Animal Philosophies
During April, we celebrate both Earth Month and Earth Day (April 26th). Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970 and marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement. In celebration of this month and day, we have developed a guide focusing on human relationships with the non-human world. This feature will center on the field of Animal Studies (and Critical Animal Studies)—inter-disciplinary fields grounded in trans-species intersectionality, questions of "animality," human-made representations of and cultural ideas about "the animal," environmental justice, social activism, and the ethics of human treatment of the creatures with which we share our planet. In the following tabs, you will find introductory animal studies texts and journals. You will also find texts that incorporate animal studies into the fields of philosophy, religion/theology, and critical race theory. Additionally, we have included brief introductions to some related fields including ecocriticism, veganism & vegetarianism, and ecofeminism.
Illustration: Armando Veve, cover art for Feline Philosophy.
If you are looking to learn more about the history of a specific animal, look into The Animal Series from Reaktion Books which explores the natural history of animals alongside their historical and cultural impact on humankind. Each short book is a wonderful introduction to an animal with which you are probably familiar and maybe even encounter daily!
Image: The Animal Series from Reaktion Books. Moth, Hare, Nightingale, Lizard.
Next Steps
For more resourced related to animal studies, check out our guide to representations of human/non-human relationships in the media, literature, and music on the Media Studies Research Guide.
If you'd like to explore more thematic content relevant to nature and the environment, try the highlight on Environmental Ethics & Aesthetics. as well as the Environmental Justice & Earth Day feature at the Media Studies Research Guide, which includes music, novels, feature films, and documentaries on these topics.
The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies by ISBN: 9780199927142Publication Date: 2017-03-01Intellectual struggles with the "animal question"—how humans can rethink and reconfigure their relationships with other animals—first began to take hold in the 1970s. Over the next forty years, scholars from a wide range of fields would make sweeping reevaluations of the relationship between humans and other animals. The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies brings these diverse evaluations together for the first time, paying special attention to the commodification of animals, the degradation of the natural world and a staggering loss of animal habitat and species extinction, and the increasing need for humans to coexist with other animals in urban, rural and natural contexts. Linda Kalof maps these themes into the five major categories that structure this volume: Animals in the Landscape of Law, Politics and Public Policy; Animal Intentionality, Agency and Reflexive Thinking; Animals as Objects in Science, Food, Spectacle and Sport; Animals in Cultural Representations; and Animals in Ecosystems. Written by international scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, law, history, English, art, sociology, geography, archaeology, environmental studies, cultural studies, and animal advocacy, the thirty chapters in this handbook investigate key issues and concepts central to understanding our current relationship with other animals and the potential for coexistence in an ecological community of living beings.
Critical Terms for Animal Studies by ISBN: 9780226355399Publication Date: 2018-10-23Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to examining, understanding, and critically evaluating the complex relationships between humans and other animals. Scholarship in Animal Studies draws on a variety of methodologies to explore these multi-faceted relationships in order to help us understand the ways in which other animals figure in our lives and we in theirs. Bringing together the work of a group of internationally distinguished scholars, the contribution in Critical Terms for Animal Studies offers distinct voices and diverse perspectives, exploring significant concepts and asking important questions. How do we take non-human animals seriously, not simply as metaphors for human endeavors, but as subjects themselves? What do we mean by anthropocentrism, captivity, empathy, sanctuary, and vulnerability, and what work do these and other critical terms do in Animal Studies? Sure to become an indispensable reference for the field, Critical Terms for Animal Studies not only provides a framework for thinking about animals as subjects of their own experiences, but also serves as a touchstone to help us think differently about our conceptions of what it means to be human, and the impact human activities have on the more than human world.
Animal Liberation by ISBN: 0380713330Publication Date: 1991-04-01The Australian philosopher Peter Singer's 1975 work, Animal Liberation, is often cited as a founding document in animal studies. Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere—inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In this newly revised and expanded edition, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory forms" and product-testing procedures—offering sound, humane solutions to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency and justice, Animal Liberation is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.
Humans and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence by ISBN: 9781440838354Publication Date: 2017-01-26There is an urgent need to understand human-animal interactions and relations as we become increasingly aware of our devastating impact on the natural resources needed for the survival of all animal species. This timely reference explores such topics as climate change and biodiversity, the impact of animal domestication and industrial farming on local and global ecosystems, and the impact of human consumption of wild species for food, entertainment, medicine, and social status. This volume also explores the role of pets in our lives, advocacy movements on behalf of animals, and the role of animals in art and media culture. Authors Julie Urbanik and Connie L. Johnston introduce the concept of animal geography, present different aspects of human-animal relationships worldwide, and highlight the importance of examining these interconnections.
Anthropocentrism by ISBN: 9789004187948Publication Date: 2011-07-14Anthropocentrism is a charge of human chauvinism and an acknowledgement of human ontological boundaries. Anthropocentrism has provided order and structure to humans' understanding of the world, while unavoidably expressing the limits of that understanding. This collection explores the assumptions behind the label 'anthropocentrism', critically enquiring into the meaning of 'human'. It addresses the epistemological and ontological problems of charges of anthropocentrism, questioning whether all human views are inherently anthropocentric. In addition, it examines the potential scope for objective, empathetic, relational, or 'other' views that trump anthropocentrism. With a principal focus on ethical questions concerning animals, the environment and the social, the essays ultimately cohere around the question of the non-human, be it animal, ecosystem, god, or machine.
Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art: Towards Theory and Practice by ISBN: 9783631845011Publication Date: 2023-03-16Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, this edition examines the changing conception of human subjectivity, agency, and citizenship as shaped by the dynamic interplays between nature, technology, science, and culture. The proposed 'symbiotic turn', (the awareness of the multitude of interactions and mutual interdependencies among humans, non-humans and their environment) aspires to explore the complex recompositions of the "human" in the 21st century. By organizing and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue at multiple levels, both in theory and practice, Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies is suggested as a new narrative about the biosphere and technosphere, which is embodied literarily, philosophically, and artistically.
Animal Studies: An Introduction by ISBN: 9780199968398Publication Date: 2013-01-01Animal studies is a growing interdisciplinary field that incorporates scholarship from public policy, sociology, religion, philosophy, and many other areas. In essence, it seeks to understand how humans study and conceive of other-than-human animals, and how these conceptions have changed over time, across cultures, and across different ways of thinking. This interdisciplinary introduction to the field boldly and creatively foregrounds the realities of nonhuman animals, as well as the imaginative and ethical faculties that humans must engage to consider our intersection with living beings outside of our species. It also compellingly demonstrates that the breadth and depth of thinking and humility needed to grasp the human-nonhuman intersection has the potential to expand the dualism that currently divides the sciences and humanities.As the first holistic survey of the field, Animal Studies is essential reading for any student of human-animal relationships and for all people who care about the role nonhuman animals play in our society.
When looking for animal studies articles, try using the following terms/keywords:
- Ahuman theory
- Animal communication
- Animal experimentation
- Animal exploitation
- Animal liberation
- Animal rights
- Animal welfare
- Animal–industrial complex
- Animality
- Creature/creaturely
- Eco-ability movement
- Ecocriticism
- Ecofeminism
- Environmental humanities
- Fauna-criticism
- Human-animal relationships
- Human-animal studies
- Posthumanism/Posthumanities
- Sentientist
- Speciesism
- Veganarchism
- Zoopoetics
For more Animal Studies Journals, see the Animal Studies Journal list.
