Empathy is a term used increasingly both in moral theory and animal ethics, with the suggestion that empathy enhances our moral ability and agency. Yet, its precise meaning is often left unexplored, together with the various obstacles and challenges met by an empathy-based ethic, such as those concerning the ways in which empathy is prone to bias and may also facilitate manipulation of others. These oversights render the contemporary discussion on empathy and animal ethics vulnerable to both conceptual confusion and moral simplicity. The book aims to tackle these problems by clarifying the different and even contradictory ways in which "empathy" can be defined, and by exploring the at times surprising implications the various definitions have from the viewpoint of moral agency. Its main question is: What types of empathy hinder moral ability, and what types enable us to become more morally capable in our dealings with the nonhuman world? During the contemporary era, when valuable forms of empathy are in decline, and the more hazardous, self-regarding and biased varieties of utilising empathy in the increase, this question is perhaps more important than ever.

How does 19th-century literature concerned with creatures, animals and humans who are not permitted to be properly human also produce such gruesome, strange, abject citizens alongside techno-urban systems like the meat industry, the popular serial press and even in rights movements? Through formal analysis of subjection, address, and narration in canonical and penny literatures, this book reveals the mutual forces of concern and consumption that afflict objects of a weird cultural history of bloody London across the long 19th century.

Through an absorbing investigation into recent, high-profile scandals involving one of the largest kosher slaughterhouses in the world, located unexpectedly in Postville, Iowa, Aaron S. Gross makes a powerful case for elevating the category of the animal in the study of religion. Major theorists have almost without exception approached religion as a phenomenon that radically marks humans off from other animals, but Gross rejects this paradigm, instead matching religion more closely with the life sciences to better theorize human nature. Gross begins with a detailed account of the scandals at Agriprocessors and their significance for the American and international Jewish community. He argues that without a proper theorization of "animals and religion," we cannot fully understand religiously and ethically motivated diets and how and why the events at Agriprocessors took place. Subsequent chapters recognize the significance of animals to the study of religion in the work of Ernst Cassirer, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Jacques Derrida and the value of indigenous peoples' understanding of animals to the study of religion in our daily lives. Gross concludes by extending the Agribusiness scandal to the activities at slaughterhouses of all kinds, calling attention to the religiosity informing the regulation of "secular" slaughterhouses and its implications for our relationship with and self-imagination through animals.

THE MASSIVE NUMBER 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER It has been 30 years since Noel Fitzpatrick graduated as a veterinary surgeon, and that 22-year-old from Ballyfin, Ireland, is now one of the leading veterinary surgeons in the world. The journey to that point has seen Noel treat thousands of animals - many of whom were thought to be beyond help - animals that have changed his life, and the lives of those around them, for the better. If the No.1 Sunday Times bestseller Listening to the Animals was about Noel's path to becoming The Supervet, then How Animals Saved My Life is about what it's like to actually be The Supervet. Noel shares the moving and often funny stories of the animals he's treated and the unique 'animal people' he has met along the way. He reflects on the valuable lessons of Integrity, Care, Love and Hope that they have taught him - lessons that have sustained him through the unbelievable highs and crushing lows of a profession where lives are quite literally at stake. As Noel explores what makes us connect with animals so deeply, we meet Peanut, the world's first cat with two front bionic limbs; eight-year-old therapy dachschund Olive; Odin, a gorgeous five-year-old Dobermann, who would prove to be one of Noel's most challenging cases - and of course his beloved companions Ricochet, the Maine Coon, and Keira, the scruffy Border terrier who is always by his side.

As human beings, what is our true relation to the animals on earth? What is our responsibility to our fellow creatures? Douglas Sloan explores these and other questions in this important book on the human animal connection. His explorations are based on personal experience and wide-ranging research into the work of Rudolf Steiner and others, including scientist students of the inner life of animals and committed defenders of animal wellbeing. Rudolf Steiner describes how from the beginning of creation humans and animals have been united in deep kinship. A loss of the sense of this human animal connection has resulted in an immense animal suffering the world over. Many questions arise: are animals conscious? Do they have a spiritual reality, souls and selves? Do they have emotional empathy, language and memory? Are we justified in eating them, hunting them, experimenting on them? This book argues that we must start to relate to animals in a completely new way -- a relationship that understands and respects animals' inner spiritual being, and one that requires a deep grasp of our own spiritual being in relation to theirs and offers help to do so, both in concept and in everyday action.

