Bellwether Histories
Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis
Susan Nance editor Jennifer Marks editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Washington Press
Published:20th Jun '23
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£97.16was £107.95(9780295751412)
A multispecies history of the globalized United States, Bellwether Histories reveals how animals have been ensnared in colonialism, capitalism, and environmental destruction as human decisions created and perpetuated untenable and unequal interspecies relationships.
Explores ecological crises and extinctions that have shaped US historyA multispecies history of the globalized United States, Bellwether Histories reveals how animals have been ensnared in colonialism, capitalism, and environmental destruction as human decisions created and perpetuated untenable and unequal interspecies relationships. The collection's authors explore how people misunderstood or ignored animal crises precipitated by habitat destruction and population declines, sudden dependence on human aid, shifts from freedom to captivity, or subjection to overextended management systems.
Chapters address a range of themes, including the links between antislavery and anti-animal-cruelty advocacy; how cattle, horse, and pig behavior shaped human life and technology; and the politics of caring for and trafficking wild animals. This volume interrogates the history of animal disposability and its ideological twin in US history, human exceptionalism—the anthropocentric myth that people could harm animals without harming themselves.
Today's mass extinctions and ecological breakdowns ensure deadly zoonotic pandemics and global warming will harass us far into the future. Bellwether Histories looks back at how animals have been warning us of our collective fate and asks why they were so seldom heard.
"[P]rovides an important reminder and even a blueprint for how all historians might contend with the experiences of animals and the consequences of human-animal relationships in the Anthropocene."
* Environmental History *"Accessible and engaging, this volume would be of interest to environmental and United States history scholars and could be used in an American environmental history course. Each essay can stand on its own and various chapters could contribute to gender studies, western history, war and society, or other specialized scholarship and syllabi."
* Western Historical Quarterly *"Bellwether Histories is a wide-ranging, insightful volume that presents a variety of telling animal stories that are important not only for the animal experiences, animal suffering, and animal agency they describe, but also for their role in warning about environments in crisis in the wake of capitalism and colonization."
* Pacific Northwest Quarterly *"The chapters in this volume are sensitive to the historical animal experience of living and dying in the capitalist hubristic system. . . . The collection should be on the standard reading lists for graduate students. Many of the chapters . . . are compelling histories that could certainly work at the undergraduate level as well."
* Animal History *"Bellwether Histories as a whole provides a rich and generative contribution to the burgeoning field of “more-than-human histories.""
* H-Net RevieISBN: 9780295751429
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 367g
256 pages