1995: Brightlingsea, a small port in rural Essex. Two women, Alice and Linda, wake up to find lorries thundering through their town, carrying live animals in horrendous conditions for export. Although from very different worlds, the pair unite to try to stop the lorries. They become unlikely friends, facing arrest and police brutality amidst the protests, while also dealing with the pressures of motherhood. When one of their group dies, things start to unravel, as they are forced to face the differences between them. Timely and lyrical, Humane is a play about activism, friendship and motherhood and the values that unite and divide us.

This book focuses not only on the practical problems of animal control but examines related issues that have received less attention. It covers the psychological bases of resistance to spay/neuter, and discusses the sensitive subject of the animal rights attitude toward euthanasia. it explores the possibility of chemical, rather than surgical, sterilization, and proposes a humane method of dealing with feral cats under certain circumstances. It presents the possibility of early spay/neuter, and offers a glimpse of the conditions of animal shelters in some other countries and how they are beginning to be handled. The contributors include veterinarians, a philosopher, teachers, animal control and shelter personnel and directors, a psychiatrist and an attorney.

Although scholars in the disciplines of law, psychology, philosophy, and sociology have published a considerable number of prescriptive, normative, and theoretical studies of animals in society, Pet Politics presents the first study of the development of companion animal or pet law and policy in Canada and the United States by political scientists. The authors examine how people and governments classify three species of pets or companion animals-cats, dogs, and horses-for various degrees of legal protection. They then detail how interest groups shape the agenda for companion animal legislation and regulation, and the legislative and administrative formulation of anticruelty, kennel licensing, horse slaughter, feral and roaming cat, and breed ban policies. Finally, they examine the enforcement of these laws and policies by agencies and the courts. Using an eclectic mix of original empirical data, original case studies, and interviews-and relying on general theories and research about the policy process and the sociopolitical function of legality-the authors illustrate that pet policy is a unique field of political struggle, a conflict that originates from differing perspectives about whether pets are property or autonomous beings, and clashing norms about the care of animals. The result of the political struggle, the authors argue, is difficulty in the enactment of policies and especially in the implementation and enforcement of laws that might improve the welfare of companion animals.

Do animals have moral rights? If so what does this mean? What sorts of mental lives do animals have, and how should we understand their welfare? After addressing these questions, DeGrazia explores their implications in contexts such as food consumption, zoos, and research.

It's the dream scenario for many of us after a long week: having the house completely to ourselves. No partners, no parents, no kids, no pets. But as we settle into the couch, something stirs: maybe a mouse darts out from under a cupboard, or a fly buzzes lazily past the window. We're not actually alone at all. Until quite recently, no one had taken the life that lives with us very seriously: until Rob Dunn and his team decided to take a closer look. Upon investigating the terra incognita of our homes, they discovered that there are nearly 200,000 species living in our bedrooms, kitchens, living areas, bathrooms, and basements. Some of these species can kill us. Some benefit us. And some seem simply benign. But almost all of them were completely unknown--and they've been living alongside us the whole time. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn takes us to the edge of biology's latest frontier: our own homes. Every house is a wilderness--from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards, to the camel crickets living in the basement, to the antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus waiting on the kitchen counter, thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants live literally under our noses. As we have become increasingly obsessed with cleaning and sterilizing our homes and separating our living spaces from nature, we have unwittingly cultivated an entirely new playground for evolution. Unfortunately, this means that we have created a range of new parasites, from antibiotic-resistant microbes to nearly impossible to kill cockroaches, to threaten ourselves with. At the same time, many of the more helpful organisms--such as microbes that can protect us from autoimmune diseases or promote healthy digestion, or the centipedes that can hunt down those pesky roaches--are caught in the crosshairs. If we're not careful, the "healthier" we try to make our homes, the more likely we'll be putting our own health at risk. A rich natural history and a thrilling scientific investigation, Rob Dunn's Never Home Alone shows us that if are to truly thrive in our homes, we must learn to welcome the unknown guests that have been there the whole time.

