"Signifying Animals" examines what animals mean to human beings around the world, offering a fresh assessment of the workings of animal symbolism in diverse cultures. The essays in the book are based on first-hand field research with peoples as dissimilar as the Mongolian nomads of Soviet Central Asia, Aboriginal Australians, Inuit hunters of the Canadian Arctic and cultivators of Africa and Papua New Guinea.
The essays look at accounts of mythical beasts among the Amerindian peoples of Andean South America, alleged sightings of an extinct giant bird in New Zealand as well as the complex symbolism of the American rodeo. Others discuss animal symbolism in the Middle East, India and the ancient picts of Scotland. The book advances a powerful argument against some prevalent fallacies in symbolic interpretation.

Modern society is beginning to re-examine its whole relationship with animals and the natural world. Until recently issues such as animal welfare and environmental protection were considered the domain of small, idealistic minorities. Now, these issues attract vast numbers of articulate supporters who collectively exercise considerable political muscle. Animals, both wild and domestic, form the primary focus of concern in this often acrimonious debate. Yet why do animals evoke such strong and contradictory emotions in people - and do our western attitudes have anything in common with those of other societies and cultures? Bringing together a range of contributions from distinguished experts in the field, Animals and Society explores the importance of animals in society from social, historical and cross-cultural perspectives.

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An interdisciplinary social history, this book examines the major pressures and influences that brought about the remarkable growth of opposition to hunting in twentieth century England. With public opinion consistently deciding from the middle of the century onward that hunting mammals for sport was cruel and unacceptable, it would appear that the controversy over hunting has all but been decided, though hunting yet remains 'at bay'. Based on a range of cultural, social, literary and political sources drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, including history, sociology, geography, psychology and anthropology, The History of Opposition to Blood Sports in Twentieth Century England accounts for the change in our relationship with animals that occurred in the course of the twentieth century, shedding light on the manner in which this resulted in the growth in opposition to hunting and other blood sports. With evidence comprising a mixture of primary and secondary historical sources, together with documentary films, opinion polls, Mass Observation records, political party archives, and the findings of sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and geographers, this book will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences and historians with an interest in human-animal relations.

From the hooves of chariot horses pounding the dust of the racetrack to the cries of elephants charging the battlefields, animals were a key part of Roman life. On memorials left to beloved dogs or in images of arena animals hammered onto coins, their stories and roles in Roman history are there for us to find. Why did the emperor Augustus always have a seal skin nearby? What was the most dangerous part of a chariot race? How could a wolf help with toothache? Take a gallop into the Roman world of chariot horses, battle elephants and rampaging rhinos. In the ancient world a bear could be weaponised and venomous snakes could change the course of a battle at sea. If you want to know exactly how to boil a crane (and who doesn't?) or how to use eels to commit murder, the Romans have the answer. They wove animals into poetry, sacrificed them and slaughtered thousands in their arenas, while animal skins reinforced shields and ivory decorated the hilts of their swords. From much-loved dogs to talking ravens, Battle Elephants and Flaming Foxes discovers who the Romans really were through the fascinating relationships they had with the creatures they lived and died alongside.

For the Celts, a rural people whose survival depended solely upon their environment, natural phenomena, the elements, and animals, especially, merited their extreme respect. The Celts made both wild and domesticated species the focus of elaborate rituals as well as the basis of profound religious beliefs. "Animals in Celtic Life and Myth" examines the intimate relationship between humans and animals, in a society in which animals were special and central to all aspects of life.
Miranda Green draws on evidence from a variety of early Celtic documents, as well as archaeology and iconography, revealing that the Celts believed many animals to be sacred, either possessing divine status in their own right or acting as mediators between gods and humans. She covers the crucial role of animals in the Celtic economy; in hunting and welfare; in Celtic art and literature; in religion and ritual. The attitude of the Celts toward animals closely connected the Celtic with the everyday: warfare was bound up with religion; the killing of animals was a ritual act; in stories, heroes talk to animals in their own language and gods change at will from human to animal form. The book covers the important period between 8 B.C. and 1 A.D., during which much of Europe, ranging from Ireland to Czechoslovakia, was turning to Christianity.
"Animals in Celtic Life and Myth" is invaluable to students of archaeology, anthropology and history, as well as to the general reader with an interest in animals.

