In "What Animals Teach Us about Politics," Brian Massumi takes up the question of "the animal." By treating the human as animal, he develops a concept of an animal politics. His is not a human politics of the animal, but an integrally animal politics, freed from connotations of the "primitive" state of nature and the accompanying presuppositions about instinct permeating modern thought. Massumi integrates notions marginalized by the dominant currents in evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and philosophy--notions such as play, sympathy, and creativity--into the concept of nature. As he does so, his inquiry necessarily expands, encompassing not only animal behavior but also animal thought and its distance from, or proximity to, those capacities over which human animals claim a monopoly: language and reflexive consciousness. For Massumi, humans and animals exist on a continuum. Understanding that continuum, while accounting for difference, requires a new logic of "mutual inclusion." Massumi finds the conceptual resources for this logic in the work of thinkers including Gregory Bateson, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Simondon, and Raymond Ruyer. This concise book intervenes in Deleuze studies, posthumanism, and animal studies, as well as areas of study as wide-ranging as affect theory, aesthetics, embodied cognition, political theory, process philosophy, the theory of play, and the thought of Alfred North Whitehead.

Since 2013, an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought before the New York State courts an unusual request-asking for habeas corpus hearings to determine whether Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees, should be considered legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty. While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanzees are persons on superficial and sometimes conflicting grounds. Consequently, Kiko and Tommy remain confined as legal "things" with no rights. The major moral and legal question remains unanswered: are chimpanzees mere "things", as the law currently sees them, or can they be "persons" possessing fundamental rights? In Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief, a group of renowned philosophers considers these questions. Carefully and clearly, they examine the four lines of reasoning the courts have used to deny chimpanzee personhood: species, contract, community, and capacities. None of these, they argue, merits disqualifying chimpanzees from personhood. The authors conclude that when judges face the choice between seeing Kiko and Tommy as things and seeing them as persons-the only options under current law-they should conclude that Kiko and Tommy are persons who should therefore be protected from unlawful confinement "in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice." Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief-an extended version of the amicus brief submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in Kiko's and Tommy's cases-goes to the heart of fundamental issues concerning animal rights, personhood, and the question of human and nonhuman nature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these issues.

In 1943, fierce aerial bombardment razed the Berlin zoo and killed most of its animals. But only two months after the war's end, Berliners had already resurrected it, reopening its gates and creating a symbol of endurance in the heart of a shattered city. As this episode shows, the Berlin zoo offers one of the most unusual-yet utterly compelling-lenses through which to view German history. This enormously popular attraction closely mirrored each of the political systems under which it existed: the authoritarian monarchy of the kaiser, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and the post-1945 democratic and communist states. Gary Bruce provides the first English-language history of the Berlin zoo, from its founding in 1844 until the 1990 unification of the West Berlin and East Berlin zoos. At the center of the capital's social life, the Berlin zoo helped to shape German views not only of the animal world but also of the human world for more than 150 years. Given its enormous reach, the German government used the zoo to spread its political message, from the ethnographic display of Africans, Inuit, and other "exotic" peoples in the late nineteenth century to the Nazis' bizarre attempts to breed back long-extinct European cattle. By exploring the intersection of zoology, politics, and leisure, Bruce shows why the Berlin zoo was the most beloved institution in Germany for so long: it allowed people to dream of another place, far away from an often grim reality. It is not purely coincidence that the profound connection of Berliners to their zoo intensified through the bloody twentieth century. Its exotic, iconic animals-including Rostom the elephant, Knautschke the hippo, and Evi the sun bear-seemed to satisfy, even partially, a longing for a better, more tranquil world.

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.

This engaging volume explores and defends the claim that misanthropy is a justified attitude towards humankind in the light of how human beings both compare with and treat animals. Reflection on differences between humans and animals helps to confirm the misanthropic verdict, while reflection on the moral and other failings manifest in our treatment of animals illuminates what is wrong with this treatment. Human failings, it is argued, are too entrenched to permit optimism about the future of animals, but ways are proposed in which individual people may accommodate to the truth of misanthropy through cultivating mindful, humble and compassionate relationships to animals. Drawing on both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions David E. Cooper offers an original and challenging approach to the complex field of animal ethics.