Animal Studies Journal by Animal Studies Journal provides a forum for current research in the field of animal Studies. ASJ publishes international cross-disciplinary scholarship and practice-led research. The journal, which is published twice yearly, is fully refereed (double-blind peer reviewed) and open access. ISSN: 2201-3008 (Online).
Journal of Animal Ethics by The Journal of Animal Ethics is the first named journal of animal ethics in the world. It is devoted to the exploration of progressive thought about animals. It is multidisciplinary in nature and international in scope. It covers theoretical and applied aspects of animal ethics—of interest to academics from the humanities and the sciences, as well as professionals working in the field of animal protection. The Journal is published by the University of Illinois Press in partnership with the Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
Anthrozoös: A multidisciplinary journal of the interactions of people and animals by Anthrozoös is a bi-monthly, peer-reviewed publication whose focus is to report the results of studies, from a wide array of disciplines, on the interactions between people and other animals. Academic disciplines represented include anthropology, archaeozoology, art and literature, education, ethology, history, human medicine, psychology, sociology and veterinary medicine.
Antennae by Antennae (founded in 2006) is an independent, hybrid, peer reviewed journal. We are free to the public, non-funded by institutions, and not supported by grants or philanthropists. The Journal’s format and contents are informed by the concepts of ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘widening participation’. Independent publications share histories of originality, irreverence, and innovation and Antennae has certainly been an important contributor to what will be remembered as the non-human turn in the humanities. The first issue of Antennae coincided with the rise of human-animal studies; a field of academic inquiry now become mainstream.Society & Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies by
Society & Animals publishes studies that describe and analyze our experiences of non-human animals from the perspective of various disciplines within both the social sciences and humanities. The journal specifically deals with subjects such as human-animal interactions in various settings (animal cruelty, the therapeutic uses of animals), the applied uses of animals, the use of animals in popular culture (e.g. dog-fighting, circus, animal companion, animal research), representations of animals in literature, the history of the domestication of animals, the politics of animal welfare, and the animal rights movement.
Between the Species: A Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals by Between the Species is a peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to the philosophical examination of the relationship between human beings and other animals. While most articles are ethical inquiries, others raise issues involving metaphysics, epistemology and other areas of philosophical investigation. Between the Species is an open access journal: users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles.
Derecho Animal by Derecho Animal (Forum of Animal Law Studies), is an electronic publication founded in 2009 by ICALP (International Center for Animal Law and Policy) at the Law Faculty of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, under the direction of Marita Giménez-Candela. It is the first legal publication dedicated to interdisciplinary studies on human-animal relations, and relies on wide dissemination across the international landscape. Its basic aim is to publish and share original investigation and rigorous technical works in Animal Law and other related sciences (Animal Welfare Science, Public Policy relating to animals, Ethics, Nutrition, Education, Assisted Therapy with Animals, Cultural History).
Humanimalia by Humanimalia is a biannual journal devoted to the study of human–animal relations. It is interdisciplinary, open-access, and peer-reviewed, publishing original articles from a wide range of cultural, historical, philosophical, political, and aesthetic perspectives.
Journal for Critical Animal Studies by The Journal for Critical Animal Studies (JCAS) was designed to develop activist consciousness of animal liberation history, practice, theory, and politics, while also encouraging Critical Animal Studies (CAS) scholarship, one of the most progressive and dynamic modes of theory in the academy today. To this end, JCAS, a free online journal, accepts manuscripts and other materials that promote the fundamental notions of CAS.
Animal Welfare Animal Welfare is an international scientific journal. It publishes the results of peer-reviewed scientific research, technical studies, surveys and reviews relating to the welfare of kept animals (eg on farms, in laboratories, zoos and as companions) and of those in the wild whose welfare is compromised by human activities. Papers on related ethical and legal issues are also considered for publication.
Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought by ISBN: 0826464130Publication Date: 2004-07-30Animal Philosophy is the first text to look at the place and treatment of animals in Continental thought. A collection of essential primary and secondary readings on the animal question, it brings together contributions from the following key Continental thinkers: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Levinas, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Ferry, Cixous, and Irigaray. Each reading is followed by commentary and analysis from a leading contemporary thinker. The coverage of the subject is exceptionally broad, ranging across perspectives that include existentialism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, phenomenology and feminism. This anthology is an invaluable one-stop resource for anyone researching, teaching or studying animal ethics and animal rights in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory, sociology, environmental studies and gender and women's studies.
The History of Animals: A Philosophy by ISBN: 9781350012011Publication Date: 2018-05-03Oxana Timofeeva's The History of Animals: A Philosophy is an original and ambitious treatment of the "animal question". While philosophers have always made distinctions between human beings and animals, Timofeeva imagines a world free of such walls and borders. Timofeeva shows the way towards the full acceptance of our animality; an acceptance which does not mean the return to our animal roots, or anything similar. The freedom generated by this acceptance operates through negativity; is an effect of the rejection of the very core of metaphysical philosophy and Christian culture, traditionally opposed to our 'animal' nature and seemingly detached from it. This book is accessible, jargon-free and ideal for students and all those interested in re-imagining how we engage with animals and the environment.
Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy by ISBN: 9781783481811Publication Date: 2014-12-01Debate in animal ethics needs reenergizing. To date, philosophers have focused on a relatively limited number of specific themes whilst leaving metaphilosophical issues that require urgent attention largely unexamined. This timely collection of essays brings together new theory and critical perspectives on key topics in animal ethics, foregrounding questions relating to moral status, moral epistemology and moral psychology. Is an individualistic approach based upon capacities the best way to ground the moral status of non-human animals or should philosophers pursue relational perspectives? What does it mean to "know" animals and "speak" for them? What is the role of emotions such as disgust, empathy, and love, in animal ethics and how does emotion inform the rationalism inherent in analytic animal ethics theory? The collection aims to broaden the scope of animal ethics, rendering it more inclusive of important contemporary philosophical themes and pushing the discipline in new directions.
Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida by ISBN: 9780231140225Publication Date: 2008-07-08Zoographies challenges the anthropocentrism of the Continental philosophical tradition and advances the position that, while some distinctions are valid, humans and animals are best viewed as part of an ontological whole. Matthew Calarco draws on ethological and evolutionary evidence and the work of Heidegger, who called for a radicalized responsibility toward all forms of life. He also turns to Levinas, who raised questions about the nature and scope of ethics; Agamben, who held the "anthropological machine" responsible for the horrors of the twentieth century; and Derrida, who initiated a nonanthropocentric ethics. Calarco concludes with a call for the abolition of classical versions of the human-animal distinction and asks that we devise new ways of thinking about and living with animals.
Ethics, Humans and Other Animals: an introduction with readings by ISBN: 0415212413Publication Date: 2000-11-07This introductory textbook is ideally suited to newcomers to philosophy and ethical problems. Rosalind Hursthouse carefully introduces the three standard approaches in current ethical theory: utilitarianism, rights, and virtue ethics. She links each chapter to readings from key exponents such as Peter Singer and Mary Midgley and asks students to think critically about these readings for themselves. Key features include clear activities and activities, chapter summaries and guides to further reading.
How to Count Animals, More or Less by ISBN: 9780198829676Publication Date: 2019-06-16Most people agree that animals count morally, but how exactly should we take animals into account? A prominent stance in contemporary ethical discussions is that animals have the same moral status that people do, and so in moral deliberation the similar interests of animals and people shouldbe given the very same consideration. In How to Count Animals, more or less, Shelly Kagan sets out and defends a hierarchical approach in which people count more than animals do and some animals count more than others. For the most part, moral theories have not been developed in such a way as to take account of differences in status. By arguing for a hierarchical account of morality—and exploring what status sensitive principles might look like—Kagan reveals just how much work needs to be done to arrive at an adequate view of our duties toward animals, and of morality more generally.
