| Title | : | Looking at Animals in Human History |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1861893345 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781861893345 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 222 |
| Publication | : | First published November 1, 2006 |
Taking in a wide range of visual and textual materials, Linda Kalof unearths many surprising and revealing examples of our depictions of animals. She also examines animals in a broad sweep of literature, narrative and from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History to Donna Haraway’s writings on animal–human–machine interaction; and from accounts of the Black Plague and histories of the domestic animal and zoos, to the ways that animal stereotypes have been applied to people to highlight hierarchies of gender, race and class.
Well-researched and scholarly, yet very accessible, this book is a significant contribution to the human–animal story. Featuring more than 60 images, Looking at Animals in Human History brings together a wealth of information that will appeal to the wide audience interested in animals, as well as to specialists in many disciplines.
Linda Kalof is professor of sociology at Michigan State University. Her books include The Earthscan Reader in Environmental Values and The Animals The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings .
Looking at Animals in Human History Reviews
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Kalof takes a romp through the whole length of Western history, from the cave art of Chauvet, France, to Philip K. Dick's science fiction tale "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Along the way there's plenty of detail and analysis on changing fashions in cruelty to animals, and signs of emerging empathy for other species. The book is strong in showing the shifting themes in artistic depictions and exhibitions of animals. There's less focus on our actual interactions with pets, farm animals and wild creatures.
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Kalof goes wrong from the very first word: "we." Clearly she means "we humans," since, of course, humans are animals too. So it's deeply anthropocentric, here and throughout.
Worse still, despite the title, it's deeply anglocentric. To be fair, I read only the chapter on the Middle Ages, but, without any but English-language scholarship (or, here and there, a few translations), it's no wonder that she concentrates on medieval England. That would be fine had her book NOT been called "In Human History."
Her preface trumpets her own deep research ("In researching this book I have consulted a very large number of books and articles": incidentally, this is just a weird thing for an academic to say), and she uses a few good articles, by Rob Meens, Esther Cohen, Debra Hassig, Jean Birrell. Overall, however, she relies on untheorized and, worse, out-of-date scholarship: Keith Thomas (1983, and not a medievalist), Lynn White (1962) and Joseph Strutt (1801!). In at least one case, one source (Oscar Brownstein on animal baiting in England) contradicts another (Strutt). Note that had she read the Brownstein more carefully, she would have moved the bear- and boar-baiting section to the 'Renaissance' chapter, since there's just not evidence (unless REED says otherwise?) for widespread *entertainment* of this sort prior to the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
Basically, the medieval chapter is a heavily diluted, sloppy distillation of Joyce E. Salisbury's The Beast Within (1994). If this chapter is representative, the rest should be avoided.
