Humans and Other Animals Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions

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 '¬Üpetishism'¬", 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.

Samantha Hurn is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David where she convenes an award-winning MA program in Anthrozoology. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Wales, Andalusia, South Africa, and Swaziland.

1. Why Look at Human-Animal Interactions?
2. A History of 'Animality'
3. Continuity and Difference
4. The ‘West’ and the Rest: Conflicting Ideas About Animals and ‘Animality’
5. Animal Domestication: Human 'Domination' Over Nature?
6. Good to Think: Animal Classification and Symbolism
7. Good to Eat: Dietary Taboos Reconsidered
8. Petishism: a Cross Cultural Look at Pets and their Owners
9. Inter-species Communication
10. Never Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth: The Power of Animals in Human Relationships
11. Ethnoprimatology
12. Animals, Science and Medicine
13. Conservation in Action
14. ‘Hunting’ and Blood Sports in Cultural Context
15. Animal Rights and Wrongs
16. Overcoming Anthropocentricity: A new Challenge for Anthropology