An exploration of the various ways animals and their relations to humans have been depicted throughout the ages. This volume delves into the realm between representative images and real animals. It is a historical inquiry into human interaction with the animals we eat, pamper, experiment on, and imagine, as they have been variously domesticated, slaughtered, loved, studied, and made into icons of human invention. Common assumptions and experiences with animals have entered into the functioning and conceptualizing of life, yet these are historically and culturally contingent. The essays in this volume unveil the ways in which human-animal relationships reveal the interhuman structures of the cultures in which they are formed. By using animals as a lens, they refocus our awareness of the ways in which humans have allotted resources, gathered knowledge, and structured families. The treatment of animals is often a guide to the treatment of people within a society, while the perceived 'stewardship' of humans over animals has helped shape the broader environment that both human and nonhuman animals share. The authors tackle their subject from a variety of levels -- popular, scientific, and economic. The essays explore the vast borderland between human ideas and physical nature regarding animal representation. Contributors include Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., Jonathan Burt, Ken C. Erickson, Katherine C. Grier, Richard C. Hoffmann, Andrew C. Isenberg, JacquelineMilliet, John Solomon Otto, Karen A. Rader, Harriet Ritvo, Nigel Rothfels, Kenneth J. Shapiro, and Edward I. Steinhart. Mary Henninger-Voss is an Associate of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University.

Red Panda: Biology and Conservation of the First Panda, Second Edition, provides the most up-to-date research, data, and conservation solutions for the red pandas, Ailurus species. Since the publication of the previous edition in 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) updated the threat level of red pandas, and they are now considered to be endangered. This latest edition is updated to provide an in-depth look at the scientific and conservation-based issues urgently facing the red panda today. Led by one of the world's leading authorities and advocates for red panda conservation, this new edition includes data from the Population and Habitat Viability (PHVA) workshops conducted in three of the species' range states, Nepal, China, and India; these workshops utilized firsthand information on the decrease of red panda populations due to factors including deforestation, illegal pet trade, human population growth, and climate change. This book also includes updated information from the first edition on reproduction, anatomy, veterinary care, zoo management, and fossil history.

Regional geopolitical processes have turned the Himalayan region of Ladakh, in northwest India, into a strategic border area with an increasing military presence that has decentered the traditional agropastoralist economy. This in turn has led to social fragmentation, the growing isolation of elders, and ethical dilemmas for those who strive to maintain traditional subsistence activities. Simultaneously, climate change is causing glaciers-a vital source of life in the region-to recede, which elders perceive as the consequence of a broken bond with the natural environment and the deities that inhabit the landscape. Caring for Glaciers looks at the causes and consequences of ongoing social and cultural change in peoples' relationship with the natural environment. It illuminates how relations of reciprocity - learned through everyday life and work in the mountains with the animals, glaciers, and deities that form Ladakh's sacred geography - shape and nurture an ethics of care. Integrating contemporary studies of affect, landscape, and multispecies anthropology, Caring for Glaciers contributes to the anthropology of ethics by examining the moral order that develops through the embodied experience of life and work in the Himalayas.

Most approaches to animal ethics ground the moral standing of nonhumans in some appeal to their capacities for intelligent autonomy or mental sentience. "Corporal Compassion "emphasizes the phenomenal and somatic commonality of living beings; a philosophy of body that seeks to displace any notion of anthropomorphic empathy in viewing the moral experiences of nonhuman living beings. Ralph R. Acampora employs phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism and deconstruction to connect and contest analytic treatments of animal rights and liberation theory. In doing so, he focuses on issues of being and value, and posits a felt nexus of bodily being, termed symphysis, to devise an interspecies ethos. Acampora uses this broad-based bioethic to engage in dialogue with other strains of environmental ethics and ecophilosophy.

"Corporal Compassion" examines the practical applications of the somatic ethos in contexts such as laboratory experimentation and zoological exhibition and challenges practitioners to move past recent reforms and look to a future beyond exploitation or total noninterference--a posthumanist culture that advocates caring in a participatory approach.

A weary-looking man stands at an intersection, backpack at his feet. Curled up nearby is a mixed-breed dog, unfazed by the passing traffic. The man holds a sign that reads, "Two old dogs need help. God bless." What's happening here? Leslie Irvine breaks new ground in the study of homelessness by investigating the frequently noticed, yet underexplored, role that animals play in the lives of homeless people. Irvine conducted interviews on streetcorners, in shelters, even at highway underpasses, to provide insights into the benefits and liabilities that animals have for the homeless. She also weighs the perspectives of social service workers, veterinarians, and local communities. Her work provides a new way of looking at both the meaning of animal companionship and theconcept of home itself.

Historian James Turner focuses on the great rise of Victorian concern for the humane treatment of animals, one of the most noteworthy flowering of such sentiment in modern times and one that engaged the support of the rich and the powerful, of church dignitaries, peers and ministers, and the queen herself. In delving into the history of animal rights, he also offers a fresh perspective on such varied aspects of Victorian culture as attitudes toward sex, pain, child labor, women, poverty, and science.