The Beautiful Animal: Sincerity, Charm, and the Fossilised Dialectic by ISBN: 1786607557Publication Date: 2018-06-20Can philosophy conceive of a perfect animal? Can it think of the animal as anything other than an imperfect human? The book attempts to rethink the Hegelian dialectic so as to render it capable of assigning a proper place to the animal, and in particular the beautiful animal, and to rework the philosophy of nature so as to encompass the fossil. The fossil itself teaches philosophy and in particular the dialectic how it must modify itself in order to encompass the beautiful animal, in the form of what we term the fossilised dialectic, resistant to the spiritualisation which will always leave the animal behind. If philosophy can admit the animal in this way, we might then ask what philosophy can learn from this animal that will have taken up residence in its home? What does a specifically domestic animal teach us? At the very least, it shows us that the function we give to the furnishings of the house is not the only one and perhaps therefore that there is no single unique function. In this way, animals teach us the most philosophical lesson there is: to see the world as it is in itself.
Thinking Plant Animal Human: Encounters with Communities of Difference by ISBN: 9781452960869Publication Date: 2020-06-23There is a revolution under way in our thinking about animals and, indeed, life in general, particularly in the West. The very words man, animal, and life have turned into flimsy conceptual husk—-impediments to thinking about the issues in which they are embroiled. David Wood was a founding member of the early 1970s Oxford Group of philosophers promoting animal rights; he also directed Ecology Action (UK). Thinking Plant Animal Human is the first collection of this major philosopher's influential essays on "animals," bringing together his many discussions of nonhuman life, including the classic "Thinking with Cats." Exploring our connections with cats, goats, and sand crabs, Thinking Plant Animal Human introduces the idea of "kinnibalism" (the eating of mammals is eating our own kin), reflects on the idea of homo sapiens, and explores the place of animals both in art and in children's stories. Finally, and with a special focus on trees, the book delves into remarkable contemporary efforts to rescue plants from philosophical neglect and to rethink and reevaluate their status. Wood shows that the best way of resisting simplistic classification is to attend to our manifold relationships with other living beings. It is not anthropocentric to focus on such relationships; they cast light in complex ways on the living communities of which we are part, and exploring them recoils profoundly on our understanding of ourselves.
The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I by ISBN: 9780226144283Publication Date: 2009-11-01When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1, the University of Chicago Press inaugurates an ambitious series, edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf, translating these important works into English. The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 launches the series with Derrida's exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from 2001-2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine's fable "The Wolf and the Lamb," Hobbes's biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence's poem "Snake," Machiavelli's Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau's evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract. Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal.
The Animal That Therefore I Am by ISBN: 9780823227907Publication Date: 2008-04-15The Animal That Therefore I Am is the long-awaited translation of the complete text of Jacques Derrida's ten-hour address to the 1997 Cérisy conference entitled "The Autobiographical Animal," the third of four such colloquia on his work. The book was assembled posthumously on the basis of two published sections, one written and recorded session, and one informal recorded session. The book is at once an affectionate look back over the multiple roles played by animals in Derrida's work and a profound philosophical investigation and critique of the relegation of animal life that takes place as a result of the distinction—dating from Descartes—between man as thinking animal and every other living species. The Animal That Therefore I Am is at times a militant plea and indictment regarding, especially, the modern industrialized treatment of animals. However, Derrida cannot subscribe to a simplistic version of animal rights that fails to follow through, in all its implications, the questions and definitions of "life" to which he returned in much of his later work.
Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being by ISBN: 9780823230273Publication Date: 2009-04-15This book explores the significance of human animality in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and provides the first systematic treatment of the animal theme in Nietzsche's corpus as a whole Lemm argues that the animal is neither a random theme nor a metaphorical device in Nietzsche's thought. Instead, it stands at the center of his renewal of the practice and meaning of philosophy itself. Lemm provides an original contribution to on-going debates on the essence of humanism and its future. At the center of this new interpretation stands Nietzsche's thesis that animal life and its potential for truth, history, and morality depends on a continuous antagonism between forgetfulness (animality) and memory (humanity). This relationship accounts for the emergence of humanity out of animality as a function of the antagonism between civilization and culture. Lemm's book presents Nietzsche as the thinker of an emancipatory and affirmative biopolitics.
Critical animal studies (CAS) is a theory-to-activism global community. It emerged in 2001 with the founding of the Centre for Animal Liberation Affairs by Anthony J. Nocella and Steven Best, which in 2007 became the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS). Critical Animal Studies is interested in ethical reflection on the relationships between humans and other animals. Scholars in the field seek to integrate academic research with political engagement and activism. Generally speaking, CAS is considered more radical than Animal Studies with many scholars in the field expressing the need to direct action and political engagement, though some scholars in Animal Studies also share these views.
For more texts, search "Critical animal studies" under title series in IUCAT and see the Critical Animal Studies Series published by Brill. For an introductory critique of CAS, see the following article: "Has the Growth of Critical Animal Studies Been Good for Animals?" by Moe Constantine and Z. Zane McNeill.
Critical Animal Studies: An introduction by ISBN: 9781438445342Publication Date: 2013-01-01Having roots as a specialized philosophical movement at Oxford University in the early 1970s, critical animal studies is now taking shape as a wide-open, multidisciplinary endeavor through which scholars across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and others ranging from creative writers to architects, are joining together to address issues related to today's unprecedented subjection of animals. Introducing this emerging field, Dawne McCance describes the wide range of analysis and approaches represented, looking at much-debated practices such as industrialized or "factory" farming of animals, handling and slaughter, animal experimentation, wildlife management, animal captivity, global genomics, meat-eating, and animal sacrifice. McCance equally focuses on many of the theoretical and ethical problems that recur across the field, raising critical questions about prevailing approaches to animal ethics, and inviting new ways of thinking about and responding to animals.
The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre by ISBN: 9781135100872Publication Date: 2014-04-16As the scholarly and interdisciplinary study of human/animal relations becomes crucial to the urgent questions of our time, notably in relation to environmental crisis, this collection explores the inner tensions within the relatively new and broad field of animal studies. This provides a platform for the latest critical thinking on the condition and experience of animals. The volume is structured around four sections: engaging theory doing critical animal studies critical animal studies and anti-capitalism contesting the human, liberating the animal: veganism and activism. The Rise of Critical Animal Studies demonstrates the centrality of the contribution of critical animal studies to vitally important contemporary debates and considers future directions for the field. This edited collection will be useful for students and scholars of sociology, gender studies, psychology, geography, and social work.
Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation by ISBN: 9781433191695Publication Date: 2022-02-21Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation, co-edited by Nathan Poirier, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Annie Bernatchez of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, is a brilliant radical engaging intersectional book promoting total liberation from new fresh critical animal studies voices throughout the world. This captivating critical animal studies collection, influenced by historical and ongoing radical movements such as green anarchism, Black liberation, prison abolition, feminism, Queer liberation, disability rights, and decolonization, is one of the most powerful texts in the last decade within the animal liberation movement. We must begin to listen to new and young scholars for social justice to evolve in order to end speciesism and all forms of oppression. Read, share, reflect and act on this interdisciplinary collection of scholar-activists from sociology, anthropology, criminology, economics, philosophy, cultural studies, eco-theology, environmental studies, and education that will transform the global movement for radical social justice and propel total liberation forward.
