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Anthropology and Cryptozoology
Cryptozoology is best understood as the study of animals which, in the eyes of Western science, are extinct, unclassified or unrecognised. In consequence, and in part because of its selective methods and lack of epistemological rigour, cryptozoology is often dismissed as a pseudo-science. However, there is a growing recognition that social science can benefit from engaging with it, for as as social scientists are very well aware, ’scientific’ categorisation and explanation represents just one of a myriad of systems used by humans to enable them to classify and make sense of the world around them. In many cultural contexts, myth, folk classification and lived experience challenge the ’t...
Humans and Other Animals
Humans and Other Animals is about the myriad and evolving ways in which humans and animals interact, the divergent cultural constructions of humanity and animality found around the world, and individual experiences of other animals. Samantha Hurn explores the work of anthropologists and scholars from related disciplines concerned with the growing field of Anthrozoology. Case studies from a wide range of cultural contexts are discussed, and readers are invited to engage with a diverse range of human-animal interactions, including blood sports (such as hunting, fishing, and bull fighting), pet keeping and "petishism," eco-tourism and wildlife conservation, working animals, and animals as food. The idea of animal exploitation raised by the animal rights movements is considered, as well as the anthropological implications of changing attitudes towards animal personhood, and the rise of a posthumanist philosophy in the social sciences more generally. Key debates surrounding these issues are raised and assessed and, in the process, readers are encouraged to consider their own attitudes towards other animals and, by extension, what it means to be human.
Human-Animal Farm
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Encounters with Dogs as an Exercise in Analyzing Multi-species Ethnography
Multi-species ethnography is a comparatively recent development in the social sciences aimed at attempting to document and analyse interactions between members of different species. Conceptually, as well as methodologically, it has been the subject of much debate. Debate has focused on the logistics of utilising qualitative data collection methods in the study of nonhuman others, the implications of seeing nonhuman others as valid ethnographic subjects, and the validity of classificatory categories such as ́€ ̃specieś€TM when it comes to understanding the lived experiences of the other beings with whom humans interact. In order to produce meaningful multi-species ethnography, research...
The Troubled Empire
The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empireÑa millennium and a half in the makingÑwas suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation. The Troubled Empire explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions. If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a Little Ice Age, and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, K...
Diversity of Sacrifice
The term "sacrifice" belies what is a complex and varied transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. Bringing together scholars from such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, literature, and theology, Diversity of Sacrifice explores sacrificial practices across a range of contexts from prehistory to the present. Incorporating theory, material culture, and textual evidence, the volume seeks to consider new and divergent data related to contexts of sacrifice that can help broaden our field of vision while raising new questions. The essays contributed here move beyond reductive and simple explanations to explore complex areas of social interaction. Sacrifice plays a key role in the overlapping sacred and secular spheres for a number of societies in the past and present. How religious beliefs and practices can be integral parts of life on individual and community levels is of fundamental importance to understanding the past and present. In addition to aiding scholarly research, Diversity of Sacrifice enables students to explore this rich theme across Europe and the Mediterranean with clear discussions of theory and data.
Cat People: Human–Cat Interrelatedness in the Cat Fancy
This book examines the social world of the cat fancy, or the leisure activity of breeding and exhibiting pedigree cats. Based on multispecies ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in the United Kingdom, it explores the process and performance of exhibiting cats at shows, the breeding practices and discourses integral to the creation of pedigree breeds, and the relations that these practices generate between human guardians, the pedigree cat population, and non-pedigree cats. Through observation with cat fanciers and their interactions with their cats, the author investigates the social dynamics and relationships that form within the fancy, considering the interconnections between biopower and eugenics in pedigree breeding, the practices of pet keeping and the complexities of more-than-human care, and the implications of involvement for the cats themselves. As such, Cat People: Human–Cat Interrelatedness in the Cat Fancy will appeal to scholars from across the social sciences and humanities interested in human–animal interactions, multispecies leisure, anthrozoology, and more-than-human care.
Why We Eat, How We Eat
Why We Eat, How We Eat maps new terrains in thinking about relations between bodies and foods. With the central premise that food is both symbolic and material, the volume explores the intersections of current critical debates regarding how individuals eat and why they eat. Through a wide-ranging series of case studies it examines how foods and bodies both haphazardly encounter, and actively engage with, one another in ways that are simultaneously material, social, and political. The aim and uniqueness of this volume is therefore the creation of a multidisciplinary dialogue through which to produce new understandings of these encounters that may be invisible to more established paradigms. In...
The Giant Squid in Transatlantic Culture
This book builds upon the extensive study of the historical relationship between sea animals and humans in transatlantic culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It exposes the present understanding of the human relationship with the giant squid not only as too simplistic but also as historically inaccurate. For instance, it redefines the earlier understanding that humans and especially seafarers have understood giant squid as horror-evoking and ugly creatures since the dawn of history and explains the origins of mythical sea monsters such as the Kraken. The book is, however, more than a critical response to previous work. It will point out that animals such as cephalopods, wh...
The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, 3 Volume Set
The International Encyclopedia of Primatology represents the first comprehensive encyclopedic reference focusing on the behaviour, biology, ecology, evolution, genetics, and taxonomy of human and non-human primates. Represents the first comprehensive encyclopedic reference relating to primatology Features more than 450 entries covering topics ranging from the taxonomy, history, behaviour, ecology, captive management and diseases of primates to their use in research, cognition, conservation, and representations in literature Includes coverage of the basic scientific concepts that underlie each topic, along with the latest advances in the field Highly accessible to undergraduate and graduate students in primatology, anthropology, and the medical, biological and zoological sciences Essential reference for academics, researchers and commercial and conservation organizations This work is also available as an online resource at www.encyclopediaofprimatology.com
