Julie Urbanik - Humans and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence

HUMANS AND ANIMALS

A Geography of Coexistence

Julie Urbanik and Connie L. Johnston, Editors

Copyright 2017 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Urbanik, Julie, 1971 editor. | Johnston, Connie L., editor.

Title: Humans and animals : a geography of coexistence / Julie Urbanik and Connie L. Johnston, editors.

Other titles: Humans and animals (Santa Barbara, Calif.)

Description: Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016016455 | ISBN 9781440838347 (hard copy : alk.paper) | ISBN 9781440838354 (EISBN)

Subjects: LCSH: Human-animal relationshipsEncyclopedias. | Human geographyEncyclopedias. | ZoogeographyEncyclopedias.

Classification: LCC QL85 .H86 2017 | DDC 590dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016455

ISBN: 978-1-4408-3834-7

EISBN: 978-1-4408-3835-4

21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available as an eBook.

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This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

PREFACE

As co-editors of the first one-volume encyclopedia to address the geography of human-animal coexistence for a general audience, we are excited to have a role in sharing knowledge of a field about which we are passionate. As geographers, we are used to multifaceted complexity, but at times we were surprised by the challenge of bringing together for this volume an area of study that ranges across disciplines as diverse as anthropology, art, biology, cultural studies, economics, ethology, geography, history, law, literature, politics, science studies, and veterinary sciences. We feel that we successfully met this challenge and hope that our readers will as well.

As with any work of this kind, tough decisions must be made on relevant topics to include. We have done our utmost to exercise good judgment in this regard, and the resulting scope of this work is a cohesive presentation of the spectrum of human-animal relations, organized alphabetically around 150 topics. These include specific species, biological concepts, philosophical concepts, social movements, specialized fields, and different categories of relations. Every effort has been made to include as global a perspective as possible, in recognition of cultural/spatial variety even within broad categories like pets or religion.

The contributors were tasked to write succinct yet comprehensive entries for a worldwide, English-speaking audience. Entries provide accessible, jargon-free overviews of topics so that readers may gain an understanding of key terms, relevant histories, geographic locations or variations, and explanations of any controversies. The selected images allow readers to see human-animal relations in the world visually, while they are learning to see them textually.

We have also provided one set of supplemental materials. The set includes a selection of excerpts from 20 key documents ranging from foundational single-author books, to court decisions, government legislation, and international treaties. These primary sources exemplify the different ways in which human-animal relations are articulated by different social bodies.

We hope this volume will not only serve as a reference but also as a starting point for deeper engagement. To that end, we have provided further reading suggestions with each entry, a master bibliography, a glossary of terms for quick clarifications, and a full index for ease of locating specific topics.

This volume would not have been possible without the vision, guidance, and support of our editor, Julie Dunbar, at ABC-CLIO. We are grateful to her for providing us with this opportunity, and we appreciate everything we have learned from her. We also extend our deepest thanks to our incredible group of contributors. Their expertise and enthusiasm (along with patience and sense of humor) have ensured that this encyclopedia will become an essential reference for anyone with a budding interest in the coexistence of humans and animals. This work would not have been possible without them.

INTRODUCTION

It is practically impossible to move through your day without encountering animals in one form or another. They might be on your plate, snuggled next to you in bed, talking to you in advertisements, television, or film, or you might hear them flying overhead on your way to work or drive by their remains on the side of the road. You might hunt them, photograph them, draw them, get a tattoo of them, see them as having souls or not, avoid them at all costs, or take a family picnic to the zoo to surround yourself with them. The fact is, animals are everywhere humans arefrom dust mites enjoying a snack of your dead skin, to the companion animals and wildlife in your neighborhood, to the livestock and wildlife that live farther away from you. Animals also live in more places than do humansable to survive in the deep ocean trenches or in the harsh cold of the Arctic and Antarctica. Indeed, humans are but one of millions of species of animal and, as animals ourselves, our very survival as a species is intimately connected to these others. How does a person begin to make sense of the many ways we have relationships with all the different nonhuman species when it involves considerations of ethics, biology, economics, cultural difference, and the larger planetary environment?

This encyclopedia provides a first step and ongoing guide for those looking to explore these intricate relationships. Recent decades have seen a dramatic rise in scholarly interest in human-animal relationships, and this volume is a concentration and synthesis of that work. Scholars are interested in these relationships for many of the same reasons anyone else might befor example, they care about a particular species and want to learn more about it, they want to understand why some people eat pigs and others dont, or they may be curious about how the new neighborhood being built down the street will impact wildlife. Some scholars may be animal advocates themselvesmeaning they act politically (e.g., writing letters, protesting, making animal-friendly consumer choices, participating in policy-making or legislation) to support what they believe are ethical ways of interacting with other species, while others are focused more on solving scientific questions about behavior, habitat, or conservation, or studying how and why relations between humans and animals are the way they are. The umbrella term for those scholars studying these topics is Human-Animal Studies (HAS), and this encyclopedia is a contribution to this field. HAS encompasses work from fields as diverse as anthropology, biology, geography, history, literature, medicine, philosophy, and veterinary medicine, to name but a few. There are now undergraduate and graduate programs in various fields of HAS, along with dozens of research journals and specialty groups developing around the world.

Indeed, the rise of public and scholarly interest in human-animal relations has come at a time when our one, human, species is having tremendous impact on all other species. This time period is now being referred to as the Anthropoceneor the Age of Humansbecause humans have become the primary driver of actions shaping life on Earth. At the same time that scientists are learning more about our impact on animal species in the world, they are also learning more about the amazing experiences and capabilities of animals themselves. While many people around the world have grown increasingly fond of animals with the growth of visual media, they have also grown increasingly concerned about their treatment from exposs by animal advocacy organizations and dire warnings from conservation scientists. Until now, there has not been a resource for those looking to sort out their own views on human-animal relations without struggling with jargon in scholarly writing or feeling hesitant to engage with the activist stance of animal advocacy groups. As educators, we know that individuals first engaging with the topic of human-animal relations can face an overwhelming amount of material, so we believe that this one-volume work on the topic is an excellent way to open the door to many different people.