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.

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.

To date, philosophical discussions of animal ethics and Critical Animal Studies have been dominated by Western perspectives and Western thinkers. This book makes a novel contribution to animal ethics in showing the range and richness of ideas offered to these fields by diverse Asian traditions. Asian Perspectives on Animal Ethics is the first of its kind to include the intersection of Asian and European traditions with respect to human and nonhuman relations. Presenting a series of studies focusing on specific Asian traditions, as well as studies that put those traditions in dialogue with Western thinkers, this book looks at Asian philosophical doctrines concerning compassion and nonviolence as these apply to nonhuman animals, as well as the moral rights and status of nonhuman animals in Asian traditions. Using Asian perspectives to explore ontological, ethical and political questions, contributors analyze humanism and post-humanism in Asian and comparative traditions and offer insight into the special ethical relations between humans and other particular species of animals. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian religion and philosophy, as well as to those interested in animal ethics and Critical Animal Studies.

We love our pets. Dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, and other species have become an essential part of more families than ever before. Pet owners are drawn to their animal companions through an innate desire to connect with other species. But there is a dark side to our domestic connection with animal life: the pet industry is contributing to a global conservation crisis for wildlife, often without the knowledge of pet owners. In Unnatural Companions, journalist Peter Christie issues a call to action for pet owners. If we hope to reverse the alarming trend of wildlife decline, pet owners must acknowledge the pets-versus-conservation dilemma and concede that our well-fed and sheltered cats too often prey on garden wildlife and seemingly harmless reptiles released into the wild might be the next destructive invasive species. We want our pets to eat nutritionally healthy food, but how does the designer food we feed them impact the environment? Christie's book is a cautionary tale to responsible pet owners about why we must change the ways we love and care for our pets. It concludes with the positive message that the small changes we make at home can foster better practices within the pet industry that will ultimately benefit our pets' wild brethren.

Meat and dairy production and consumption are in crisis. Globally, 70 billion farm animals are used for food production every year. It is well accepted that livestock production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predicts a rough doubling of meat and milk consumption in the first half of the 21st century, with particularly rapid growth occurring in the developing economies of Asia. What will this mean for the health and wellbeing of those animals, of the people who consume ever larger quantities of animal products, and for the health of the planet itself? The new edition of this powerful and challenging book explores the impacts of the global growth in the production and consumption of meat and dairy, including cultural and health factors, and the implications of the likely intensification of farming for both small-scale producers and for animals. Several chapters explore the related environmental issues, from resource use of water, cereals and soya, to the impact of livestock production on global warming and issues concerning biodiversity, land use and the impacts of different farming systems on the environment. A final group of chapters addresses ethical and policy implications for the future of food and livestock production and consumption. Since the first edition, published in 2010, all chapters have been updated, three original chapters re-written and six new chapters added, with additional coverage of dietary effects of milk and meat, antibiotics in animal production, and the economic, political and ethical dimensions of meat consumption. The overall message is clearly that we must eat less meat to help secure a more sustainable and equitable world.

This book explores how humans in the Renaissance lived with, attended to, and considered the minds, feelings, and sociality of other creatures. It examines how Renaissance literature and natural history display an unequal creaturely world: all creatures were categorized hierarchically. However, post-Cartesian readings of Shakespeare and other Renaissance literature have misunderstood Renaissance hierarchical creaturely relations, including human relations. Using critical animal studies work and new materialist theory, Bach argues that attending closely to creatures and objects in texts by Shakespeare and other writers exposes this unequal world and the use and abuse of creatures, including people. The book also adds significantly to animal studies by showing how central bird sociality and voices were to Renaissance human culture, with many believing that birds were superior to some humans in song, caregiving, and companionship. Bach shows how Descartes, a central figure in the transition to modern ideas about creatures, lived isolated from humans and other creatures and denied ancient knowledge about other creatures' minds, especially bird minds. As significantly, Bach shows how and why Descartes' ideas appealed to human grandiosity. Asking how Renaissance categorizations of creatures differ so much from modern classifications, and why those modern classifications have shaped so much animal studies work, this book offers significant new readings of Shakespeare's and other Renaissance texts. It will contribute to a range of fields, including Renaissance literature, history, animal studies, new materialism, and the environmental humanities.