The War Against Animals by ISBN: 9789004300422Publication Date: 2015-06-22Are non-human animals our friends or enemies? In this provocative book, Dinesh Wadiwel argues that our mainstay relationships with billions of animals are essentially hostile. The War against Animals asks us to interrogate this sustained violence across its intersubjective, institutional and epistemic dimensions. Drawing from Foucault, Spivak and Derrida, The War against Animals argues that our sovereign claim of superiority over other animals is founded on nothing else but violence. Through innovative readings of Locke and Marx, Dinesh Wadiwel argues that property in animals represents a bio-political conquest that aims to secure animals as the "spoils of war." The goal for pro-animal advocacy must be to challenge this violent sovereignty and recognize animal resistance through forms of counter-conduct and truce.
Critical Animal Studies and Social Justice: Critical Theory, Dismantling Speciesism, and Total Liberation by ISBN: 9781793635228Publication Date: 2022-03-03An essential read for activists, community organizers, and justice scholars Critical Animal Studies and Social Justice: Critical Theory, Dismantling Speciesism, and Total Liberation is a collection that combines scholarship and activism in nine ground-breaking and provocative chapters. The book includes contributions from around the world influenced by critical theory, feminism, social justice, political theory, media studies, environmental justice, food justice, disability studies, and Black liberation. By promoting total liberation and liberatory politics, these essays challenge the reader to think about new approaches to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. The contributors examine and disrupt many of the exclusionary assumptions and behaviors by those working toward justice and liberation, encouraging the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and actions.
Animals, Disability, and the End of Capitalism: Voices From the Eco-Ability Movement by ISBN: 9781433135156Publication Date: 2019-02-11Animals, Disability, and the End of Capitalismis a collection of essays from the leaders in the field of eco-ability. The book is rooted in critical pedagogy, inclusive education, and environmental education. The efforts of diverse disability activists work to weave together the complex diversity and vastly overlooked interconnections among nature, ability, and animals. Eco-ability challenges social constructions, binaries, domination, and normalcy. Contributors challenge the concepts of disability, animal, and nature in relation to human and man. Eco-ability stresses the interdependent relationship among everything and how the effect of one action such as the extinction of a species in Africa can affect the ecosystem in Northern California. Animals, Disability, and the End of Capitalism is timely and offers important critical insight from within the growing movement and the current academic climate for such scholarship.
Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies by ISBN: 9781793624352Publication Date: 2021-03-24Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies explores nonhuman animals' experiences of gender, physiological sex, and sexuality while in nature and captivity. The contributors analyze nonhuman oppression issues such as reproductive freedom, deconstructing dichotomous thinking, and promoting animal liberation within and beyond the academy. The scholar-activists featured in this collection investigate injustice in news stories, literature, and other media that shape human perceptions and treatment toward nonhumans. Each chapter confronts problematic social constructions of gender, physiological sex, or sexuality by applying literary theory, cultural studies, disability studies, queer studies, ecocriticism, and more to promote justice and equity for nonhuman animals.
Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict by ISBN: 9780231151887Publication Date: 2013-05-07Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and growth-curbing epidemics of infectious disease. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals.
Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice by ISBN: 9780198789802Publication Date: 2018-12-18There is now widespread agreement that many non-human animals are sentient, and that this fact has important moral and political implications. Indeed, most are in agreement that animal sentience ought to constrain the actions of political institutions, limiting the harms that can be perpetrated against animals. The primary aim of this book is to show that the political implications of animal sentience go even further than this. For this book argues that sentience establishes a moral equality and a shared set of rights amongst those creatures who possess it. Crucially, this worth and these rights create a duty on moral agents to establish and maintain a political order dedicated to their interests.This book is devoted to sketching what this "sentientist politics" might look like. It argues in favour of a "sentientist cosmopolitan democracy": a global political system made up of overlapping local, national, regional and global communities comprised of human and non-human members who exist within shared "communities of fate."
When researching animals in religion, try utilizing the "Human animal relationships--Religious aspects" or "Animals--Religious aspects" subject headings in IUCAT.
Image: Relief of a cow (representing Hathor) from the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Via Artstor, 1458 BCE.
Animals and World Religions by ISBN: 9780199790678Publication Date: 2011-12-09Despite increasing public attention to animal suffering, little seems to have changed: Human beings continue to exploit billions of animals in factory farms, medical laboratories, and elsewhere. In this wide-ranging and perceptive study, Lisa Kemmerer shows how spiritual writings and teachings in seven major religious traditions can help people to consider their ethical obligations toward other creatures. Dr. Kemmerer examines the role of nonhuman animals in scripture and myth, in the lives of religious exemplars, and by drawing on foundational philosophical and moral teachings. She begins with a study of indigenous traditions around the world, then focuses on the religions of India (Hindu, Buddhist and Jain) and China (Daoism and Confucianism), and finally, religions of the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). At the end of each chapter, Kemmerer explores the inspiring lives and work of contemporary animal advocates who are motivated by a personal religious commitment. Animals and World Religions demonstrates that rethinking how we treat nonhuman animals is essential for anyone claiming one of the world's great religions.
Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology by ISBN: 9780823263196Publication Date: 2014-09-15A turn to the animal is underway in the humanities, most obviously in such fields as philosophy, literary studies, cultural studies, and religious studies. One important catalyst for this development has been the remarkable body of animal theory issuing from such thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway. What might the resulting interdisciplinary field, commonly termed animality studies, mean for theology, biblical studies, and other cognate disciplines? Is it possible to move from animal theory to creaturely theology? This volume is the first full-length attempt to grapple centrally with these questions. It attempts to triangulate philosophical and theoretical reflections on animality and humanity with theological reflections on divinity. If the animal-human distinction is being rethought and re-theorized as never before, then the animal-human-divine distinctions need to be rethought, re-theorized, and re-theologized along with it. This is the task that the multidisciplinary team of theologians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and historians assembled in this volume collectively undertakes.
Totemism and Human-Animal Relations in West Africa by ISBN: 9781003017578Publication Date: 2021-03-29This book explores human-animal relations amongst the Bebelibe of West Africa, with a focus on the establishment of totemic relationships with animals, what these relationships entail and the consequences of abusing them. Employing and developing the concepts of "presencing" and "the ontological penumbra" to shed light on the manner in which people make present and engage in the world around them, including the shadowy spaces that have to be negotiated in order to make sense of the world, the author shows how these concepts account for empathetic and intersubjective encounters with non-human animals. Grounded in rich ethnographic work, Totemism and Human-Animal Relations in West Africa offers a reappraisal of totemism and considers the implications of the ontological turn in understanding human-animal relations. As such, it will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and anthrozoologists concerned with human-animal interaction.
Hunter-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology by ISBN: 9783030211813Publication Date: 2019-09-02Exploring a hitherto unexamined aspect of San cosmology, Mathias Guenther's two volumes on human-animal relations in San cosmology link "new Animism" with Khoisan Studies, providing valuable insights for Khoisan Studies and San culture, but also for anthropological theory, relational ontology, folklorists, historians, literary critics and art historians. In Volume I, therianthropes and transformations, two manifestations of ontological mutability that are conceptually and phenomenologically linked, are contextualized in broader San myth. Guenther explores the pervasiveness of human-animal hybridity and transformation in San expressive culture (myth, stories and storytelling, ludic dancing and art, ancestral rock art and contemporary easel art), ritual (trance dance curing, female and male rites of passage) and hunting. Transformation is shown to be experienced by humans, particularly via rituals and dancing that evoke animal identity mergers, but also by hunters who may engage with their prey animals in terms of sympathy and inter-subjectivity, particularly through the use of "hunting medicines."
