Explores the evolving and diverse ways in which humans and animals interact, from blood sports to pet keeping.
What are our attitudes towards other animals, and how does this affect our humanity?
This work of anthrozoology explores the myriad and evolving ways in which humans and animals interact, the divergent cultural constructions of humanity and animality found around the world, and individual experiences of other animals.
This book looks at case studies covering blood sports (such as hunting, fishing and bull fighting), pet keeping and ‘petishism’, eco-tourism and wildlife conservation, working animals and animals as food. It addresses the idea of animal exploitation raised by the animal rights movements, as well as the anthropological implications of changing attitudes towards animal personhood, and the rise of a posthumanist philosophy in the social sciences more generally.
About the Author
Samantha Hurn is Lecturer in Anthropology, and launched an award winning MA in Anthrozoology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She has recently been appointed to the Department of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Exeter and is now establishing an MA in Anthrozoology there. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Wales, Andalusia, South Africa and Swaziland.
What People Are Saying
"A refreshingly novel text for beginning students, as well as stimulating a wider interest in an intelligent discussion of human-animals relations." Roy Ellen, Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology, University of Kent Canterbury
Table of Contents
1. Why look at human-animal interactions?
2. Animality
3. Continuity
4. The West and the Rest
5. Domestication
6. Good to think
7. Food
8. Pets
9. Communication
10. Intersubjectivity
11. Humans and other primates
12. Science and medicine
13. Conservation
14. Hunting and blood sports
15. Animal rights and wrongs
16. From anthropocentricity to multispecies ethnography
Bibliography
Index