Whales and dolphins are icons for the conservation movement. They are the most conspicuous ambassadors for entire marine ecosystems and possibly even for the biosphere as a whole. Concurrent with our realisation of impending threats to their environment is a growing scientific understanding of the social and cognitive complexity of many of these species. This book brings together experts in the relevant diverse fields of cetacean research, to provide authoritative descriptions of our current knowledge of the complex behaviour and social organization of whales and dolphins. The authors consider this new information in the context of how different human cultures from around the world view cetaceans and their protection, including attitudes to whaling. They show how new information on issues such as cetacean intelligence, culture and the ability to suffer, warrants a significant shift in global perceptions of this group of animals and how these changes might be facilitated to improve conservation and welfare approaches.

From the time Europeans first came to the New World until the closing of the frontier, the benefits of abundant wild animals-from beavers and wolves to fish, deer, and bison-appeared as a recurring theme in colonizing discourses. Explorers, travelers, surveyors, naturalists, and other promoters routinely advertised the richness of the American faunal environment and speculated about the ways in which animals could be made to serve their colonial projects. In practice, however, American animals proved far less malleable to colonizers' designs. Their behaviors constrained an English colonial vision of a reinvented and rationalized American landscape. In Wild by Nature, Andrea L. Smalley argues that Anglo-American authorities' unceasing efforts to convert indigenous beasts into colonized creatures frequently produced unsettling results that threatened colonizers' control over the land and the people. Not simply acted upon by being commodified, harvested, and exterminated, wild animals were active subjects in the colonial story, altering its outcome in unanticipated ways. These creatures became legal actors-subjects of statutes, issues in court cases, and parties to treaties-in a centuries-long colonizing process that was reenacted on successive wild animal frontiers. Following a trail of human-animal encounters from the seventeenth-century Chesapeake to the Civil War-era southern plains, Smalley shows how wild beasts and their human pursuers repeatedly transgressed the lines lawmakers drew to demarcate colonial sovereignty and control, confounding attempts to enclose both people and animals inside a legal frame. She also explores how, to possess the land, colonizers had to find new ways to contain animals without destroying the wildness that made those creatures valuable to English settler societies in the first place. Offering fresh perspectives on colonial, legal, environmental, and Native American history, Wild by Nature reenvisions the familiar stories of early America as animal tales.

Drawing together the latest research and a range of case studies, Henry Buller and Emma Roe guide readers on a fascinating journey through animal welfare issues 'from farm to fork'. Animal welfare offers a vital lens through which to explore the economies, culture and politics of food. This is the first text to provide a much-needed overview of this strongly debated area of the food industry. Buller and Roe explore how animal welfare is defined, advocated, assessed and implemented by farmers, veterinarians, distributors, and consumers. From the practicalities and limitations of establishing a basic standard of care for livestock, to the ethics of selling welfare as a product in the supermarket, this indispensable book offers empirical insights into a key aspect of the global food system: the lives, deaths, and consumption of animals which are at the core of the food chain. It is a must-read for students and scholars of animal welfare, agro-food studies and human-animal relations in disciplines such as geography, politics, anthropology, and sociology as well as animal behaviour, psychology and veterinary science.

Do depictions of crazy cat ladies obscure more sinister structural violence against animals hoarded in factory farms? Highlighting the frequent pathologization of animal lovers and animal rights activists, this book examines how the "madness" of our relationships with animals intersects with the "madness" of taking animals seriously. The essays collected in this volume argue that "animaladies" are expressive of political and psychological discontent, and the characterization of animal advocacy as mad or "crazy" distracts attention from broader social unease regarding human exploitation of animal life. While allusions to madness are both subtle and overt, they are also very often gendered, thought to be overly sentimental with an added sense that emotions are being directed at the wrong species. Animaladies are obstacles for the political uptake of interest in animal issues-as the intersections between this volume and established feminist scholarship show, the fear of being labeled unreasonable or mad still has political currency.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ORDINARY ANIMAL. EVERY ONE HAS A HEROIC STORY TO TELL. Discover how . . . Able Seacat Simon rescued the crew of HMS Amethyst Bobby the Wonder Dog crossed a continent to find his family Galipolli Murphy carried 250 wounded soldiers to safety Pickles tracked down the stolen World Cup And the Tamworth Two managed to save their bacon Clare Balding's stories of daring, courageous, remarkable creatures who changed our world for the better: from the dog that inspired Lassie to the bear that fought the Nazis.