This book explores the religious language of Nonconformity used in ethical debates about animals. It uncovers a rich stream of innovative discourse from the Puritans of the seventeenth century, through the Clapham Sect and Evangelical Revival, to the nineteenth century debates about vivisection. This discourse contributed to law reform and the foundation of the RSPCA, and continues to flavour the way we talk about animal welfare and animal rights today. Shaped by the "nonconformist conscience", it has been largely overlooked. The more common perception is that Christian "dominion" authorises the human exploitation of animals, while Enlightenment humanism and Darwinian thought are seen as drawing humans and animals together in one "family". This book challenges that perception, and proposes an alternative perspective. Through exploring the shaping of animal advocacy discourses by Biblical themes of creation, fall and restoration, this book reveals the continuing importance of the nonconformist conscience as a source to enrich animal ethics today. It will appeal to the animal studies community, theologians and early modern historians.

This book offers the first transnational historical study of the creation, contention and consequences of the Australian animal movement. Largely inspired by Peter Singer and his 1975 book Animal Liberation, a new wave of animal activism emerged in Australia and across the world. In an effort to draw public and media attention to the plight of animals, such as the rearing of pigs and poultry in factory farms and the export of live animals to the Middle East and South East Asia, Australian activists were often innovative and provocative in how they made their claims. Through lobbying, disruptive methods, and vegan activism, the animal movement consistently contested the politics and culture of how animals were used and exploited. Australians not only observed and learnt from people and events overseas, but also played significant international roles. This book examines the complex and conflicting consequences of the animal movement for Australian politics, as well as its influence on broader social change.

THE INSTANT NUMBER 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER In this inspiring, uplifting and heart-warming memoir, world-renowned veterinary surgeon Professor Noel Fitzpatrick shares some of the most personal and powerful tales ever from his life as The Supervet. Picking up from where the Sunday Times bestselling How Animals Saved My Life left off, Noel shares the moving, heart-warming and often surprising stories of the animals that he has treated in his remarkable career. As he explores how our relationships with animals can bring out the best in each of us, we meet some of the wonderful animals he has tried to help, the families who love them and the deeply personal challenges Noel has faced along the way. It is animals like these who have taught Noel the valuable lessons of Love, Hope and Faith - lessons that have sustained him in his life beyond being the Supervet. This is the remarkable story of one man and the animals he has saved, animals who have - in turn - saved him.

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.

The renowned zoologist Fritz Eloff became interested in the Kalahari lion in 1958 when he first heard a lion roaring from the red dunes surrounding the camp. So impressive was the earth-trembling sound that he decided to devote his studies to these predators. This meant that he also had to become familiar with the Kalahari, its dust, its intense heat during the day and freezing cold nights, its vegetation, all the mammals and birds that form part of the lion’s food chain as well as the other predators the lion has to compete with. This book is the result of 40 years of extensive research and numerous exciting adventures. Written in an accessible style, it imparts information about the physical characteristics of the Kalahari lion, its habitat, role in the ecosystem and interaction with humans. The book concludes with the stories of a number of legendary male and female lions, and the author’s view on the survival of these magnificent animals in an ever changing environment.

This book is one of a series of volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986 which addressed world archaeology in its widest sense, investigating how people lived in the past and how and why changes took place to result in the forms of society and culture which exist now. The series brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds who could lend their own expertise to the discussions. This book is an exploration of the way in which the animal world features in the works of art of a variety of cultures of different times and places. Contributors have adopted a variety of perspectives for looking at the complex ways in which past and present humans have interrelated with beings they classify as animals. Some of the approaches are predominantly economic and ecological, some are symbolic and others philosophical or theological. All these different views are included in the interpretation of the artworks of the past, revealing some of the foci and inspirations of cultural attitudes to animals. Originally published 1989.

This is the first book to explore women's leading role in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain, drawing on rich archival sources. Women founded bodies such as the Battersea Dogs' Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and various groups that opposed vivisection. They energetically promoted better treatment of animals, both through practical action and through their writings, such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Yet their efforts were frequently belittled by opponents, or decried as typifying female 'sentimentality' and hysteria. Only the development of feminism in the later Victorian period enabled women to show that spontaneous fellow-feeling with animals was a civilising force. Women's own experience of oppressive patriarchy bonded them with animals, who equally suffered from the dominance of masculine values in society, and from an assumption that all-powerful humans were entitled to exploit animals at will. -- .