Beyond Wild and Tame: Soiot encounters in a sentient landscape by ISBN: 9781789206784Publication Date: 2020-04-09Responding to recent scholarship, this book examines animal domestication and offers a Soiot approach to animals and landscapes, which transcends the wild-tame dichotomy. Following herder-hunters of the Eastern Saian Mountains in southern Siberia, the author examines how Soiot and Tofa households embrace unpredictability, recognize sentience, and encourage autonomy in all their relations with animals, spirits, and land features. It is an ethnography intended to help us reinvent our relations with the earth in unpredictable times.
Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges, and the Arts: Animal studies in modern worlds by ISBN: 9783319568737Publication Date: 2017-10-27This volume illuminates how creative representations remain sites of ongoing struggles to engage with animals in indigenous epistemologies. Traditionally imagined in relation to spiritual realms and the occult, animals have always been more than primitive symbols of human relations. Whether as animist gods, familiars, conduits to ancestors, totems, talismans, or co-creators of multispecies cosmologies, animals act as vital players in the lives of cultures. From early days in colonial contact zones through contemporary expressions in art, film, and literature, the volume's unique emphasis on Southern Africa and North America—historical loci of the greatest ranges of species and linguistic diversity—help to situate how indigenous knowledges of human-animal relations are being adapted to modern conditions of life shared across species lines.
The Bible and Posthumanism by ISBN: 9781589837522Publication Date: 2014-03-31What does it mean, and what should it mean to be human? In this collection of essays, scholars place the philosophies and theories of animal studies and posthumanism into conversation with biblical studies. Authors cross and disrupt boundaries and categories through close readings of stories where the human body is invaded, possessed, or driven mad. Articles explore the ethics of the human use of animals and the biblical contributions to the question. Other essays use the image of lions—animals that appear not only in the wild, but also in the Bible, ancient Near Eastern texts, and philosophy—to illustrate the potential these theories present for students of the Bible.
Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud by ISBN: 9781108423663Publication Date: 2018-04-19Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud selects key themes in animal studies—animal intelligence, morality, sexuality, suffering, danger, personhood—and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud. Beth A. Berkowitz demonstrates that distinctive features of the Talmud—the new literary genre, the convergence of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, the Talmud's remove from Temple-centered biblical Israel—led to unprecedented possibilities within Jewish culture for conceptualizing animals and animality. She explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud, showing how it is ripe for reading with a critical animal studies perspective. When we do, we find waiting for us a multi-layered, surprisingly self-aware discourse about animals as well as about the anthropocentrism that infuses human relationships with them.
Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by ISBN: 9780823275595Publication Date: 2017-11-14Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals—pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes disseminated for millennia to debase, dehumanize, and justify the persecution of Jews, Bestiarium Judaicum asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers tell animal stories? Focusing on the nonhuman-animal constructions of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, and Gertrud Kolmar, Jay Geller expands his earlier examinations (On Freud's Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions and The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity) of how such writers drew upon representations of Jewish corporeality in order to work through their particular situations in Gentile modernity. From Heine's ironic lizards to Kafka's Red Peter and Siodmak's Wolf Man, Bestiarium Judaicum brings together Jewish cultural studies and critical animal studies to ferret out these writers' engagement with the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species "Jew" were identified.
Fallen Animals: Art, Religion, Literature by ISBN: 9781498543965Publication Date: 2017-10-05The premise of Fallen Animals is that some how and in some way The Fall of Adam and Eve as related in the Bible has affected all living beings from the largest to the smallest, from the oldest to the youngest, regardless of gender and geography. The movement from the blissful arena of the Garden of Eden to the uncertain reality of exile altered in an overt or nuanced fashion the attitudes, perceptions, and consciousness of animals and humanity alike. Interpretations of these reformulations as well as the original story of the Paradise Garden have been told and retold for millennia in a variety of cultural contexts, languages, societies, and religious environments. Throughout all those retellings, animals have been a constant presence positively and negatively, actively and passively, from the creation of birds, fish, and mammals to the agency of the serpent in the Fall narrative. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is but one example of the ambivalence which has characterized the human-animal relationship over the centuries, both across, and within, cultures, societies and traditions. The book examines the interpretations, functions and interactions of the Fall—physical, moral, artistic and otherwise—as represented through animals, or through human-animal interactions.
Animals and Race by ISBN: 9781611864458Publication Date: 2023-02-01The intersection of race and species has a long and problematic history. Western thinking specifically has demonstrated a societal need to try to conceive of race as a purely biological fact rather than a social construct. This book is an academic-activist challenge to that instinct, prioritizing anti-racism in its observation of the animal-race intersection. Too often, as Bénédicte Boisseron has indicated, this intersection typically appears in the form of animal activists instrumentalizing racial discrimination as a vehicle to approach animal rights. But why does this intersection exist, and, perhaps more importantly, how can we challenge it moving forward? This volume examines those two critical questions, taking an interdisciplinary approach in moving across subjects including art history, film studies, American history, and digital media analysis. Our interpretation of animals has, for centuries, been fundamental in the development of Western race thinking. This collection of essays looks at how this perspective contributes to the construction of racial discrimination, prioritizing ways to read the animal in our culture as a means for working to dismantle this conception.
Like an Animal: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering by ISBN: 9789004439085Publication Date: 2021-06-17The contributors of Like an Animal challenge most fundamental concepts in the fields of racism, dehumanization, borders, displacement, and refugees that rest on the assumption of humanism. They show how we can bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice at the border. The goal of this interdisciplinary collection is twofold. First, to invite border/migration studies to consider a broader social justice perspective that includes nonhuman animals. Second, to start a discussion if nonhumans maybe refugees of a kind and how humans can address nonhumans' interests and needs from the perspective of addressing refugee issues. As capitalism and the climate crisis are taking a catastrophic toll on the planet, this timely volume exposes the alternative origins of violence that lie at the heart of the planet's destruction.
Dangerous Crossings: Race, species, and nature in a multicultural age by ISBN: 9781107044944Publication Date: 2015-04-20Dangerous Crossings offers an interpretation of the impassioned disputes that have arisen in the contemporary United States over the use of animals in the cultural practices of nonwhite peoples. It examines three controversies: the battle over the 'cruelty' of the live animal markets in San Francisco's Chinatown, the uproar over the conviction of NFL superstar Michael Vick on dogfighting charges, and the firestorm over the Makah tribe's decision to resume whaling in the Pacific Northwest after a hiatus of more than seventy years. Claire Jean Kim shows that each dispute demonstrates how race and species operate as conjoined logics, or mutually constitutive taxonomies of power. Analyzing each case as a conflict between single optics (the optic of cruelty and environmental harm vs the optic of racism and cultural imperialism), she argues for a multi-optic approach that takes different forms of domination seriously, and thus encourages an ethics of avowal among different struggles.
Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man by ISBN: 9780674980303Publication Date: 2020-05-12Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize A prizewinning poet argues that Blackness acts as the caesura between human and nonhuman, man and animal. Throughout US history, Black people have been configured as sociolegal nonpersons, a subgenre of the human. Being Property Once Myself delves into the literary imagination and ethical concerns that have emerged from this experience. Each chapter tracks a specific animal figure--the rat, the cock, the mule, the dog, and the shark--in the works of Black authors such as Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Jesmyn Ward, and Robert Hayden. The plantation, the wilderness, the kitchenette overrun with pests, the simultaneous valuation and sale of animals and enslaved people--all are sites made unforgettable by literature in which we find Black and animal life in fraught proximity. Joshua Bennett argues that animal figures are deployed in these texts to assert a theory of Black sociality and to combat dominant claims about the limits of personhood. Bennett also turns to the Black radical tradition to challenge the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in discourses surrounding the environment and animals. Being Property Once Myself is an incisive work of literary criticism and a close reading of undertheorized notions of dehumanization and the Anthropocene.
Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question by ISBN: 9780231546744Publication Date: 2018-09-24Bénédicte Boisseron investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the Black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life.
Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World by ISBN: 9781479890040Publication Date: 2020-05-19Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the Enlightenment. In so doing, Becoming Human demonstrates that the history of racialized gender and maternity, specifically anti-Blackness, is indispensable to future thought on matter, materiality, animality, and posthumanism. Jackson argues that African diasporic cultural production alters the meaning of being human and engages in imaginative practices of world-building against a history of the bestialization and thingification of Blackness—the process of imagining the Black person as an empty vessel, a non-being, an ontological zero—and the violent imposition of colonial myths of racial hierarchy. She creatively responds to the animalization of Blackness by generating alternative frameworks of thought and relationality that not only disrupt the racialization of the human/animal distinction found in Western science and philosophy but also challenge the epistemic and material terms under which the specter of animal life acquires its authority. What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of "the human."
The Postcolonial Animal: African literature and posthuman ethics by ISBN: 9780472074198Publication Date: 2019-09-06Despite the central role that animals play in African writing and daily life, African literature and African thinkers remain conspicuously absent from the field of animal studies. The Postcolonial Animal: African Literature and Posthuman Ethics demonstrates the importance of African writing to animal studies by analyzing how postcolonial African writing—including folktales, religion, philosophy, and anticolonial movements—has been mobilized to call for humane treatment of nonhuman others. Mwangi illustrates how African authors grapple with the possibility of an alternative to eating meat, and how they present postcolonial animal-consuming cultures as shifting toward an embrace of cultural and political practices that avoid the use of animals and minimize animal suffering. The Postcolonial Animal analyzes texts that imagine a world where animals are not abused or used as a source of food, clothing, or labor, and that offer instruction in how we might act responsibly and how we should relate to others—both human and nonhuman—in order to ensure a world free of oppression.
Postcolonial Animalities by ISBN: 9780367236298Publication Date: 2019-09-10Postcolonial Animalities, co-edited by Suvadip Sinha and Amit R. Baishya, brings together ten essays to consider the interfaces between "human" and "animal" and the concrete presence of animals in postcolonial cultural production. This edited collection critiques monohumanist conceptions of the "human" and considers the co-constitutiveness of imaginaries of the human with grammars of animality. One of the central contributions of this volume is to decolonize existing conceptualizations of the human-animal relationship, and to consider the material representation of animals within the realm of colonial and postcolonial cultural production from the perspective of ethical alterity and alternative narratives of anticolonial and postcolonial politics. The volume also explores entanglements of race and species in colonial and neocolonial frameworks without transforming such inquiries into a zero-sum game that privileges one category over another. The essays in the volume, focusing on multiple geographical locations ranging from South Asia, Southeast Asia, post-Ottoman Turkey, the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa and Palestine/Israel, historicizes and understands multispecies, interspecies and transspecies encounters, affiliations and connections in and through their localized dimensions, and studies human-animal encounters in their varied and complex affective relationalities. Through such inquiries, the volume considers how modes of representing animals, including located forms of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism, help us think-with and be-with different animals.
Colonialism and Animality: Anti-colonial perspectives in critical animal studies by ISBN: 9780367856120Publication Date: 2020-03-04The fields of settler colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial studies, as well as Critical Animal Studies are growing rapidly, but how do the implications of these endeavours intersect? Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies explores some of the ways that the oppression of Indigenous persons and more-than-human animals are interconnected. Composed of 12 chapters by an international team of specialists plus a Foreword by Dinesh Wadiwel, the book is divided into four themes: Tensions and Alliances between Animal and Decolonial Activisms Revisiting the Stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples' Relationships with Animals Cultural Perspectives Colonialism, Animals, and the Law. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, activists, as well as postdoctoral scholars, working in the areas of Critical Animal Studies, Native Studies, postcolonial and critical race studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as Cultural Studies, Animal Law and Critical Criminology.
Many scholarly field overlap with animal studies. These fields are often intersectional, for example, incorporating feminist scholarship or design theory with animal studies. Below you will find just a small sampling of the many animal studies-related fields:
- Ecocriticism
- Ecofeminism
- Plant Theory
- Veganism & Vegetarianism
- Art & Design
Ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology often referring to literary criticism where scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways humans treats the subject of nature. Ecocriticism comes from the works of Joseph Meeker, who presented the idea of “literary ecology” in The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972). The term 'ecocriticism' was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism." Ecocriticism is known by a number of other designations, including "green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and "environmental literary criticism", and is informed by fields such as ecology, sustainable design, biopolitics, environmental history, environmentalism, and social ecology, among others. In the United States, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) hosts a biennial conference for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature and the environmental humanities in general. ASLE also published the Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE) Journal.
Adapted from: Ecocriticism, Wikipedia.
Ecocriticism by ISBN: 9780415667852Publication Date: 2011-08-23Ecocriticism explores the ways in which we imagine and portray the relationship between humans and the environment in all areas of cultural production, from Wordsworth and Thoreau through to Google Earth, J.M. Coetzee and Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. Greg Garrard's animated and accessible volume traces the development of the movement and explores its key concepts, including: pollution wilderness apocalypse dwelling animals earth. Featuring a newly rewritten chapter on animal studies, and considering queer and postcolonial ecocriticism and the impact of globalisation, this fully updated second edition also presents a glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading in print and online.
Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader by ISBN: 9780415508599Publication Date: 2014-06-25Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader charts the growth of this important field. The first-wave ecocriticism section focuses on key readings from the 1960s to the 1990s. The second-wave ecocriticism section goes on to consider a range of exciting contemporary trends, including environmental justice, aesthetics and philosophy, and globalization. Containing seminal, representative, and contemporary work in the field, this volume and the editorial commentary is designed for use on both undergraduate and postgraduate ecocritical literature courses.
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is an intersectional branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on concepts of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). There are several branches of ecofeminism including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism (or materialist ecofeminism).
Ecofeminism by ISBN: 9781780325637Publication Date: 2014-03-01This groundbreaking work remains as relevant today as when it was when first published. The authors argue that ecological destruction and industrial catastrophes constitute a direct threat to everyday life, the maintenance of which has been made the particular responsibility of women. Is there a relationship between patriarchal oppression and the destruction of nature in the name of profit and progress? How can women counter the violence inherent in these processes? Should they look to a link between the women's movement and other social movements? Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva offer a thought-provoking analysis of these and many other issues from a unique North-South perspective. In constructing their own ecofeminist epistemology and methodology, these two internationally respected feminist environmental activists look to the potential of movements advocating consumer liberation and subsistence production, sustainability and regeneration, and they argue for an acceptance of limits and reciprocity and a rejection of exploitation, the endless commoditization of needs, and violence.