Turner draws on extensive researh in the archives of a animal protection societies, literature of the period, and controversial writings on the treatment of animals. He argues that the dual shocks of industrialization and urbanization helped produce a deeper emotional identification with the natural world. Scientists of the day, proclaiming that human beings were close kin to beasts, not only encouraged but demanded considerate treatment for animals, a sentiment that reached its liveliest expression in the antivivisection controversy. By the turn of the century, the author demonstrates, new conceptions of human nature adn heightened sensitivity even to the plight of lower life-forms were contributing to a new understanding of man's place in nature.

A collaboration between an attorney and an animal protection advocate, this work utilises the extremely controversial and high-profile "crush video" case, US v. Stevens, to explore how American society attempts to balance the protection of free speech and the prevention of animal cruelty. Starting from the detailed case study of a single prominent ruling, the authors provide a masterful survey of important issues facing society in the area of animal welfare. The Stevens case included various "hot topic" elements connected to the role of government as arbiter of public morality, including judicial attitudes to sexual deviance and dogfighting.

"Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture" examines how the shared embodied existence of early modern human and nonhuman animals challenged the establishment of species distinctions. The material conditions of the early modern world brought humans and animals into complex interspecies relationships that have not been fully accounted for in critical readings of the period's philosophical, scientific, or literary representations of animals. Where such prior readings have focused on the role of reason in debates about human exceptionalism, this book turns instead to a series of cultural sites in which we find animal and human bodies sharing environments, mutually transforming and defining one another's lives.To uncover the animal body's role in anatomy, eroticism, architecture, labor, and consumption, Karen Raber analyzes canonical works including More's "Utopia," Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet," and Sidney's poetry, situating them among readings of human and equine anatomical texts, medical recipes, theories of architecture and urban design, husbandry manuals, and horsemanship treatises. Raber reconsiders interactions between environment, body, and consciousness that we find in early modern human-animal relations. Scholars of the Renaissance period recognized animals' fundamental role in fashioning what we call "culture," she demonstrates, providing historical narratives about embodiment and the cultural constructions of species difference that are often overlooked in ecocritical and posthumanist theory that attempts to address the "question of the animal."

This explores the political and poetic understanding of the deconstruction of the 'animal question'. Re-examining how we relate to other animals has far-reaching implications for how we think of ourselves. This textbook reveals how thinkers on deconstruction, including Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous and Nicholas Royle, have consistently addressed questions about animality. Cixous questions human intervention between the death of a wild bird and the predation of a domestic cat. Kelly Oliver explores Derrida's analysis of what or whose gaze is at stake when a King oversees the autopsy of an elephant. Royle examines in what sense the vulnerable impressions made by the tunnelling of a mole might be thought of as the traces of a text. Throughout this collection authors explore the politics, and the poetics, of a less human-centred world. They demonstrate that even when this world is viewed through the prism of fields such as literature, autobiography and philosophy, it always shows traces of other animals. It expands the current debate on the 'animal question' through new essays by established authors, such as Peggy Kamuf, Sarah Wood and Judith Still, that critically examine a wide range of texts by Derrida, Cixous and Royle. It includes the first English translation of 'Un Refugie' by Helene Cixous, showing how her approach to relations between humans and other animals is similar to but distinct from that of Derrida. It republishes Nicholas Royle's ground-breaking essay 'Mole'.

The entwined history of humans and elephants is fascinating but often sad. People have used elephants as beasts of burden and war machines, slaughtered them for their ivory, exterminated them as threats to people and ecosystems, turned them into objects of entertainment at circuses, employed them as both curiosities and conservation ambassadors in zoos, and deified and honored them in religious rites. How have such actions affected these pachyderms? What ethical and moral imperatives should humans follow to ensure that elephants are treated with dignity and saved from extinction?

In Elephants and Ethics, Christen Wemmer and Catherine A. Christen assemble an international cohort of experts to review the history of human-elephant relations, discuss current issues of vital concern to elephant welfare, and assess the prospects for the ethical coexistence of both species.

Part I provides an overview of the vexatious human-elephant relationship, from the history of our interactions to understanding elephant intelligence and sense of self. It concludes with a discussion of the issues of stress, pain, and suffering as experienced by elephants in human care and the problems inherent in assessing these subjectively.

