The Animals Reader

by Linda Kalof (Editor), Amy Fitzgerald (Editor)

The Animals Reader brings together key classic and contemporary writings from philosophy, ethics, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, environmental studies, history, law and science. Providing a framework for understanding the state of the multidisciplinary field of animal studies, the second edition contains updated content reflecting the developments in research and theory in the field that have emerged in the ten years since publication of the first edition.

With new chapters from Peter Singer, Carol Gigliotto, Jacques Derrida and Irus Braverman, and new topics covered including the connection between animal abuse and interpersonal violence and human-animal relations, this book is the go-to resource for students of animal studies. Extracts are from academic texts and more popular texts alike as readers are given a sense of how human-animal relations have been understood and critiqued through time.

Helpful pedagogical features specific to this edition include:

- an explanatory updated Editors Introduction
- updated introductions to each extract, with details about the author of that piece and the context of their writing
- further reading suggestions at the end of each section, updated to reflect new scholarship.

With favourite chapters from the first edition preserved, this second edition has all the required new content to bring The Animals Reader fully up to date.

586 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[amyleigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

The excerpts chosen here felt quite dated, even though some were classic and canonical Animal Studies texts, which I guess makes sense since it was published in 2007. I also found the excerpts chosen weren't really even reflective of the theorists' larger works, in some cases (Donna Haraway's excerpt was so tangential to the vital and engaging parts of her thinking). My frustrations with this largely came with feeling unmoored in extracts...

[Rev. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Right off the bat, I only read about 30% of the essays in this book. I didn't buy it for a class, which I feel is probably where most people would come into contact with this. I got this for some on-going research that I am doing concerning the treatment of animals and the the proclivity of humans towards violence against their own species. I didn't find very much to aid me in this pursuit. Most of the essays in this are of the stomach-turningly academic type, and Mark Bekoff particularly gives me the heebie-jeebies. I believe quite firmly in animals' rights to comfort and safety. I am a vegetarian and regularly support animal charities, fostering and adopting animals that would either languish in shelters or be put down. However, claiming that you try to be a "dogcentrist" or "dogcentric" when you examine dogs, is academic nonsense. We, as human beings, divided by millions of years of evolution, cannot know what a dog is feeling with any kind of certainty. We project and, I would say, are often mistaken in our thoughts on the subject. Again, there isn't any good way to know. Rather than engage in pointless discussions about philosophical differences, why not try to save more animals from something we can safely say that they understand: suffering.

[Ike Sharpless · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm using this as a 'secondary' reader for the animal studies class I teach...I like it less than the Animal Ethics Reader because it's considerably less balanced, but it has a lot of key works that are geared more towards the critical animal studies end of the spectrum which are useful to provide, even if I personally think they need a good deal of parsing.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good essays. Thought provoking