Greyhounds were bred to be the fastest dogs on earth. Yet for decades tens of thousands were destroyed, abandoned and abused each year when they couldn't run fast enough. Scrappy Marion Fitzgibbon became obsessed with saving these dogs when she became head of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Along with an American greyhound rescuer, a foxhunter's wife, a British Lady and a powerful German animal advocate, she fights to create a sanctuary where animals heal and thrive. Their pioneering work is part of a global movement to close race tracks and find homes for these misunderstood dogs. In this David versus Goliath story (including the rescue of her own dog, Lily), Schenone takes us into a complex world of impassioned people who stood up for millions of animals.

In recent years, animals have entered the focus of the social and cultural sciences, resulting in the emergence of the new field of human-animal studies. This book investigates the relationships between humans and animals, paying particular attention to the role of affect, space, and animal subjectivity in diverse human-animal encounters. Written by a team of international scholars, contributions explore current debates concerning animal representation, performativity, and relationality in various texts and practices. Part I explores how animals are framed as affective, through four case studies that deal with climate change, human-bovine relationships, and human-horse interaction in different contemporary and historical contexts. Part II expands on the issue of relationality and locates encounters within place, mapping the different spaces where human-animal encounters take place. Part III then examines the construction of animal subjectivity and agency to emphasize the way in which animals are conscious and sentient beings capable of experiencing feelings, emotions, and intentions, and active agents whose actions have meaning for the animals themselves. This book highlights the importance of the ways in which affect enables animal agency and subjectivity to emerge in encounters between humans and animals in different contexts, leading to different configurations. It contributes not only to debates concerning the role of animals in society but also to the epistemological development of the field of human-animal studies.

Many people consider themselves to be both environmentalists and supporters of animal welfare and rights. Yet, despite the many issues which bring environmentalists and animal advocates together, for decades there have been flashpoints which seem to pit these two social movements against each other, dividing them in ways unhelpful to both. In this innovative book, Amy J. Fitzgerald analyses historic, philosophical, and socio-cultural reasons for this divide. Tackling three core contentious issues - sport hunting, zoos, and fur - over which there has been profound disagreement between segments of these movements, she demonstrates that, even here, they are not as far apart as is generally assumed, and that there is space where they could more productively work together. Charting a path forwards, she points to evolving practices and broad structural forces which are likely to draw the movements closer together in the future. The threats posed by industrial animal agriculture to the environment and to non-human and human animals demand, once and for all, that we bridge the divide between animal advocacy and environmentalism.

Animals fall in love, establish rules for fair play, exchange valued goods and services, hold "funerals" for fallen comrades, deploy sex as a weapon, and communicate with one another using rich vocabularies. Animals also get jealous and violent or greedy and callous and develop irrational phobias, just like us. Monkeys address inequality, wolves miss each other, elephants grieve for their dead, and prairie dogs name the humans they encounter. Human and animal behavior is not as different as once believed. In Not So Different, the biologist Nathan H. Lents argues that the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both humans and animals. Identical emotional and instinctual drives govern our actions. By acknowledging this shared programming, the human experience no longer seems unique, but in that loss we gain a fuller appreciation of such phenomena as sibling rivalry and the biological basis of grief, helping us lead more grounded, moral lives among animals, our closest kin. Through a mix of colorful reporting and rigorous scientific research, Lents describes the exciting strides scientists have made in decoding animal behavior and bringing the evolutionary paths of humans and animals closer together. He marshals evidence from psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, and ethology to further advance this work and to drive home the truth that we are distinguished from animals only in degree, not in kind.

This book provides an interdisciplinary discussion of animals as a source of food within the context of tourism. It focuses on a range of ethical issues associated with the production and consumption of animal foods, highlighting the different ways in which animals are valued and utilised within different cultural and economic contexts. This book brings together food studies of animals with tourism and ethics, forming an important contribution to the wider conversation of human-animal studies.

Typically, the legal investigation of nonhuman life, and of animal life in particular, is conducted through the discourse of animal rights. Within this discourse, legal rights are extended to certain nonhuman animals through the same liberal framework that has afforded human rights before it. Animals, Biopolitics, Law envisions the possibility of lively legalities that move beyond the humanist perspective. Drawing on an array of expertise-from law, geography, and anthropology, through animal studies and posthumanism, to science and technology studies-this interdisciplinary collection asks what, in legal terms, it means to be human and nonhuman, what it means to govern and to be governed, and what are the ethical and political concerns that emerge in the project of governing not only human but also more-than-human life.