Gender Violence in Ecofeminist Perspective: Intersections of animal oppression, patriarchy and domination of the Earth by ISBN: 9781138493841Publication Date: 2019-09-25This book aims to begin an eco-centered, eco-feminist informed discussion about the ways in which our relationship to "nature" is bound up with gender, patriarchy, and violence. Ecofeminist scholars study the interconnections between gendered relationships of domination among humans, between humans, and between humans, nonhumans, and the earth. It is in this ideological and structural tangle between humans and the environment that a deeper understanding of gender violence is possible. Ecofeminism offers analytical possibilities for understanding a "logic of domination" which sustain a whole host of problems, including the interrelated oppressions of gender violence and exploitation of the more-than-human-life world. In this book, Gwen Hunnicutt brings into dialog ecofeminism and gender violence.
Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice by ISBN: 9780295749754Publication Date: 2022-01-01Rivers host vibrant multispecies communities in their waters and along their banks, and, according to queer-trans-feminist river scientist Cleo Wölfle Hazard, their future vitality requires centering the values of justice, sovereignty, and dynamism. At the intersection of river sciences, queer and trans theory, and environmental justice, Underflows explores river cultures and politics at five sites of water conflict and restoration in California, Oregon, and Washington. Incorporating work with salmon, beaver, and floodplain recovery projects, Wölfle Hazard weaves narratives about innovative field research practices with an affectively oriented queer and trans focus on love and grief for rivers and fish. Wölfle Hazard elucidates the underflows in river cultures, sciences, and politics where Native nations and marginalized communities fight to protect rivers. The result is a deeply moving account of why rivers matter for queer and trans life, offering critical insights that point to innovative ways of doing science that disrupt settler colonialism and new visions for justice in river governance.
Plant Theory
Plant Theory is an emerging field that considered how vegetable life fits into philosophical questions of morality, ethics, and human relationships with the non-human. For more texts on plant theory, try searching under the subject heading "Plants Philosophy" or "Biopolitics" in IUCAT.
Plant Theory: Biopower & Vegetable Life by ISBN: 9780804795715Publication Date: 2015-10-14In our age of ecological disaster, this book joins the growing philosophical literature on vegetable life to ask how our present debates about biopower and animal studies change if we take plants as a linchpin for thinking about biopolitics. Logically enough, the book uses animal studies as a way into the subject, but it does so in unexpected ways. Upending critical approaches of biopolitical regimes, it argues that it is plants rather than animals that are the forgotten and abjected forms of life under humanist biopower. Indeed, biopolitical theory has consistently sidestepped the issue of vegetable life, and more recently, has been outright hostile to it. Provocatively, Jeffrey T. Nealon wonders whether animal studies, which has taken the "inventor" of biopower himself to task for speciesism, has not misread Foucault, thereby managing to extend humanist biopower rather than to curb its reach.
Vegetative Powers: The Roots of Life in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Natural Philosophy by ISBN: 9783030697082Publication Date: 2021-05-26The volume analyzes the natural philosophical accounts and debates concerning the vegetative powers, namely nutrition, growth, and reproduction. While principally focusing on the early modern approaches to the lower functions of the soul, readers will discover the roots of these approaches back to the Ancient times, as the volume highlights the role of three strands that help shape the study of life in the Medieval and early modern natural philosophies. From late antiquity to the early modern period, the vegetative soul and its cognate concepts have played a substantial role in specifying life, living functions, and living bodies, sometimes blurring the line between living and non-living nature, and, at other moments, resulting in a strong restriction of life to a mechanical system of operations and powers. The 24 contributions of the volume fill a crucial gap in scholarship, ultimately outlining the importance of vegetal processes of incessant proliferation, generation, and organic growth as the roots of life in natural philosophical interpretations.
Veganism & Vegetarianism
These are both not only diets and lifestyle choices that abstain from the use of animal products in various forms, they are also political movements that have inspired direct action and influenced animal rights activists for decades. The environmental impacts of meat-centric diets that many Americans consume have clear impacts on our planet, animals, and the workers that produce our food. Embracing vegan/vegetarian diets are actions that one can take to reduce the impacts of our consumption. Though food consumption is often only a small fraction of a person’s total carbon footprint and direct political action can have a larger impact on our planet, dietary changes, like incorporating more plant-based proteins into one's diet are often one of the quickest ways for many people to lighten their climate impact.
Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer by ISBN: 0791440435Publication Date: 1999-01-14For vegetarians seeking the historical roots of vegetarianism, for animal rights activists and the environmentally concerned, and for those questioning their consumption of meat, here's a book that provides a deep understanding of vegetarianism as more than just a dietary decision. This is the first comprehensive collection of primary source material on vegetarianism as a moral choice and includes the writings of Carol Adams, Bernard de Mandeville, Mohandas Gandhi, Oliver Goldsmith, Anna Kingsford, Frances Moore Lapp, Porphyry, Pythagoras, Tom Regan, Albert Schweitzer, Seneca, Peter Singer, Leo Tolstoy, and Richard Wagner, among others.
Veganism: Politics, Practice, and Theory by ISBN: 9781350124912Publication Date: 2021-07-29What exactly do vegans believe? Why has veganism become such a critical and criticized social movement, and how does veganism correspond to wider debates about sustainability, animal studies, and the media? Eva Haifa Giraud offers an accessible route into the debates that surround vegan politics, which feed into broader issues surrounding food activism and social justice. Giraud engages with arguments in favor of veganism, as well as the criticisms levelled at vegan politics. She interrogates debates and topics that are central to conversations around veganism, including identity, intersectional politics, and activism, with research drawn from literary animal studies, animal geographies, ecofeminism, posthumanism, critical race theory, and new materialism.
Sexual Politics of Meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory by ISBN: 9780826411846Publication Date: 1999-11-01An examination of the historical, gender, race and class implications of meat culture, making the links between the practice of butchering/eating animals and the maintenance of male dominance. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new preface by Carol Adams that answers the question she is most often asked: why did you write this book? Adams also discusses new developments in feminist thought and animal rights, and updates the statistics and information provided.
Sistah Vegan: black female vegans speak on food, identity, health, and society by ISBN: 9781590561454Publication Date: 2009-10-01Sistah Vegan is a series of narratives, critical essays, poems, and reflections from a diverse community of North American black-identified vegans. Collectively, these activists are de-colonizing their bodies and minds via whole-foods veganism. By kicking junk-food habits, the more than thirty contributors all show the way toward longer, stronger, and healthier lives. Sistah Vegan is not about preaching veganism or vegan fundamentalism. Rather, the book is about how a group of black-identified female vegans perceive nutrition, food, ecological sustainability, health and healing, animal rights, parenting, social justice, spirituality, hair care, race, gender-identification, womanism, and liberation that all go against the (refined and bleached) grain of our dysfunctional society. Thought-provoking for the identification and dismantling of environmental racism, ecological devastation, and other social injustices, Sistah Vegan is an in-your-face handbook for our time. It calls upon all of us to make radical changes for the betterment of ourselves, our planet, and—by extension—everyone.
The Vegan Matrix: Understanding and discussing privilege among vegans to build a more inclusive and empowered movement by ISBN: 9781590566176Publication Date: 2020-08-01A short guidebook to understanding and discussing privilege among vegans and vegan organizations in the wake of #metoo, including how to establish accountability while honoring dignity and ways to communicate effectively. In The Vegan Matrix, psychologist, longtime vegan advocate, and organizational head Dr. Melanie Joy explores a serious problem in the vegan movement—unexamined privilege—and looks at the struggle to communicate effectively about this problem in a way that helps offset it. Using simple, straightforward language and a compassionate tone, Joy explains what privilege is, why it's so important for vegans to become aware of it, and how to talk about it in a way that deepens understanding and helps transform it. In so doing, Joy unpacks some of the many privileges that must be acknowledged and addressed, and shows how more inclusivity and diversity within vegan organizations will benefit the movement as a whole.