Animals regularly populate philosophical texts as a foil to illustrate what it means to be human. How should we understand this human-animal divide? Not only does it inform us of who we are, it also tells us how we should relate to the larger non-human world. The Speaking Animal interrogates the human-animal divide by looking at our linguistic differences - how the speaking human subject is constructed through its opposition to the dumb animal. Alison Suen begins with an analysis of the role of language in animal ethics, with an eye toward the voice/voiceless opposition that is at work in animal advocacy. After offering a critical analysis of the ethical and political significance of speaking for animals, the book takes on a more constructive turn, going against the usual interpretation of language as a capacity that allows us to reason. Instead, it argues that our language capacity is also a relational capacity. Language is that which enables us to develop kinship with others - including animal others.

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).

This is the first book to define the philosophical and practical parameters of critical animal studies (CAS). Rooted in anarchist perspectives that oppose all systems of domination and authoritarianism, CAS both challenges anthropocentrism and presents animal liberation as a social justice movement that intersects with other movements for positive change. Written by a collection of internationally respected scholar-activists, each chapter expands upon the theory and practice underlying the total liberation approach, the roles of academics and activists, and the ten principles of CAS. With apolitical animal studies and exploitative animal research dominating higher education, this book offers a timely counter-narrative that demands the liberation of all oppressed beings and the environment. Defining Critical Animal Studies will interest educators, students, activists, community members, and policy makers seeking accessible theory that can be put into action.

Respect for animals has always been a part of human consciousness. Poets, thinkers, philosophers, scientists and statesmen have long celebrated our compassion towards Earth's other beasts.
Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb compiles the most significant statements of sensibility to animals in the history of thought. From the myths of the ancient world to the Middle Ages to Darwin and beyond, Preece captures the most telling and fascinating accounts of humankind's relationship to the wild world, placing them in historical context.
Jung called it "an unconscious identity with animals," while Wordsworth saw it as the "primal sympathy which having been must ever be." Linking the diverse chords of human experience that are touched by the animal world, Preece shows that despite a historical thread of cruelty, there still remains in all humanity a constant underlying concern for other beings as an integral part of the moral community.
With musings and meditations from Lao Tse to Mohammed, from Plato to Jane Goodall, from classical religion to parliamentary proceedings, Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb is an original, superbly researched history that deepens our understanding of all living beings.

What did British people in the late eighteenth century think and feel about their relationship to nonhuman animals? This book shows how an appreciation of human-animal similarity and a literature of compassion for animals developed in the same years during which radical thinkers were first basing political demands on the concept of natural and universal human rights. Some people began to conceptualise animal rights as an extension of the rights of man and woman. But because oppressed people had to insist on their own separation from animals in order to claim the right to a full share in human privileges, the relationship between human and animal rights was fraught and complex. This book examines that relationship in chapters covering the abolition movement, early feminism, and the political reform movement. Donkeys, pigs, apes and many other literary animals became central metaphors within political discourse, fought over in the struggle for rights and freedoms; while at the same time more and more writers became interested in exploring the experiences of animals themselves. We learn how children's writers pioneered narrative techniques for representing animal subjectivity, and how the anti-cruelty campaign of the early 1800s drew on the legacy of 1790s radicalism. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Clare, Southey, Blake, Wollstonecraft, Equiano, Dorothy Kilner, Thomas Spence, Mary Hays, Ignatius Sancho, Anna Letitia Barbauld, John Oswald, John Lawrence, and Thomas Erskine are just a few of the writers considered. Along with other canonical and non-canonical writers of many disciplines, they placed nonhuman animals at the heart of British literature in the age of the French Revolution.

Human-animal studies is an academic field that has grown exponentially over the past decade. It explores the whys, hows, and whats of human-animal relations: why animals are represented and configured in different ways in human cultures and societies around the world; how they are imagined, experienced, and given significance; what these relationships might signify about being human; and what about these relationships might be improved for the sake of the individuals as well as the communities concerned. The Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies presents a collection of original essays from artists and scholars who have established themselves internationally on the basis of specific and significant new contributions to human-animal studies. This international, interdisciplinary handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of human-animal studies, sociology, anthropology, biology, environmental studies, geography, cultural studies, history, philosophy, media studies, gender studies, literature, psychology, ethology, and visual studies.

