[Ordering Info]
Vast in its scope and vision, this book synthesizes an array of disparate research and scholarship and in doing so exposes the tensions and inconsistencies in the view of animals through different areas of Western thought. A project of such breadth is unprecedented and there is no existing conceptual structure for a work of this kind: it is certain to spark a furore of philosophical debate.
Here is what the critics have to say:
"Written with refreshing and penetrating honesty as well as conviction and dedication." Anthrozo”s
"By trying to see things from the animals' point of view (as far as she is able) a whole different perspective is created." Radical Philosophy
"Pages and pages of good philosophical, political, ethnological, anthropological, and just plain thoughtful thinking! The book is astonishing in its breath of knowledge and compassion." Earth First
"A fascinating section is the review of human-animal continuity in the fossil record, in the psychological studies of chimpanzees' ability to learn, and in anthropological-style studies of animal communities, including domesticated ones as well as bees, primates and other mammals such as whales and dolphins. Even more stunning is the account of human children reared by wolves and gazelles 50 recorded cases of animal species raising human children over the last 600 years." Australian Tribune
"Noske explores how we fit animals into our lives, as providers of food, for example, and how consistently we view them as fundamentally different from ourselves." New Scientist
"Vast in its scope and vision it synthesizes an array of disparate research and scholarship." Sandra Harding, University of Delaware
"A thought-provoking, enlightening book. Makes animal rights activists, deep ecologists, social theorists and the average everyday human stop and think about their personal belief systems and actions, something long overdue in our Western capitalist society." Briarpatch
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Road Towards Domestication
- The Wide Range of Human-Animal Relationships; A Social Relationship Between Two Species as Preliminary Stage of Domestication; Domestication as a Concept; Animal Domestication as a Historical Process
- Domestication Under Capitalism
- Capitalist Science and Technology; Alienation; Animal Production in the Capitalist System; Scientific Management in Animal Industries; Human-controlled Animal Subsistence Cycles; Animal Alienation: De-animalization;
- The Animal Industrial Complex
- Agribusiness in Europe; Agribusiness in the U.S. and Australia; Human Workers in Animal Industries; The Third World Connection; The Environmental Consequences; Modern Animal Production and the Human Consumer; Animal Research
- The Devaluation of Nature
- Some Non-Western Concepts of Nature; Greek Attitudes to Nature; Medieval Europe; The Dawn of Modern Times; Organic Science in Post-medieval Europe; Animals as Machines; Male Since versus Female Nature; Appeasing the Church; The `Problem' of Living Nature; Darwin; Random Workmanship?; Hobbesian Animal Societies; Darwin's Hierarchies; Marxism; Human-Animal Relatedness; Humans Contrasted with Animals; The Social Versus the Natural
- The Question of Human-Animal Continuity
- The Social versus the Biological Sciences; Sociobiology, a New Nature-culture Debate; Collective Mindlessness; Costs, Benefits and Investment; Anti-sociobiology but Pro-continuity; The Animal Question in Feminism; Hominoids and Hominids; The Homo Lineage
- Human-Animal Discontinuities?
- Humans as Sole Constitutors; Is Animal Language not Language?; Animal Constitutors; Animal Tool-users and Tool-makers; Animals as Sociocultural Beings; The Animal as the Other
- Meeting the Other: Towards as Anthropology of Animals
About the author
Barbara Noske has an MA in cultural anthropology and a PhD in philosophy, both from the University of Amsterdam, and is currently Research Scholar, at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University. In addition to this book, she is at work on Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Born in the Netherlands, (she speaks four languages Dutch, French, English and German), Barbara travelled the world before coming to Canada, working as a free-lance writer and lecturer for a wide variety of audiences, both academic and popular, where she participated in radio and television debates, talk shows and polemics. As a world traveller she has done a lot of hitchhiking; in Australia alone she hitchhiked 40,000 kilometres. She has wrangled horses, and driven cattle in Wyoming and in Australia, and amassed considerable experience handling horses and ponies in Wales, Scotland, England, France, and Iceland. In the summer season (56 degrees already in early morning), on top of trucks, she crossed the Sahara Desert and in this way made contact with the half-nomadic Tuareg who taught her how to handle and ride camels. Apart from being a fervent horseback rider, she was at one time a competitive swimmer. Today she adds to her list a passion for, and participation in, ethnic folkdancing.