Beasts of Burden: animal and disability liberation by ISBN: 9781620971284Publication Date: 2017-03-07A beautifully written, deeply provocative inquiry into the intersection of animal and disability liberation—and the debut of an important new social critic. How much of what we understand of ourselves as "human" depends on our physical and mental abilities—how we move (or cannot move) in and interact with the world? And how much of our definition of "human" depends on its difference from "animal"? Drawing on her own experiences as a disabled person, a disability activist, and an animal advocate, author Sunaura Taylor persuades us to think deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably, about what divides the human from the animal, the disabled from the nondisabled—and what it might mean to break down those divisions, to claim the animal and the vulnerable in ourselves, in a process she calls "cripping animal ethics." Beasts of Burden suggests that issues of disability and animal justice—which have heretofore primarily been presented in opposition—are in fact deeply entangled. Fusing philosophy, memoir, science, and the radical truths these disciplines can bring—whether about factory farming, disability oppression, or our assumptions of human superiority over animals—Taylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that can open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability.
Aphro-Ism: essays on pop culture, feminism, and black veganism by ISBN: 9781590565551Publication Date: 2017-06-01In this lively, accessible, and provocative collection, Aph and Syl Ko provide new theoretical frameworks on race, advocacy for nonhuman animals, and feminism. Using popular culture as a point of reference for their critiques, the Ko sisters engage in groundbreaking analysis of the compartmentalized nature of contemporary social movements, present new ways of understanding interconnected oppressions, and offer conceptual ways of moving forward expressive of Afrofuturism and black veganism.
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by ISBN: 9780764524837Publication Date: 2007-09-28The ultimate one-stop vegetarian cookbook from the author of the classic How to Cook Everything. Hailed as "a more hip Joy of Cooking" by the Washington Post, Mark Bittman's award-winning book How to Cook Everything has become the bible for a new generation of home cooks, and the series has more than 1 million copies in print. Now, with How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian, Bittman has written the definitive guide to meatless meals—a book that will appeal to everyone who wants to cook simple but delicious meatless dishes, from health-conscious omnivores to passionate vegetarians. Bittman's recipes are refreshingly straightforward, resolutely unfussy, and unfailingly delicious-producing dishes that home cooks can prepare with ease and serve with confidence.
Art & Design
Humans have long been inspired by animals in our creative/artistic pursuits in in constructing our built environments. The books below offer a few examples of how animals have influenced human art and design.
Picture Ecology: Art and ecocriticism in planetary perspective by ISBN: 9780691236018Publication Date: 2021-10-26Seeking a broad reexamination of visual culture through the lenses of ecocriticism, environmental justice, and animal studies, Picture Ecology offers a diverse range of art historical criticism formulated within an ecological context. This book brings together scholars whose contributions extend chronologically and geographically from eleventh-century Chinese painting to contemporary photography of California wildfires. The book's fifteen interdisciplinary essays provide a dynamic, cross-cultural approach to an increasingly vital area of study, emphasizing the environmental dimensions inherent in the content and materials of aesthetic objects. Picture Ecology provides valuable new approaches for considering works of art in ways that are timely, intellectually stimulating, and universally significant.
Animal Acts: Performing Species Today by ISBN: 9780472071999Publication Date: 2014-01-22We all have an animal story—the pet we loved, the wild animal that captured our childhood imagination, the deer the neighbor hit while driving. While scientific breakthroughs in animal cognition, the effects of global climate change and dwindling animal habitats, and the exploding interdisciplinary field of animal studies have complicated things, such stories remain a part of how we tell the story of being human. Animal Acts collects eleven exciting, provocative, and moving stories by solo performers, accompanied by commentary that places the works in a broader context. The anthology foregrounds questions of race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, and other issues central to the human project within the discourse of the "post human," and will appeal to readers interested in solo performance, animal studies, gender studies, performance studies, and environmental studies.
Animal Graphics by ISBN: 9789881426000Publication Date: 2015-09-15It is easy to see why brands often turn to depictions of animals in their marketing materials—in popular culture, animals are used to evoke freedom, pride, or power. Restaurants use animal forms as a humorous play on the contents of their menus; corporations to distinguish themselves in a world of plain symbols and vector art: Animal Graphics explores the wide range of possibilities with animal imagery.
Lo—TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism by ISBN: 9783836578189Publication Date: 2019-12-13Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us. Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity's negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable. Lo-TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.
There are many ways to get involved with Animal Rights and Environmental movements right here in and around Bloomington. From incorporating animal studies into your scholarship to donating money and participating in direct action campaigns, see the following list for organizations supporting animals and the environment in the Bloomington area:
- Bloomington Animal Shelter Run by Bloomington Animal Care and Control, whose mission is to address and respond to all animal needs in the community through education, enforcement and support in order to build a community where animals are valued and treated with kindness and respect. The Animal Shelter is accepting donations and foster applications.
- Monroe County Humane Association (MCHA) "Dedicated to promoting the welfare of animals, strengthening the human-animal bond, and providing access to veterinary care & humane education across our community."
- Sunrise Bloomington "We are a group of undergrads, grads, faculty, high schoolers and Bloomington community members who are dedicated to bringing about positive changes towards climate justice initiative through grassroots movement building!"
- IU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund The Student Animal Legal Defense Fund was established at IU Maurer School of Law in 2010 to provide a forum for education, advocacy, and scholarship aimed at improving the lives of animals and advancing their interests through the legal system.
- BloomingVeg "An all-ages social and advocacy group for vegetarians, vegans, and veggie-lovers alike in Bloomington, Indiana."
- Indy VegFest A "nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase the public’s acceptance of the compassionate, environmental, and health facets of a vegan lifestyle through an annual event and year-round outreach and education opportunities."
- Rainbow Bakery Vegan bakery in Bloomington, IN.
- Vegan, Vegetarian & Gluten-Free Restaurants in Bloomington
- Uplands PEAK Sanctuary Indiana's first farmed animal sanctuary, providing lifelong care to their residents, educational tours, and volunteer opportunities.
The following are national organizations fighting for animal rights, liberation, and environmental justice. For more information on the impact of a few of the organizations listed below, check out Animal Charity Evaluators, which researches animal welfare organizations.
- Native American Humane Society "Shares our expertise to help tribal communities learn how to humanely manage and care for the animal populations in their own communities. NAHS connects tribal communities and animal welfare service providers, NGOs, foundations, and other agencies to assist tribal communities in resolving their challenges with animals through regular animal care, population management, and community activities."
- The Humane League "We exist to end the abuse of animals raised for food by influencing the policies of the world’s biggest companies, demanding legislation, and empowering others to take action and leave animals off their plates."
- Good Food Institute "A nonprofit think tank working to make the global food system better for the planet, people, and animals. Alongside scientists, businesses, and policymakers, GFI’s teams focus on making plant-based and cultivated meat delicious, affordable, and accessible."
- The Green New Deal Network "A coalition of grassroots organizations, labor, and climate and environmental justice organizations growing a movement to pass local, state, and national policies that create millions of family-sustaining union jobs, ensure racial and gender equity, and take action on climate at the scale and scope the crisis demands."
- Indigenous Environmental Network "IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues (EJ). IEN’s activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities."