Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and growth-curbing epidemics of infectious disease.

Nibert centers his study on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, a practice that has been largely controlled by elite groups and expanded with the rise of capitalism. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. In his view, conquest and subjugation were the results of the need to appropriate land and water to maintain large groups of animals, and the gross amassing of military power has its roots in the economic benefits of the exploitation, exchange, and sale of animals. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals.

Nibert links domesecration to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, including the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves; global warming; and world hunger, and he reviews the U.S. government's military response to the inevitable crises of an overheated, hungry, resource-depleted world. Most animal-advocacy campaigns reinforce current oppressive practices, Nibert argues. Instead, he suggests reforms that challenge the legitimacy of both domesecration and capitalism.

In "Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism," Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics.

Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals -- as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.

What is it about Western society, ask the authors, that makes it possible for people to express great affection for animals as sentient creatures and simultaneously turn a blind eye to the most callous behavior toward them? Animals are sold as expensive commodities, used as food and clothing, killed as vermin, and hunted for sport. But they also are treated as members of the family, used as the cause celebre of social movements, and made the subject of art, film, and poetry. Such contradictions motivate these unique ethnographers to venture into social worlds most people know about only in passing, such as veterinary clinics where companion animals are cared for, animal shelters where dogs and cats are "mercifully" euthanized, and primate labs where monkeys are kept for animal experimentation. Arluke and Sanders are not distanced ethnographers. They worked in the clinics, shelters, and laboratories, cleaning cages, assisting in surgery, and participating in "sacrificing" animals for science or helping to provide them with an "easy death." In this book, the people who work with these animals and live through them talk to the authors about the strategies they adopt to cope with the stress of the job. This fascinating book combines sociological analysis with ethnographic description to give us insight into the history and practice of how we as human beings construct animals, and by extrapolation, how we construct ourselves and others in relation to them. Author note: Arnold Arluke is Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University and a Research Associate at the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine. He is an Associate Editor of Society and Animals and the author of The Making of Rehabilitation: A Political Economy of Medical Specialization with Glenn Gritzer and Gossip: The Inside Scoop with Jack Levin. Clinton R. Sanders, Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, is the author of Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing (Temple) and the co-editor (with Jeff Ferrell) of Cultural Criminology.

"This is a way of putting my life out there, because if I were to write a memoir, there'd be five volumes before I got to The Beatles. So I'm going at it this way, through photographs and quotes. And this is, I feel, a better way for me to do it." - Ringo Starr "Ringo's picture book, Ringo in book form. The essence of Ringo." - David Lynch Another Day In The Life is introduced and narrated by Ringo Starr, with forewords by legendary movie director David Lynch and rock photographer Henry Diltz. Ringo shows us the world as seen through a Starr's eyes, in more than 500 observational photographs and rare images from the archives, and an original text of nearly 13,000 words. From Los Angeles to Tokyo and everywhere in between, Ringo's photographs celebrate his life in music and offer a glimpse behind the scenes. Many are taken during historic events, such as Ringo's acceptance of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and his return to New York's Plaza Hotel, 50 years after The Beatles first visited the USA. Another Day In The Life, Ringo Starr's 184-page monograph featuring Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh and a host of All-Starr friends, is captioned throughout with an original commentary. Meditative, witty and always engaging, Ringo reflects on a legendary life in music. RINGOBOOK.COM GENESIS-PUBLICATIONS.COM

Wildlife is an important and cherished element of our natural heritage in the United States. But state and federal laws governing the ways we interact with wildlife can be complex to interpret and apply. Ten years ago, Wildlife Law: A Primer was the first book to lucidly explain wildlife law for readers with little or no legal training who needed to understand its intricacies. Today, navigating this legal terrain is trickier than ever as habitat for wildlife shrinks, technology gives us new ways to seek out wildlife, and unwanted human-wildlife interactions occur more frequently, sometimes with alarming and tragic outcomes. This revised and expanded second edition retains key sections from the first edition, describing basic legal concepts while offering important updates that address recent legal topics. New chapters cover timely issues such as private wildlife reserves and game ranches, and the increased prominence of nuisance species as well as an expanded discussion of the Endangered Species Act, now more than 40 years old. Chapter sidebars showcase pertinent legal cases illustrating real-world application of the legal concepts covered in the main text. Accessibly written, this is an essential, ground-breaking reference for professors and students in natural resource and wildlife programs, land owners, and wildlife professionals.