The second part explores how humans use elephants as tools and entertainment. It reviews domestic uses in Asia, examines the history and roles of elephants in zoos and circuses, and discusses the methods and ethics of training and caring for captive elephants.

In Part III the contributors examine the fragile and conflict-filled world of human-elephant interactions in the wild. Each chapter delves into a different angle of the "elephant problem" -- the all-too-humanproblem of our growing populations taking over space that was historically the domain of these pachyderms. The chapters explore attempts to tame and "train" elephants in populous areas, the struggle over balancing species preservation while maintaining biodiversity in protected areas, and the conundrums posed by hunting, tourism, and human-elephant competition on rural land.

That the future health and survival of elephants is dependent on human actions is irrefutable. In addressing these issues from multiple perspectives, Elephants and Ethics promotes mutual understanding of the cultural, conservation, and economic difficulties at the root of the many troublesome human-elephant interactions and poses new questions about our responsibility toward these largest of land mammals.

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.

Pets, People, and Pragmatism examines human relationships with pets without assuming that such relations are either benign or unnatural and to be avoided. The book addresses a lack of respect in pet-people relationships; for respectful relationships to be a real possibility, however, humans must make the effort to understand the beings with whom we live, work, and play. American pragmatism understands that humans and other animal beings have been interacting and transforming each other for thousands of years. There is nothing unnatural about the human domestication of other animal beings, though domestication does raise specific practical and ethical questions. A pragmatist account of our relationship with those animal beings commonly considered as pets does not prohibit the use of these beings in research, entertainment, competition, or work. It does, however, find abuse and neglect unethical. Since abuse can occur in any use of other animal beings, this pragmatist account takes up the abusive practices in research, entertainment, competition, and work without arguing that research, entertainment, competition, and work are inherently abusive. Some of the sources of abuse have been addressed by utilitarian and deontological accounts, but a pragmatist evolutionary perspective offers unique insights and results in some surprising conclusions: for instance, there may be an ethical obligation to let a horse race, a dog show, or a cat compete in agility. Pets, People, and Pragmatism embarks on a philosophical journey that will captivate scholars and pet enthusiasts alike. It provides an important contribution to longstanding debates in the area of animal issues and strengthens the idea of multiple approaches to non-human beings. It also opens space for approaches that challenge some of the assumptions in the field of philosophy that have resulted in a dualistic and hierarchical approach to metaphysics and ethics.

Thomas Hardy and Animals examines the human and nonhuman animals who walk and crawl and fly across and around the pages of Hardy's novels. Animals abound in his writings, yet little scholarly attention has been paid to them so far. This book fills this gap in Hardy studies, bringing an important author within range of a new and developing area of critical inquiry. It considers the way Hardy's representations of animals challenged ideas of human-animal boundaries debated by the Victorian scientific and philosophical communities. In moments of encounter between humans and animals, Hardy questions boundaries based on ideas of moral sense or moral agency, language and reason, the possession of a face, and the capacity to suffer and perceive pain. Through an emphasis on embodied encounters, his writings call for an extension of empathy to others, human or nonhuman. In this accessible book Anna West offers a new approach to Hardy criticism.

Gary L. Francione is a law professor and leading philosopher of animal rights theory. Robert Garner is a political theorist specializing in the philosophy and politics of animal protection. Francione maintains that we have no moral justification for using nonhumans and argues that because animals are property--or economic commodities--laws or industry practices requiring "humane" treatment will, as a general matter, fail to provide any meaningful level of protection. Garner favors a version of animal rights that focuses on eliminating animal suffering and adopts a protectionist approach, maintaining that although the traditional animal-welfare ethic is philosophically flawed, it can contribute strategically to the achievement of animal-rights ends.

As they spar, Francione and Garner deconstruct the animal protection movement in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and elsewhere, discussing the practices of such organizations as PETA, which joins with McDonald's and other animal users to "improve" the slaughter of animals. They also examine American and European laws and campaigns from both the rights and welfare perspectives, identifying weaknesses and strengths that give shape to future legislation and action.

Traditional cultural practices involving animals are being seriously questioned, heavily regulated, and, in some cases, even abolished in Spain. This essential and timely text brings together prominent scholars working in the ever-expanding field of animal studies in Spain, drawing from a variety of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences to provide an interdisciplinary look at the animal question. In choosing an angle to approach the study of ethical, aesthetic considerations, and cultural representations of animals, this collection moves away from the ideology of human exceptionalism that is still predominant but progressively losing force in the field of animal ethics in Spain. It instead includes contributions by scholars who have chosen to look at animals, to a lesser or greater degree, through an antispeciesist lens, displaying the committed attention to and respect for animal life that characterizes critical animal studies.