Human-animal co-existence is central to a politics of life, how we order societies, and to debates about who 'we' humans think 'we' are. In other words, our ways of understanding and ordering human-animal relations have economic and political implications and affect peoples' everyday lives. By bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are and have been assembled, disassembled, practised and possibly policed and politicized. Instead of asking only how control and knowledge are and have been extended over life, the chapters in this book also look at what happens when control fails, at practices which defy orders, escape detection, fail to produce or only loosely hang together. In doing so the book problematises and extends the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics that has been such a central analytical concept in studies of human-animal relations and provides a unique resource of cases and theoretical refinements regarding the ways in which we live together with more than human others .

What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque. Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem-and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

Although Cultural Studies has directed sustained attacks against sexism and racism, the question of the animal has lagged behind developments in broader society with regard to animal suffering in factory farming, product testing, and laboratory experimentation, as well in zoos, rodeos, circuses, and public aquariums. The contributors to "Animal Subjects" are scholars and writers from diverse perspectives whose work calls into question the boundaries that divide the animal kingdom from humanity, focusing on the medical, biological, cultural, philosophical, and ethical concerns between non-human animals and ourselves. The first of its kind to feature the work of Canadian scholars and writers in this emergent field, this collection aims to include the non-human-animal question as part of the ethical purview of Cultural Studies and to explore the question in interdisciplinary terms.

Images of animals are all around us. Yet the visibility offered by wildlife photography can't help but contribute to an image of the animal as fundamentally separate from the human. But how can we get closer to animals without making them aware of us or changing their relationship to their environment?

The Blind might be the answer. Developed for naturalists by the Institute of Critical Zoologists, the Blind is a camouflage cloak that works on the principle that an object vanishes from sight if light rays striking it are not reflected, but are instead forced to flow around as if it were not there. In fifty stunning color photographs, this volume""shows the cloak tested in nature reserves, grasslands, and urban environments. By taking the human out of the picture, "The Blind" offers an opportunity to explore how we see animals in photography.

The concept of 'modernity' is central to many disciplines, but what is modernity to animals? Susan Nance answers this question through a radical reinterpretation of the life of Jumbo the elephant. In the 1880s, consumers, the media, zoos, circuses and taxidermists, and (unknowingly) Jumbo himself, transformed the elephant from an orphan of the global ivory trade and zoo captive into a distracting international celebrity. Citizens on two continents imaged Jumbo as a sentient individual and pet, but were aghast when he died in an industrial accident and his remains were absorbed by the taxidermic and animal rendering industries reserved for anonymous animals. The case of Jumbo exposed the 'human dilemma' of modern living, wherein people celebrated individual animals to cope or distract themselves from the wholesale slaughter of animals required by modern consumerism.

This book is one of a series of volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986 which addressed world archaeology in its widest sense, investigating how people lived in the past and how and why changes took place to result in the forms of society and culture which exist now. The series brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds who could lend their own expertise to the discussions. This book is an exploration of the way in which the animal world features in the works of art of a variety of cultures of different times and places. Contributors have adopted a variety of perspectives for looking at the complex ways in which past and present humans have interrelated with beings they classify as animals. Some of the approaches are predominantly economic and ecological, some are symbolic and others philosophical or theological. All these different views are included in the interpretation of the artworks of the past, revealing some of the foci and inspirations of cultural attitudes to animals. Originally published 1989.

The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life is the first comprehensive guide to animals in the ancient world, encompassing all aspects of the topic by featuring authoritative chapters on 33 topics by leading scholars in their fields. As well as an introduction to, and a survey of, each topic, it provides guidance on further reading for those who wish to study a particular area in greater depth. Both the realities and the more theoretical aspects of the treatment of animals in ancient times are covered in chapters which explore the domestication of animals, animal husbandry, animals as pets, Aesop's Fables, and animals in classical art and comedy, all of which closely examine the nature of human-animal interaction. More abstract and philosophical topics are also addressed, including animal communication, early ideas on the origin of species, and philosophical vegetarianism and the notion of animal rights.