How we treat animals arouses strong emotions. Many people are repulsed by photographs of cruelty to animals and respond passionately to how we make animals suffer for food, commerce, and sport. But is this, as some argue, a purely emotional issue? Are there really no rational grounds for opposing our current treatment of animals? In Why Animal Suffering Matters, Andrew Linzey argues that when analyzed impartially the rational case for extending moral solicitude to all sentient beings is much stronger than many suppose. Indeed, Linzey shows that many of the justifications for inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting them. Because animals, the argument goes, lack reason or souls or language, harming them is not an offense. Linzey suggests that just the opposite is true, that the inability of animals to give or withhold consent, their inability to represent their interests, their moral innocence, and their relative defenselessness all compel us not to harm them. Andrew Linzey further shows that the arguments in favor of three controversial practices-hunting with dogs, fur farming, and commercial sealing-cannot withstand rational critique. He considers the economic, legal, and political issues surrounding each of these practices, appealing not to our emotions but to our reason, and shows that they are rationally unsupportable and morally repugnant. In this superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Linzey pioneers a new theory about why animal suffering matters, maintaining that sentient animals, like infants and young children, should be accorded a special moral status.

Are animals worthy recipients of justice? If so, what do we owe them, and what is to be gained by using the language of justice when considering our duties toward them? A Theory of Justice for Animals, written by one of the foremost scholars of animal ethics, argues that not only are animals worthy recipients of justice, but that the language of justice offers a stronger base of claims for animal advocates than does the language of ethics or morality. It also claims that a genuinely political theory of animal rights is incomplete if it does not go beyond the level of ideal theory. This is the first account of animal ethics to use nonideal theory, and it does so to plot a course from where we are now to where we want to be. Advancing what he calls the enhanced sentience position, Robert Garner argues that a valid theory of justice for animals should be rights-based, and that animals have a right to not suffer at the hands of humans. At the same time, he argues that humans have a greater interest in life and liberty than most species of nonhuman animals. Tackling animal ethics as it relates to justice and non-ideal theory, this is a seminal work that will challenge traditional approaches and offer a compelling new vision of animal justice.

What is the role of government in protecting animal welfare? What principles should policy makers draw on as they try to balance animal welfare against human liberty?
Much has been written in recent years on our moral duties towards animals, but scholars and activists alike have neglected the important question of how far the state may go to enforce those duties. Kimberly K. Smith fills that gap by exploring how liberal political principles apply to animal welfare policy. Focusing on animal welfare in the United States, Governing Animals begins with an account of the historical relationship between animals and the development of the American liberal welfare state. It then turns to the central theoretical argument: Some animals (most prominently pets and livestock) may be considered members of the liberal social contract. That conclusion justifies limited state intervention to defend their welfare - even when such intervention may harm human citizens. Taking the analysis further, the study examines whether citizens may enjoy property rights in animals, what those rights entail, how animals may be represented in our political and legal institutions, and what strategies for reform are most compatible with liberal principles. The book takes up several policy issues along the way, from public funding of animal rescue operations to the ethics of livestock production, animal sacrifice, and animal fighting.
Beyond even these specific policy questions, this book asks what sort of liberalism is suitable for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Smith argues that investigating the political morality of our treatment of animals gives us insight into how to design practices and institutions that protect the most vulnerable members of our society, thus making of our shared world a more fitting home for both humans and the nonhumans to which we are so deeply connected.

A prominent and respected philosopher of animal rights law and ethical theory, Gary L. Francione is known for his criticism of animal welfare laws and regulations, his abolitionist theory of animal rights, and his promotion of veganism and nonviolence as the baseline principles of the abolitionist movement. In this collection, Francione advances the most radical theory of animal rights to date. Unlike Peter Singer, Francione maintains that we cannot morally justify using animals under any circumstances, and unlike Tom Regan, Francione's theory applies to all sentient beings, not only to those who have more sophisticated cognitive abilities.

The Sunday Times top ten bestseller 'Lost Dog is already one of my books of the year. Spicer writes like a dream...You will love it.' India Knight, Sunday Times 'Sharply observed and deeply funny, it's one of the best, most enjoyable books of 2019 so far' British Vogue What did Fleabag do next? One morning, you wake up and wonder what has happened to your life. Then you realise: you happened to yourself. Kate is a middle aged woman trying to steer some order into a life that is going off the rails. When she adopts a lurcher called Wolfy, the shabby rescue dog saves her from herself. But when the dog disappears, it is up to Kate to hit the streets of London and find him. Will she save him, as he has saved her - or will she lose everything? As she trudges endlessly calling his name in the hopeless hope she may find him, she runs into other people's landscapes and lives, finding allies amongst psychics, bloggers and mysterious midnight joggers. Trying to find her dog tests her relationship, and her sanity, to its limits - and gets her thinking about her life, and why things have turned out as they have for her. A brilliant, life-affirming memoir, Lost Dog is a book like no other about the myth of modern womanhood.

An immersive blend of chicken-keeping memoir and animal welfare reporting by a journalist who accidentally became obsessed with her flock. Since first domesticating the chicken thousands of years ago, humans have become exceptionally adept at raising them for food. Yet most people rarely interact with chickens or know much about them. In Under the Henfluence, Tove Danovich explores the lives of these quirky, mysterious birds who stole her heart the moment her first box of chicks arrived at the post office. From a hatchery in Iowa to a chicken show in Ohio to a rooster rescue in Minnesota, Danovich interviews the people breeding, training, healing and, most importantly, adoring chickens. With more than 60 billion chickens living on industrial farms around the world, they're easy to dismiss as just another dinner ingredient. Yet Danovich's reporting reveals the hidden cleverness, quiet sweetness and irresistible personalities of these birds, as well as the complex human-chicken relationship that has evolved over centuries. This glimpse into the lives of backyard chickens doesn't just help us to understand chickens better - it also casts light back on ourselves and what we've ignored throughout the explosive growth of industrial agriculture. Woven with delightful and sometimes heartbreaking anecdotes from Danovich's own henhouse, Under the Henfluence proves that chickens are so much more than what they bring to the table.

This, the final title to be published from the sessions of the 2002 ICAZ conference, focuses on the role of man's best friend. As worker or companion, the dog has enjoyed a unique relationship with its human master, and the depth and variety of the papers in this fascinating collection is a testament to the interest that this symbiotic arrangement holds for many scholars working in archaeology today. The book covers an eclectic range of subjects, such as considering dogs as animals of sacrifice and animal components of ancient and modern religious ritual and practice; dogs as human companions subject to loving care, visual/symbolic representation, deliberate or accidental breed manipulation; as working dogs; and finally as co-inhabitors of uman dwelling paces and co-consumers of human food resources. While many of the papers in this volume have a predominant focus, they also demonstate that the relationships between humans and dogs are rarely, if ever singular or simple. Instead these relationships are complex, often combining the practical, the ideological and the symbolic.

Throughout the 19th century, animals were integrated into staged scenarios of confrontation, ranging from lion acts in small cages to large-scale re-enactments of war. Initially presenting a handful of exotic animals, travelling menageries grew to contain multiple species in their thousands. These 19th-century menageries entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit nature through war-like practices against other animal species. Animal shows became a stimulus for antisocial behaviour as locals taunted animals, caused fights, and even turned into violent mobs. Human societal problems were difficult to separate from issues of cruelty to animals. Apart from reflecting human capacity for fighting and aggression, and the belief in human dominance over nature, these animal performances also echoed cultural fascination with conflict, war and colonial expansion, as the grand spectacles of imperial power reinforced state authority and enhanced public displays of nationhood and nationalistic evocations of colonial empires. Fighting Nature is an insightful analysis of the historical legacy of 19th-century colonialism, war, animal acquisition and transportation. This legacy of entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit other animal species is yet to be defeated.'When does fighting end and theatre begin? In this fascinating study, Peta Tait - one of the most prominent authors in the Performance/Animal Studies intersection - explores animal acts with a particular focus on confrontation. The sites of the human-animal encounter range from theatres, circus, and war re-enactments investigating how the development of certain human fighting practices run in parallel with certain types of public exhibits of wild animals. Tait's account is historical, looking at animal acts - from touring menageries to theatrical performances - from the 1820s to the 1910s.'Lourdes Orozco, Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Leeds

ANIMAL DREAMS collects David Brooks' thought-provoking essays about how humans think, dream and write about other species. Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian and international literature and culture, from 'The Man from Snowy River' to Rainer Maria Rilke and The Turin Horse, to live-animal exports, veganism, and the culling of native and non-native species. In his piercing, elegant, widely celebrated style, he considers how private and public conversations about animals reflect older and deeper attitudes to our own and other species, and what questions we must ask to move these conversations forward, in what he calls 'the immense work of undoing'. For readers interested in animal welfare, conservation, and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams will be an essential, richly rewarding companion. Praise for David Brooks: "one of Australia's most skilled, unusual and versatile writers" -- Peter Pierce, The Sydney Morning Herald. "No one writes about animals like David Brooks." -- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (author of The Assault on Truth, When Elephants Weep and Lost Companions). Praise for ANIMAL DREAMS: "Beautifully written and emotionally and intellectually enthralling. The best book I have ever read on relations between humans and animals and the 'redress' we owe them. It makes you angry, it makes you weep; it makes you determined to rethink and to act." -- Helen Tiffin, FAHA (co-author of The Empire Writes Back and Wild Man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutang).

Animal rights do not feature explicitly in ancient thought. Indeed the notion of natural rights in general is not obviously present in the classical world. Plato and Aristotle are typically read as racist and elitist thinkers who barely recognise the humanity of their fellow humans. Surely they would be the last to show up as models of the humane view of other kinds?
In this unusual philosophy book, Catherine Osborne asks the reader to think again. She shows that Plato's views on reincarnation and Aristotle's views on the souls of plants and animals reveal a continuous thread of life in which humans are not morally superior to beasts; Greek tragedy turns up thoughts that mirror the claims of rights activists when they speak for the voiceless; the Desert Fathers teach us to admire the natural perceptiveness of animals rather than the corrupt ways of urban man; the long tradition of arguments for vegetarianism in antiquity highlights how mankind's abuse of other animals is the more offensive the more it is for indulgent ends.
What, then, is the humane attitude, and why is it better? How does the humane differ from the sentimental? Is there a truth about how we should treat animals? By reflecting on the work of the ancient poets and philosophers, Osborne argues, we can see when and how we lost touch with the natural intelligence of dumb animals.

Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics could be characterized as a new poetics of species, forcing a rethinking of the body's significance, both human and animal. Exploring the "logic of flesh" and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a "creaturely" approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Reintroducing Weil's elaboration of such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. In her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.

New Approaches to the Archaeology of Beekeeping aims to take a holistic view of beekeeping archaeology (including honey, wax, and associated products, hive construction, and participants in this trade) in one large interconnected geographic region, the Mediterranean, central Europe, and the Atlantic Facade. Current interest in beekeeping is growing because of the precipitous decline of bees worldwide and the disastrous effect it portends for global agriculture. As a result, all aspects of beekeeping in all historical periods are coming under closer scrutiny. The volume focuses on novel approaches to historical beekeeping but also offers new applications of more established ways of treating apicultural material from the past. It is also keenly interested in helping readers navigate the challenges inherent in studying beekeeping historically. The volume brings together scholars working on ancient, medieval, early modern, and ethnographic evidence of beekeeping from a variety of perspectives. In this sense it will serve as a handbook for current researchers in this field and for those who wish to undertake research into the archaeology of beekeeping.