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter? In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships.

The tragedies of World War II are well known. But at least one has been forgotten: in September 1939, four hundred thousand cats and dogs were massacred in Britain. The government, vets, and animal charities all advised against this killing. So why would thousands of British citizens line up to voluntarily euthanize household pets? In The Great Cat and Dog Massacre, Hilda Kean unearths the history, piecing together the compelling story of the life-and death-of Britain's wartime animal companions. She explains that fear of imminent Nazi bombing and the desire to do something to prepare for war led Britons to sew blackout curtains, dig up flower beds for vegetable patches, send their children away to the countryside-and kill the family pet, in theory sparing them the suffering of a bombing raid. Kean's narrative is gripping, unfolding through stories of shared experiences of bombing, food restrictions, sheltering, and mutual support. Soon pets became key to the war effort, providing emotional assistance and helping people to survive-a contribution for which the animals gained government recognition. Drawing extensively on new research from animal charities, state archives, diaries, and family stories, Kean does more than tell a virtually forgotten story. She complicates our understanding of World War II as a "good war" fought by a nation of "good" people. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, Kean's account of this forgotten aspect of British history moves animals to center stage-forcing us to rethink our assumptions about ourselves and the animals with whom we share our homes.

With over 65 percent of households having a pet, and Americans spending over $60 billion on them each year, it's a proven statistic that Americans love animals. Public opinions consistently show we favor compassion for all animals. Animal welfare, rights, and protection is one of the most popular issue areas to which individual donors give, and is an area in which people working with rescue and nonprofit organizations are extremely passionate. In Advocates for Animals, Lori Girshick not only provides a better understanding of the laws surrounding animal rights but looks at the nonprofit organizations and people who are making a huge difference in today's growing animal protection community. These volunteers and organizations fill the gap in what laws, policies, practices, and services do not address for animal rights/protection. Through the personal reflections of 204 individuals who volunteer or work with animals in a wide range of circumstances we learn about their paths to involvement, what they do, what they hope to achieve, and how this has impacted their lives. Many experts speak of the importance of protecting the rights of animals, and without human support, many animals face abuse, neglect, and suffering. Advocates for Animals invites you to join these efforts, enriching your own lives and living compassion in action toward animals.

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

Tommy Kane brings together, for the first time, a collection of contemporary vegan artists whose works grapple with one of the biggest issues of our century and confront our conflicted relationship with animals. With diverse contributions, Vegan Art combines a passion for art as a language with the rebellion against animal abuse and exploitation, with the belief that art should be a mechanism for social change. The complex visual language of the book is purposefully graphic and controversial. From utopian depictions of a world that vegans are fighting for, to dark dystopian impressions and brutal, bloody mutilations of non-human animals in industrial agriculture, the project tests the potential of our humanity and asks for equality for all species. With violent imagery and references to major food corporations - such as McDonalds - the project is unflinching in its advocation of veganism and animal rights. Vegan Art engenders a sense of humility with a shared view that art has the power to move people to be informed consumers. Featuring artworks by Tommy Kane, Andrew Tilsley, Milk DoNg Comics, Dan Piraro, Melinda Hegedus, Tommy Flynn and Cynical Coyote.

Animal ethics is generating growing interest both within academia and outside it. This book focuses on ethical issues connected to animals who play an extremely important role in human lives: companion animals ("pets"), with a special emphasis on dogs and cats, the animals most often chosen as pets. Companion animals are both vulnerable to and dependent upon us. What responsibilities do we owe to them, especially since we have the power and authority to make literal life-and-death decisions about them? What kinds of relationships should we have with our companion animals? And what might we learn from cats and dogs about the nature and limits of our own morality? The contributors write from a variety of philosophical perspectives, including utilitarianism, care ethics, feminist ethics, phenomenology, and the genealogy of ideas. The eighteen chapters are divided into two sections, to provide a general background to ethical debate about companion animals, followed by a focus on a number of crucial aspects of human relationships to companion animals. The first section discusses the nature of our relationships to companion animals, the foundations of our moral responsibilities to companion animals, what our relationships with companion animals teach us, and whether animals themselves can act ethically. The second part explores some specific ethical issues related to crucial aspects of companion animals' lives-breeding, reproduction, sterilization, cloning, adoption, feeding, training, working, sexual interactions, longevity, dying, and euthanasia.