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This book explores the past and current traces that cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals used by humans have left in Anglophone literary fiction. In times of accelerated global warming, an acute pandemic, and breakthroughs in bioengineering practices, discussions on how to rethink the relationships to these animals have become as heated as perhaps never before. Livestock and Literature examines what literature has to contribute to these debates. In particular, it draws on counter-narratives to so-called livestock animals’ commodification in selected science- and speculative fiction (SF) works from the twenty-first century. These texts imagine ‘what if’ scenarios where "livestock" pr...
While historiography is dominated by attempts that try to standardize and de-individualize the behavior of animals, history proves to be littered with records of the exceptional lives of unusual animals. This book introduces animal biography as an approach to the re-framing of animals as both objects of knowledge as well as subjects of individual lives. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective and bringing together scholars from, among others, literary, historical and cultural studies, the texts collected in this volume seek to refine animal biography as a research method and framework to studying, capturing, representing and acknowledging animal others as individuals. From Heini Hediger’s ...
Forget everything you think you know about Nature. Fahim Amir’s award-winning book takes pure delight in posing unexpected questions: Are animals victims of human domination, or heroes of resistance? Is Nature pristine and defenceless, or sentient and devious? Is being human really a prerequisite for being political? In a world where birds on Viagra punch above their weight and termites hijack the heating systems of major cities, animals can be recast as vigilantes, agitators, and public enemies in their own right. Under Amir’s magic spell, pigs transform from slaughterhouse innocents into rioting revolutionaries, pigeons from urban pests into unruly militants, honeybees from virtuous fu...
This issue of Transpositiones showcases a range of interdisciplinary and critical approaches to classic and alternative conceptions of cognition and sources of knowledge. The articles reflect on the many types of sensory and extrasensory knowledge available to non-human beings and wonder whether and in what ways can we, as humans, perceive, conceptualize, and respect these knowledges. The authors highlight how the existence of multiple knowledges questions species boundaries and onto- and epistemological perspectives, in the process of learning not only about other beings but also from and along with them. This selection of texts attempts to contribute to overcoming the anthropocentric perception of subjectivity and to the abandoning of an optics based on the dualisms of nature and culture, spirit and matter, subject and object, animate and inanimate nature, physis and techne, etc., which are so firmly entrenched in the Western intellectual tradition.
In May 2019, the United Nations released the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services which warned that human activities will drive nearly one million species to extinction in a few decades. The primary reasons for this are habitat loss and biodiversity demise caused by changing climate, pollution, introducing nonindigenous species, clearing land, over population, and consumption. Given this situation, humans must change course as both human wellbeing and the wellbeing of other-than-human species are imbricated in one another. One way humanity can accomplish the needed transformation is to move beyond an anthropocentric view of life by embracing a transpecies approach ...
As they migrated across great distances, ancient humans may have used birdsong and bird sightings to find food and water in unseen territory. Today, attending to birds helps scientists track not only avian migration but also environmental change. Birds remain our sentinels. Feathered Entanglements offers a rich tapestry of human-bird relations across the Indo-Pacific. In this era of uncontrolled industrialization, we have grown increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The ways in which birds feature in the daily life, symbolic systems, and material culture of humans, from pigeon keeping on the rooftops of Amman to the rituals of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, can teach us how to live with other species amid the challenges of the Anthropocene. In a time of intensifying ecological crisis, we need, more than ever, to protect and appreciate non-human lives. Feathered Entanglements embraces the connection between humans, birds, and our shared world.
In light of the dramatic growth and rapid institutionalization of human-animal studies in recent years, it is somewhat surprising that only a small number of publications have proposed practical and theoretical approaches to teaching in this inter- and transdisciplinary field. Featuring eleven original pedagogical interventions from the social sciences and the humanities as well as an epilogue from ecofeminist critic Greta Gaard, the present volume addresses this gap and responds to the demand by both educators and students for pedagogies appropriate for dealing with environmental crises. The theoretical and practical contributions collected here describe new ways of teaching human-animal st...
This open access book revises Kant’s ethical thought in one of its most notorious respects: its exclusion of animals from moral consideration. The book gives readers in animal ethics an accessible introduction to Kant’s views on our duties to others, and his view that we have only ‘indirect’ duties regarding animals. It then investigates how one would have to depart from Kant in order to recognise that animals matter morally for their own sake. Particular attention is paid to Kant’s ‘Formula of Humanity,' the role of autonomy and the moral law, as well as Kant’s notions of practical reason and animal instinct. The result is a deliberately amended version of Kantianism which nevertheless remains faithful to central aspects of Kant’s thought. The book’s final part illustrates the framework’s use in applied contexts, addressing the issues of using animals as mere means, the ethics of veganism and vegetarianism, and environmental protection. Nico Dario Müller shows how, when furnished with duties to animals, Kant's moral philosophy can be a powerful resource for animal ethicists.
Der Sozialismus sollte den »Neuen Menschen« hervorbringen. Die vorliegende Studie nimmt erstmals in den Blick, dass die umfassende Umgestaltung der Gesellschaft durch die Politik der SED auch die Beziehung des Menschen zur Natur – und damit zur Tierwelt – neu definierte. Anhand der Analyse der Tierschutzpolitik sowie ausgewählter Bereiche der Tierhaltung – Heimtier- und Nutztierhaltung – lässt sich zeigen, dass über den Menschen hinaus, auch Tiere einer Neukonzeption unterworfen waren. Der Blick auf die verschiedenen Facetten von Mensch-Tier-Verhältnissen als Phänomene der sozialistischen Gesellschaft trägt dazu bei, ein umfassenderes Verständnis der Geschichte der DDR zu erlangen.
In den letzten Jahren werden – u.a. angestoßen durch transhumanistische Diskurse und einschlägige Publikationen wie Insect Media (Jussi Parikka) oder Das Internet der Tiere (Alexander Pschera) – Tiere und Medien zunehmend auf produktive Weise zusammengedacht. Tiere sind dabei nicht auf die Rolle eines kulturwissenschaftlich beschreibbaren Motivs beschränkt, sondern sie treten in vielfältiger Weise als Mediennutzer in Erscheinung – etwa in der Animal Computer Interaction, die sich zunehmend als eigene Disziplin gegenüber der Human Computer Interaction positioniert. Medien schaffen eine neue Form der Verbindung zu Tieren und können teilweise sogar für die Tiere selbst von Nutzen s...