Human-Animal Studies is a burgeoning multidisciplinary enterprise. Human-Animal Studies places the relationships humans have with other animals, and the relations other animals have with humans, at the centre of scholarly enquiry, artistic practice, and political critique. It draws from, and engages with, subjects across the social sciences, the humanities, and beyond, including anthropology, archaeology, art, biological sciences, cultural studies, environmental studies, ethology, geography, gender studies, history, literary studies, philosophy, religious studies, science and technology studies, sociology, and visual culture. As research in and around Human-Animal Studies blossoms as never before, this new four-volume collection from Routledge's Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by two leading scholars, the collection gathers foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions. In particular, the editors have fully incorporated masterworks from South America, Asia, and Africa to capture a truly global diversity of perspectives. With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Human-Animal Studies is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as an essential database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed by scholars and students as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar-and sometimes overlooked-texts.

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.

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.

Feared, reviled and revered, the wolf has always evoked powerful emotions in humans. It has been admired as a powerful hunter; feared for the threat it is imagined to pose to humans; reviled for its depredations on domestic livestock and revered as a potent symbol of the wild. Wolf explores the ways in which indigenous hunting societies respected the wolf as a fellow hunter and how, with the domestication of animals, the wolf became regarded as an enemy because of attacks on livestock. Such attacks led to the wolf's reputation as a creature of evil in many human cultures. Alone or in packs, farmers hated wolves. In children's and other popular literature, they became the intruder from the wild preying on the innocent. So powerful is the image of the wolf in the human imagination that it became the creature that evil humans can transform into - the dreaded werewolf. Garry Marvin shows how the ways in which wolves are imagined has had far-reaching implications for how actual wolves are treated. Fear of this enigmatic creature eventually led to an attempt to eradicate it as a species. However, with the development of scientific understanding of wolves and their place in ecological systems and the growth of popular environmentalism, the wolf has been re-thought and re-imagined. Still hated by some, the wolf now has new supporters who regard it as a charismatic creature of the newly valued wild and wilderness. The book investigates the latest scientific understanding of the wolf, as well as its place in literature, history and folklore, and synthesises a huge range of material to offer insights into our changing attitudes to wolves.

""Venice, the Tourist Maze" is a popular history of the tragic, at times comic, impact of mass tourism on Venice. The outlook for Venice as a living city seems bleak, but the story is fascinating. Davis and Marvin draw on everything from Baedekers to the local papers and contemporary interviews to examine the effect of this flood of people on urban experience and the delicate fabric of the city, depicting at best an aestheticized museum city, at worst a degraded theme park. In effect, the authors argue, Venice survives as a surreal image of itself. This is a fascinating and well-written book."--Carol Lansing, author of "Power & Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy"
"Anyone inclined to pick up this book will experience over and over in the course of reading it shivers of intellectual play. For some, half the stimulation comes with the dismantling of a worn-out legend: Venice, the Most Romantic City in the World. For others, it will come while musing on the vivid contradictions revealing that what is good for Venice in the short term--revenue from tourism--is killing the city in the ever nearer long term. The authors may unwittingly encourage even more tourists to go to Venice for the most post-modern of reasons: to observe tourists observing the most touristed city in the world. "Venice, The Tourist Maze" is engrossing, amusing, fascinating, and troubling."--Sally McKee, author of "Uncommon Dominion, Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity"

   Why do people go to zoos? Is the role of zoos to entertain or to educate?         In this provocative book, the authors demonstrate that zoos tell us as         much about humans as they do about animals and suggest that while animals         may not need zoos, urban societies seem to.       A new introduction takes note of dramatic changes in the perceived role         of zoos that have occurred since the book's original publication.       "Bob Mullan and Garry Marvin delve into the assumptions about animals         that are embedded in our culture. . . . A thought-provoking glimpse of         our own ideas about the exotic, the foreign." -- Tess Lemmon, BBC         Wildlife Magazine       "A thoughtful and entertaining guided tour." -- David White,         New Society       "[An] unusual and intriguing combination of historical survey, psychological         enquiry, and compendium of fascinating facts." -- Evening Standard  

This accessible account explores how and why men risk their lives to perform with and kill wild bulls as part of a public celebration, describing and analyzing the corrida in a way not previously attempted in English.