Animals and Society


Book Description

This textbook provides a full overview of human-animal studies. It focuses on the conceptual construction of animals in American culture and the way in which it reinforces and perpetuates hierarchical human relationships rooted in racism, sexism, and class privilege.




Humans and Other Animals


Book Description

Explores the evolving and diverse ways in which humans and animals interact, from blood sports to pet keeping




New Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions


Book Description

Animals are important in human psychological and cultural life, and our relationships with other species are psychological and morally complicated. This special issue presents a series of original research articles concerning attitudes towards animals, the ethics of their treatment, the effects of companion animals on human health and psychological well-being, and the role that culture plays in our interactions with other species. The articles illustrate the scope of the new field of human-animal relationships, the variety of research approaches, and the implications of research findings for social policy.




The Social Neuroscience of Human-animal Interaction


Book Description

Our relationships with animals, as anyone with a beloved dog or cat knows, can be among the most significant in our lives. But why are we so attached to our pets? What kind of health, developmental, and psychological impacts do animals have on us? And what practical benefits -- for animals and humans alike -- can be gained from a deeper understanding of human-animal interactions? In this volume, a cross-disciplinary group of authors that includes behavioral psychologists, neuroscientists, geneticists, ethicists and veterinarians seek to understand human-animal interactions by applying research in the neurobiology and genetics that underlie human social functioning. Chapters describe the concepts and methodologies that social neuroscientists use to understand human social relationships, functioning, and the social bases of cognition, and apply these to understanding the role of animals in our lives. Authors present evolutionary and developmental perspectives, and weigh the implications of human-animal interactions research for animal welfare. Clinical applications include animal-assisted therapies for people with disabilities, acute or chronic health conditions, and social or emotional difficulties. Clear and accessible, this book is intended for a broad readership that includes clinicians, teachers, and anyone interested in how and why animals affect us the way they do.




Animals and Human Society


Book Description

Animals and Human Society provides a solid, scientific, research-based background to advance understanding of how animals impact humans. Animals have had profound effects on people from the earliest times, ranging from zoonotic diseases, to the global impact of livestock, poultry and fish production, to the influences of human-associated animals on the environment (on extinctions, air and water pollution, greenhouse gases, etc.), to the importance of animals in human evolution and hunter -gatherer communities.As a resource for both science and non-science, Animals and Human Society can be used as a text for courses in Animals and Human Society or Animal Science, or as supplemental material for Introduction to Animal Science. It offers foundational background to those who may have little background in animal agriculture and have focused interest on companion animals and horses. The work introduces livestock production (including poultry and aquaculture) but also includes coverage of companion and lab animals. In addition, animal behavior and animal perception are covered.Animals and Human Society is likewise an excellent resource for researchers, academics, or students newly entering a related field or coming from another discipline and needing foundational information, as well as interested laypersons looking to augment their knowledge on the many impacts of animals in human society. - Features research-based and pedagogically sound content, with learning goals and textboxes to provide key information - Challenges readers to consider issues based on facts rather than polemics - Poses ethical questions and raises overall societal impacts - Balances traditional animal science with companion animals, animal biology, zoonotic diseases, animal products, environmental impacts and all aspects of human/animal interaction




Shared Lives of Humans and Animals


Book Description

Animals are conscious beings that form their own perspective regarding the lifeworlds in which they exist, and according to which they act in relation to their species and other animals. In recent decades a thorough transformation in societal research has taken place, as many groups that were previously perceived as being passive or subjugated objects have become active subjects. This fundamental reassessment, first promoted by feminist and radical studies, has subsequently been followed by spatial and material turns that have brought non-human agency to the fore. In human–animal relations, despite a power imbalance, animals are not mere objects but act as agents. They shape our material world and our encounters with them influence the way we think about the world and ourselves. This book focuses on animal agency and interactions between humans and animals. It explores the reciprocity of human–animal relations and the capacity of animals to act and shape human societies. The chapters draw on examples from the Global North to explore how human life in modernity has been and is shaped by the sentience, autonomy, and physicality of various animals, particularly in landscapes where communities and wild animals exist in close proximity. It offers a timely contribution to animal studies, environmental geography, environmental history, and social science and humanities studies of the environment more broadly.




Animals and Sociology


Book Description

Animals and Sociology challenges traditional assumptions about the nature of sociology. Sociology often centres on humans; however, other animals are everywhere in society. Kay Peggs explores the significant contribution that sociology can make to our understanding of human relations with other animals.




Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes


Book Description

Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes seeks to ‘bring the animal in’ to the leisure studies domain and contribute to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, interwoven multispecies phenomenon. The emerging multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies encourages researchers to move beyond narrow focus on human-centric practices and ways of being in the world, and to recognise that human and non-human beings are positioned within shared ecological, social, cultural and political spaces. With some exceptions, leisure studies has been slow to embrace the ‘animal turn’ and consider how leisure actions, experiences and landscapes are shaped through multispecies encounters between humans, other animals, birds and insects, plants and environment. This book begins to address this gap by presenting research that considers leisure as more-than-human experiences. The authors consider leisure with nonhuman others (e.g. dogs, horses), affecting those others (e.g. environmental concerns) and affected by the non-human (e.g. landscape, weather), by exploring the ‘contact zones’ between humans and other species. Thus, this work contributes to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a Special Issue of the Leisure Studies.




Regarding Animals


Book Description

Questioning our conflicting views of the role of animals.




French Thinking about Animals


Book Description

Bringing together leading scholars from Belgium, Canada, France, and the United States, French Thinking about Animals makes available for the first time to an Anglophone readership a rich variety of interdisciplinary approaches to the animal question in France. While the work of French thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari has been available in English for many years, French Thinking about Animals opens up a much broader cross-cultural dialogue within animal studies. These original essays, many of which have been translated especially for this volume, draw on anthropology, ethology, geography, history, legal studies, phenomenology, and philosophy to interrogate human-animal relationships. They explore the many ways in which animals signify in French history, society, and intellectual history, illustrating the exciting new perspectives being developed about the animal question in the French-speaking world today. Built on the strength and diversity of these contributions, French Thinking about Animals demonstrates the interdisciplinary and internationalism that are needed if we hope to transform the interactions of humans and nonhuman animals in contemporary society.