Jaguars of the Northern Pantanal: Panthera Onca at the Meeting of the Waters details the lives and behaviors of this subpopulation of jaguars through one-of-a-kind photographs from 26 international photographers, as well as illustrations, maps, waypoints, scientific insights, field journal excerpts and personal narratives. The book seeks to understand how locals can coexist with these cats while benefitting financially through ecotourism. Users will find this book to be a conceptual model to apply to other subpopulations in order to save jaguars throughout North and South America. It is an ideal resource for researchers and practitioners in wildlife conservation, naturalism ecotourism and biologists.

Animal rights is one of the fastest growing social movements today. Women greatly outnumber men as activists, yet surprisingly, little has been written about the importance and impact of gender on the movement. Women and the Animal Rights Movement combats stereotypes of women activists as mere sentimentalists by exploring the political and moral character of their advocacy on behalf of animals. Emily Gaarder analyzes the politics of gender in the movement, incorporating in-depth interviews with women and participant observation of animal rights organizations, conferences, and protests to describe struggles over divisions of labor and leadership. Controversies over PETA advertising campaigns that rely on women's sexuality to ""sell"" animal rights illustrate how female crusaders are asked to prioritize the cause of animals above all else. Gaarder underscores the importance of a paradigm shift in the animal liberation movement, one that seeks a more integrated vision of animal rights that connects universally to other issues--gender, race, economics, and the environment--highlighting that many women activists recognize and are motivated by the connection between the oppression of animals and other social injustices.

"What gives the book distinction is Garner's comprehensive grasp of and sympathy with this subject."--New Statesman and Society "Thorough and compelling."--Political Studies "Meticulously researched...should be regarded as a standard text for teachers and undergraduates."--Talking Politics "Leads the way through this labyrinth of moral mazes."--New Scientist Our treatment of, and attitudes towards, animals vary from respect and concern at one end of the scale to cruelty and neglect at the other. Acts of violence to animals are countered by acts of violence on the behalf of animals. This book is about these apparently contradictory responses. It seeks to examine moral theories which endeavour to tell us how we ought to treat animals as well as how individuals and the law actually do treat them. In this work the author combines his professional knowledge as a political scientist with his interest in, and concern for, the plight of animals and our moral obligations towards them. He puts his case for fundamental changes in the way we think about, and behave towards, the other species with whom we share the planet. -- .

Animal lovers who feed meat to other animals are faced with a paradox: perhaps fewer animals would be harmed if they stopped feeding the ones they love. Animal diets do not raise problems merely for individuals. To address environmental crises, health threats, and harm to animals, we must change our food systems and practices. And in these systems, animals, too, are eaters. Moving beyond what humans should eat and whether to count animals as food, Just Fodder answers ethical and political questions arising from thinking about animals as eaters. Josh Milburn begins with practical dilemmas about feeding the animals closest to us, our pets or animal companions. The questions grow more complicated as he considers relationships with more distance - questions about whether and how to feed garden birds, farmland animals who would eat our crops, and wild animals. Milburn evaluates the nature and circumstances of our relationships with animals to generate a novel theory of animal rights. Looking past arguments about what we can and cannot do to other beings, Just Fodder asks what we can, should, and must do for them, laying out a fuller range of our ethical obligations to other animals.

Much of the discussion on the Anthropocene has centred upon anthropogenic global warming and climate change, and the urgency of political and social responses to this problem. Animals in the Anthropocene: Critical Perspectives on Non-Human Futures shows that assessing the effects of human activity on the planet requires more than just the quantification of ecological impacts towards the categorisation of geological eras. It requires recognising and evaluating a wide range of territories and terrains, full of non-human agents and interests and meanings, exposed to the profound forces of change that give their name to the Anthropocene.It is from the perspective of 'the animal question' - asking how best to think and live with animals - that Animals in the Anthropocene seeks to interrogate the Anthropocene as a concept, discourse and state of affairs. The term Anthropocene is a useful device for drawing attention to the devastations wreaked by anthropocentrism and advancing a relational model for human and non-human life. The effects on animals of human political and economic systems continue to expand and intensify, in numerous domains and in ways that not only cause suffering and loss but that also produce new forms of life and alter the very nature of species. As anthropogenic change affects the more-than-human world in innumerable ways, we must accept responsibility for the damage we have caused and the debt we owe to non-human species.