Bellwether Histories : Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis / edited by Susan Nance and Jennifer Marks.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Nance, Susan, editor.

Marks, Jennifer (Historian), editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animals and civilization.

Human ecology--United States.

Human ecology.

Human-animal relationships.

United States.

Genre:

History

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 pages)

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2023]

Summary:

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. 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.

Contents:

Introduction. The Mule in the Coal Mine

One. Interspecies Anticapitalism in English and American Humanitarian Writings, ca. 1800-1850

Two. Chicago's 1872 Equine Influenza Epizootic and the Evolution of Urban Transit Technology

Three. Cattle and Blizzards: Lessons from the Big Die-Up in 1880s Montana

Four. Animal Photography and the "Elk Problem" in Modern Wyoming

Five. Animals, Infrastructure, and Empire: Insects and Birds as Biological Control

Agents in Early Twentieth-Century Hawai'i

Six. Captive Breeding and the Commodification of "Surplus" Animals at the Central Park Zoo, 1886-1974

Seven. The Destructive Ecology of Human-Pig Relations in Iowa since 1950

Eight. "The Next Meal for the Lions": The US Occupation of the Baghdad Zoo, 2003-2004

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780295751436

0295751436

OCLC:

1384412687