The
purview of the book series includes any topic that allows exploration
of the relation between human and nonhuman animals in any setting,
contemporary or historical, from the perspective of various disciplines
within both the social sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology,
anthropology, political science) and humanities (e.g., history, literary
criticism). Among the broad areas included are:
- applied uses of animals (research, education, medicine, agriculture
- animals in the popular culture (entertainment, companion animals, animal symbolism)
- wildlife and the environment
- socio-political movements, public policy and the law
The following titles have been published and available from Brill Academic Publishers:
Confronting Cruelty—Moral orthodoxy and the challenge of the animal rights movement by Lyle Munro (Monash University, Australia)
Why and how do people campaign on behalf of a species that is
not their own? Responses to this question provide important insights
into the much misunderstood animal rights movement and the people in it
who challenge the moral orthodoxy that underpins our attitudes towards
nonhuman animals. The norm of moderate concern for animals - that
animals matter albeit less than humans - permits the (ab)use of animals
in vivisection, factory farming ,bloodsports and other contexts where
animals suffer. Social movement theory is used to show how animal rights
activists are engaged in the social construction of cruelty as a social
problem which they seek to prevent by their intellectual, practical and
emotion work in seminal campaigns against cruelty in the United States,
England and Australia.
Mad about Wildlife—Looking at social conflict over wildlife edited by Ann Herda-Rapp (University of Wisconsin) and Theresa L. Goedeke (Florida A&M University)
This edited volume documents the presence and types of Nature
discourse that emerge during conflicts between people over wildlife.
This collection of qualitative case studies demonstrates how social
groups create opposing symbolic meanings of Nature and highlights the
way in which the successful imposition of those meanings affects
wildlife, people generally, and management professionals. Together, the
chapters illustrate the significant, untapped utility of constructionist
approaches for understanding social conflict over wildlife issues and
for managing natural resources in a way that acknowledges and
incorporates different definitions of nature.
In Search of Consistency—Ethics, animals, and the minimize harm maxim by Lisa Kemmerer (Montana State University)
This volume introduces the most important ideas in animal ethics
and builds on a critical dialogue emerging at the intersection of
animal rights, environmental ethics, and religious studies. In Search of
Consistency examines the work of influential scholars Tom Regan (animal
rights), Peter Singer (utilitarian ethics), Andrew Linzey (theologian),
and Paul Taylor (environmental ethics), and explores ethics and animals
across six world religions (Indigenous faiths, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). In Search of Consistency sheds light
on 'the sanctity of life' by means of an intriguing moral theory, 'The
Minimize Harm Maxim', rooted in the time-honored moral ideals of
impartiality and consistency. This volume questions what it means to be
human and challenges our assumed place in the universe.
Knowing Animals edited by Laurence Simmons (University of Auckland, New Zealand) and Philip Armstrong (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
In recent decades the humanities and social sciences have
undergone an ‘animal turn’, an efflorescence of interdisciplinary
scholarship which is fresh and challenging because its practitioners
consider humans as animals amongst other animals, while refusing to do
so from an exclusively or necessarily biological point of view. Knowing
Animals showcases original explorations of the ‘animal turn’ by new and
eminent scholars in philosophy, literary criticism, art history and
cultural studies. The essays collected here describe a lively bestiary
of cultural organisms, whose flesh is (at least partly) conceptual and
textual: paper tigers, beast fables, anthropomorphs, humanimals, and
l’animot. In so doing, they investigate the benefits of knowing animals
differently: more closely, less definitively, more carefully, less
certainly. Contributors include: Laurence Simmons, Alphonso Lingis,
Barbara Creed, Tanja Schwalm, Philip Armstrong, Annie Potts, Allan
Smith, Ricardo De Vos, Catharina Landström, Brian Boyd, Helen Tiffin,
and Ian Wedde.
Canis Africanis—A dog history of South Africa edited by Sandra Swart (University of Stellenbosch) and Lance van Sittert (University of Cape Town)
This suite of essays is a first for historical writing about
southern Africa: they recover an animal’s ubiquitous, yet hidden
presence in human history. The authors have used the dog as a way “to
think about human society”. The dog is the connecting thread binding
these essays, which each reveals a different part of the complex social
history of southern Africa. The essays range widely from concerns over
disease, bestiality, and social degradation through greyhound gambling,
to anxieties over social status reflected through breed classifications,
to social rebellion through resistance to the dog tax imposed by
colonial authorities. With its focus on dogs in human history, this
project is part of what has been termed the ‘animal turn’ in the social
sciences, which investigates the spaces which animals inhabit in human
society and the way in which animal and human lives interconnect. |
