpts from key primary source documents relating to animals and
a glossary. Includes excerpts from 20 primary source documents
related to animals Offers a comprehensive look at a variety of
aspects of human-animal relationships Discusses how human actions
affect the survival of other species, such as the northern spotted
owl and bluefin tuna
Zoo Ethics examines the workings of modern zoos and considers the
core ethical challenges faced by people who choose to hold and
display animals in zoos, aquariums, or sanctuaries. Jenny Gray
asserts the value of animal life and assesses the impacts of modern
zoos, including the costs to animals in terms of welfare and the
loss of liberty. Gray highlights contemporary events, including the
killing of the gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016,
the widely publicized culling of a young giraffe in the Copenhagen
Zoo in 2014, and the investigation of the Tiger Temple in western
Thailand. Gray describes the positive welfare and health outcomes
of many animals held in zoos, the increased attention and
protection for their species in the wild, and the enjoyment and
education of the people who visit zoos. Zoo Ethics will empower
students of animal ethics and veterinary sciences, zoo and aquarium
professionals, and interested zoo visitors to have an informed view
of the challenges of compassionate conservation and to develop
their own ethical positions.
The conventional history of animals could be more accurately
described as the history of human ideas about animals. Only in the
last few decades have scholars from a wide variety of disciplines
attempted to document the lives of historical animals in ways that
recognize their agency as sentient beings with complex
intelligence. This collection advances the field further, inviting
us to examine our recorded history through an animal-centric lens
to discover how animals have altered the course of our collective
past. The seventeen scholars gathered here present case studies
from the Pacific Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, involving
species ranging from gorillas and horses to salamanders and orcas.
Together they seek out new methodologies, questions, and stories
that challenge accepted historical assumptions and structures.
Drawing upon environmental, social, and political history, the
contributors employ research from such wide-ranging fields as
philosophy and veterinary medicine, embracing a radical
interdisciplinarity that is crucial to understanding our nonhuman
past. Grounded in the knowledge that there has never been a purely
human time in world history, this collection asks and answers an
incredibly urgent question for historians and others interested in
the nonhuman past: in an age of mass extinctions, mass animal
captivity, and climate change, when we know much of what animals
have done in the past, which of our activities will we want to
change in the future?
"Who Speaks for Earthlings?" is a collection of Richard J Deboo's
articles, poems and speeches primarily, but not exclusively, on the
subject of animal rights. Always full of passion and utterly
committed to justice, compassion and love for all lives the
writings collected here will inspire and inform; by turns playful,
resolute, determined and angry, Richard's words shine a bright,
blazing candle on the lies and hypocrisy at the heart of the animal
abuse industries of animal farming, research and the exploitation
of animals in sport and entertainment. As a species we commit many
cruel and unimaginably violent and brutal acts against our fellow
Earthlings, but these writings show that we can do things another
way - we can think and live differently. In so doing we can change
the world, not only for ourselves but for all those who share this
Earth with us.
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS PLACING THE HUMAN-WOLF RELATIONSHIP IN
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEInternational in range and chronological in
organisation, this volume aims to grasp the maincurrents of thought
about interactions with the wolf in modern history. It focuses on
perceptions, interactions and dependencies, and includes cultural
and social analyses as well as biological aspects. Wolves have been
feared and admired, hunted and cared for. At the same historical
moment, different cultural and social groups have upheld widely
diverging ideas about the wolf. Fundamental dichotomies in modern
history, between nature and culture, wilderness and civilisation
and danger and security, have been portrayed in terms of wolf-human
relationships. The wolf has been part of aesthetic, economic,
political, psychological and cultural reasoning albeit it is
nowadays mainly addressed as an object of wildlife management.
There has been a major shift in perception from dangerous predator
to endangered species, but the big bad fairytale wolf remains a
cultural icon. This volume roots study of human-wolf relationships
coherently within the disciplines of environmental and animal
history for the first time.
Animal Metropolis brings a Canadian perspective to the growing
field of animal history, ranging across species and cities, from
the beavers who engineered Stanley Park to the carthorses who
shaped the city of Montreal. Some essays consider animals as
spectacle: orca captivity in Vancouver, polar bear tourism in
Churchill, Manitoba, fish on display in the Dominion Fisheries
Museum, and the racialized memory of Jumbo the elephant in St.
Thomas, Ontario. Others examine the bodily intimacies of shared
urban spaces: the regulation of rabid dogs in Banff, the maternal
politics of pure milk in Hamilton and the circulation of tetanus
bacilli from horse to human in Toronto. Another considers the
marginalization of women in Canada's animal welfare movement. The
authors collectively push forward from a historiography that
features nonhuman animals as objects within human-centered
inquiries to a historiography that considers the eclectic contacts,
exchanges, and cohabitation of human and nonhuman animals.
HISTORIES OF HUMAN CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATURE Wild Things: Nature and
the Social Imagination assembles eleven substantive and original
essays on the cultural and social dimensions of environmental
history. They address a global cornucopia of social and ecological
systems, from Africa to Europe, North America and the Caribbean,
and their temporal range extends from the 1830s into the
twenty-first century. The imaginative (and actual) construction of
landscapes and the appropriation of Nature - through
image-fashioning, curating museum and zoo collections, making
'friends', 'enemies' and mythical symbols from animals - are
recurring subjects. Among the volume's thought-provoking essays are
a group enmeshing nature and the visual culture of photography and
film. Canonical environmental history themes, from colonialism to
conservation, are re-inflected by discourses including gender
studies, Romanticism, politics and technology. The loci of the
studies included here represent both the microcosmic - underwater
laboratory, zoo, film studio; and broad canvases - the German
forest, the Rocky Mountains, the islands of Haiti and Madagascar.
Their casts too are richly varied - from Britain's otters and
Africa's Nile crocodiles to Hollywood film-makers and South African
cattle. The volume represents an excitingly diverse collection of
studies of how humans, in imagination and deed, act on and are
acted on by 'wild things'.
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