Garry Marvin - Routledge Handbook of Human-animal Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies is both a great read and a provocation to rendering each other capable of knowing entangled human and animal worldings better. The diverse essays are unsettling and enticing. Feral protagonists in contemporary South African novels, mourning Hawaiian crows and shared grief in the face of extinction, commercial wild meat and green exterminism in New Zealand, Sami reindeer and their herders, ancient dogs, crowds of Swedish cats in nonconforming homes, Arabian babblers reshaping their scientists, laboratory and other rats escaping more than one kind of maze, and many more human and non-human critters of temporally deep and spatially differentiated worlds: All of these both confront the arrogance of human exceptionalism and nurture the perceptual and analytical skills to inhabit bumptious and challenging human-animal studies. This Handbook is an ambitious, rich webbing of essays in an emergent, multi-dimensional niche-space of contemporary trans-disciplinary studies. As the editors put it in their seductive introduction: critters and scholars alike, we are in it together. The Handbook layers the kind of compost that can remix the wastes and resources of posthumanism into something more nourishing for these times of excess death and still possible resilience. Donna Haraway, author of When Species Meet

Human-animal studies is only a few decades old (and so, born yesterday in academic terms), but in that brief span it has attracted scholars from across the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts. Garry Marvin and Susan McHugh have produced a collection that demonstrates the striking disciplinary reach and methodological variety of this innovative field. Harriet Ritvo, Arthur J. Conner Professor of History, MIT

A new and necessary survey of a rapidly evolving field, this marvellous collection succeeds in being inviting as well as authoritative; taking on the challenge of reconceptualising the wild, the domesticated and the feral, these exceptional essays amply demonstrate Marvin and McHughs conviction that the question of how we live with animals is fundamental to how we live with ourselves. Philip Howell, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge

There is a crucial phrase in this book about animals and humans coinventing the practice of knowledge together that sums up the spirit of the new Human-Animal Studies, and runs through this book as an essential seam. This superb collection of essays balances detailed case studies, subtle reworkings of the big questions of human-animal relations, and an appreciation of the centrality of animals in life and culture even when they appear to be at their most marginal. From Ecuador to New Zealand, from Iceland to prehistoric Crete, from science to aesthetics, from theatre to agriculture, from woodpeckers to reindeer, from the humble squeaky dog toy to the mighty mammoth, from life to death, from the collaboration of Arabian Babblers in their own ornithology to butterfly aesthetics, the range of this book is constantly fascinating and never superficial. Above all the contributors to this collection demonstrate that Human Animal Studies is no longer a minor field, but a major discipline in its own right. Jonathan Burt, Series Editor, Animal Reaktion Books

Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies

Human-animal studies, an academic field that has grown exponentially over the past decade, explores the whys, hows, and whats of human-animal relations: why animals are represented and configured in different ways in human cultures and societies around the world; how they are imagined, experienced, and given significance; what these relationships might signify about being human; and what about these relationships might be improved for the sake of the individuals as well as the communities concerned.

The Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies presents a collection of original essays from artists and scholars who have established themselves internationally on the basis of specific and significant new contributions that are shaping the field. Offering a broad interpretive account of the development and present configurations of human-animal studies across many cultures, continents, and times, this volume explores such subjects as:

wildness and tameness of in field and laboratory science

ancient, indigenous, and industrial practices of animal husbandry

politics and aesthetics of representing feral life

human and animal implications of mourning, grief, death, and extinction.

This international, interdisciplinary handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of human-animal studies, offering entry points through anthropology, archaeology, art history, biology, cultural studies, education, environmental studies, ethology, fine art, gender studies, geography, history, literature, media studies, museum studies, performance studies, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, sociology, and visual studies.

Garry Marvin is a social anthropologist and Professor of Human-Animal studies at the University of Roehampton, London.

Susan McHugh is a literary theorist and Professor and Chair of English at the University of New England, USA.

Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies

Edited by Garry Marvin and Susan McHugh

First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 selection and editorial material Garry Marvin and Susan McHugh; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Routledge handbook of human-animal studies / edited by Garry Marvin and Susan McHugh.First edition.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Human-animal relationships. 2. AnimalsSocial aspects. 3. Animals and civilization. 4. Animal welfare.

I. Marvin, Garry. II. McHugh, Susan.

QL85.R68 2014

590dc23

2013034762

ISBN: 9780415521406 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780203101995 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

For our fathers
Ed McHugh (19342011) and Leonard John Marvin (19262012) who left us with another turn of the kaleidoscope

Garry Marvin and Susan McHugh

Nigel Rothfels

Vinciane Despret

Lynda Birke

Tora Holmberg

Giovanni Aloi

Bernard E. Rollin

Kerry Harris and Yannis Hamilakis