If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. He shows that the carnivore's position is more coherently ethical than vegetarianism, which isolates humans from the world by treating cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests as phenomena outside of life. Describing how meat eaters assume completely-which is to say, metabolically-their animal status, Lestel opens our eyes to the vital relation between carnivores and animals and carnivores' genuine appreciation of animals' life-sustaining flesh. He vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating. His goal is to recreate a kinship between humans and animals that reminds us of what it means to be tied to the world.

Mary Midgley is one of the most important moral philosophers working today. Over the last thirty years, her writings have informed debates concerning animals, the environment and evolutionary theory. The invited essays in this volume offer critical reflections upon Midgley's work and further developments of her ideas. The contributors include many of the leading commentators on her work, including distinguished figures from the disciplines of philosophy, biology, and ethology. The range of topics includes the moral status of animals, the concept of wickedness, science and mythology, Midgley's relationship to modern moral philosophy, and her relationship with Iris Murdoch. It also includes the first full bibliography of Midgley's writings. The volume is the first major study of its kind and brings together contributions from the many disciplines which Midgley's work has influenced. It provides a clear account of the themes and significance of her work and its implications for ongoing debates about our understanding of our place within the world.

Race Matters, Animal Matters challenges one of the grand narratives of African American studies: that African Americans rejected racist associations of blackness and animality through a disassociation from animality. Analyzing canonical texts written by Frederick Douglass, Charles Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells, and James Weldon Johnson alongside slaughterhouse lithographs, hunting photography, and sheep "husbandry" manuals, Lindgren Johnson argues instead for a critical African American tradition that at pivotal moments reconsiders and recuperates discourses of animality weaponized against both African Americans and animals. Johnson articulates a theory of "fugitive humanism" in which these texts fl ee both white and human exceptionalism, even as they move within and seek out a (revised) humanist space. The focus, for example, is not on how African Americans shake off animal associations in demanding recognition of their humanity, but on how they hold fast to animality and animals in making such a move, revising "the human" itself as they go and undermining the binaries that helped to produce racial and animal injustices. Fugitive humanism reveals how an interspecies ethics develops in these African American responses to violent dehumanization. Illuminating those moments in which the African American canon exceeds human exceptionalism, Race Matters, Animal Matters ultimately shows how these black engagements with animals and animality are not subsequent to efforts for racial justice - a mere extension of the abolitionist or antilynching movements- but, to the contrary, are integral to those efforts. This black- authored temporality challenges widely accepted humanist approaches to the relationship between racial and animal justice as it anticipates and even critiques the valuable insights that animal studies and posthumanism have to offer in our current moment.

In this objective, practical and authoritative introduction to animal law, the author examines the foundational concepts of the human-animal relationship and how those principles have, or have not, been translated into contemporary animal welfare law. It describes the various uses of animals in society, the practical relevance of animal health and welfare to activities of professionals, and animal welfare in the context of global issues including climate change, disease control, food safety and food supply. Relevant to companion, farm, captive (zoo and laboratory) and wild animals, the book has international application in countries with both established and developing legislation. It focuses on the issues and principles, referencing contemporary animal welfare law to provide a global benchmark. The author acknowledges the diversity of views regarding animals as individual beings and beloved pets, to pure commodities. Yet animals need to be treated as one stakeholder, along with other interests, under the law. Based on successful courses run by the author, the book combines science and ethics to provide an accessible introduction to the key principles of animal law and welfare.

In this objective, practical and authoritative introductory text the author reveals how the fundamental principles of the human-animal relationship drive the development of animal law. The book explains the criteria by which the lawful use of animals is determined, and how these criteria impact evolving standards of animal protection and define the responsibilities of people in their interactions with animals. The author identifies 29 key principles which constitute the core knowledge necessary for people involved in debating, assessing, and guiding the evolution of society's national and international rulebook of animal welfare law. The book also considers animal welfare and law in the context of a global market through discussion of common issues such as climate change, biosecurity, food safety and food supply. Based on successful law courses run by the author and his own expertise as an animal law lecturer, prosecutor and specialist legal adviser, the book combines insights from science, ethics and law to provide an essential understanding of what informs society and the law with regards to animals and their welfare.

Oxana Timofeeva's The History of Animals: A Philosophy is an original and ambitious treatment of the "animal question". While philosophers have always made distinctions between human beings and animals, Timofeeva imagines a world free of such walls and borders. Timofeeva shows the way towards the full acceptance of our animality; an acceptance which does not mean the return to our animal roots, or anything similar. The freedom generated by this acceptance operates through negativity; is an effect of the rejection of the very core of metaphysical philosophy and Christian culture, traditionally opposed to our 'animal' nature and seemingly detached from it. With a foreword by Slavoj Zizek, this book is accessible, jargon-free and ideal for students and all those interested in re-imagining how we engage with animals and the environment.

When we consider modern American animal advocacy, we often think of veganism, no-kill shelters, Internet campaigns against trophy hunting, or celebrities declaring that they would "rather go naked" than wear fur. Contemporary critics readily dismiss animal protectionism as a modern secular movement that privileges animals over people. Yet the movement's roots are deeply tied to the nation's history of religious revivalism and social reform. The Gospel of Kindness explores the broad cultural and social influence of the American animal welfare movement at home and overseas from the Second Great Awakening to the Second World War. Dedicated primarily to laboring animals at its inception in an animal-powered world, the movement eventually included virtually all areas of human and animal interaction. Embracing animals as brethren through biblical concepts of stewardship, a diverse coalition of temperance groups, teachers, Protestant missionaries, religious leaders, civil rights activists, policy makers, and anti-imperialists forged an expansive transnational "gospel of kindness," which defined animal mercy as a signature American value. Their interpretation of this "gospel" extended beyond the New Testament to preach kindness as a secular and spiritual truth. As a cultural product of antebellum revivalism, reform, and the rights revolution of the Civil War era, animal kindness became a barometer of free moral agency, higher civilization, and assimilation. Yet given the cultural, economic, racial, and ethnic diversity of the United States, its empire, and other countries of contact, standards of kindness and cruelty were culturally contingent and potentially controversial. Diverse constituents defended specific animal practices, such as cockfighting, bullfighting, songbird consumption, and kosher slaughter, as inviolate cultural traditions that reinforced their right to self-determination. Ultimately, American animal advocacy became a powerful humanitarian ideal, a barometer of inclusion and national belonging at home and abroad that endures to this day.

Animals and Society uses a variety of historical sources and a coherent social theory to tell the story of the invention of animal rights. It moves from incidents like the medieval execution of pigs to a discussion of the politics and strategies of modern rights organisations. The book also presents radical interpretations of nineteenth-century animal welfare laws, and the accounts of the Noble Savage. The insights generated by social science are always at the core of the discussion and the author daws on the work of Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, Claude Levi-Strauss and Mary Douglas. This wide-ranging and accessible book provides a fascinating account of the relations between humans and animals. It raises far-reaching questions about the philosophy, history and politics of animal rights.

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.

Welfare research has established a range of scientific indicators of stress, welfare and suffering in animals that can be applied to all aspects of improving their welfare through good housing and management, and the topic continues to grow in importance among both professionals and the public. The practical focus of this authoritative, comprehensive encyclopedia aims to promote the understanding and improvement of animals' behaviour without compromising welfare. Under the editorial direction of Professor Daniel Mills, the UK's first specialist in veterinary behavioural medicine, over 180 international experts have contributed a wealth of fully cross-referenced entries from concise definitions to detailed short essays on biological, practical, clinical and ethical aspects of behaviour and welfare in domestic, exotic, companion and zoo animals.

This is a guidebook full of miracle-making tools. Lighten up your journey with inspiration, meditations, heartfelt stories, over seventy prayers, and solid, fact-based reasons that explain why we human beings must make peace with the animal nations if we are ever to find true inner pace, heal our earth, and create authentic world peace.

For most people, animals are the most significant aspects of the nonhuman world. They symbolize nature in our imaginations, in popular media and culture, and in campaigns to preserve wilderness, yet scholars habitually treat animals and the environment as mutually exclusive objects of concern. Conducting the first examination of animals' place in popular and scholarly thinking about nature, Anna L. Peterson builds a nature ethic that conceives of nonhuman animals as active subjects who are simultaneously parts of both nature and human society. Peterson explores the tensions between humans and animals, nature and culture, animals and nature, and domesticity and wildness. She uses our intimate connections with companion animals to examine nature more broadly. Companion animals are liminal creatures straddling the boundary between human society and wilderness, revealing much about the mutually constitutive relationships binding humans and nature together. Through her paradigm-shifting reflections, Peterson disrupts the artificial boundaries between two seemingly distinct categories, underscoring their fluid and continuous character.