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Animal Series
Human
What does it mean to be human? And what, if anything, does it have to do with being a member of the animal species Homo sapiens? This dazzling book gets to the very heart of our rather unscientific motivations and prejudices, showing how they are of great use in resolving the world’s biggest problems. From beasts to aliens, this book explores widely discussed but often problematic links between humans and six other beings, tackling deep philosophical questions including humanity’s common purpose, life’s meaning, and what it means to be accepted as part of a community. Global in its outlook and illustrated with stunning pictures, Human is a powerful, funny, and iconoclastic antidote to post-humanism.
- GenresPhilosophy
208 pages, Paperback
Published May 11, 2020
2 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Amanda Rees
10 booksAmanda Rees is a senior lecturer in the department of sociology at the University of York. She is interested in histories of the future, of prehistory, and of human/animal relationships. Her work has been published in the British Journal for the History of Science and Social Studies of Science, among others. Her latest book is The Infanticide Controversy: Primatology and the Art of Field Science (2009).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 11, 2021
There's something of a tradition of books that treat Homo sapiens as they would another animal - in Human, Amanda Rees and Charlotte Sleigh are contributing to an 'animal series'. If done correctly, this is an effective conceit. The pocket sized book is glossy and well illustrated (though I found it quite hard to open without breaking the spine). It begins with a purely 'human as animal' introduction where we learn, for example that humans are categorised as of 'Least concern' on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List.
From here we move onto a series of chapters on aspects of the human species, taking in the broad concepts of beast (what makes us different, if anything, from the other animals), hominin (the origin of our species), she (the place of women in society), god (not exactly surprisingly, religion), and alien (the position of the 'other', plus literal aliens) with a conclusion labelled 'Inhumanism', which returns to the theme of 'what makes us human', keeping on the sociological/anthropological lines.
Once we get into these detailed sections, we rapidly move away from what might be expected of the format - I can't imagine that the other animals in the series (ranging from Albatross to Zebra) were treated in this way. What we get is a view dominated by the social sciences, with very little biology - which seems highly limiting. Some specifics were a touch depressing - I couldn't see the point, for example, of dedicating over a page in a relatively short book to Freud's outdated concepts. Similarly (and what finally lost it a star), the alien section's treatment of Science Fiction is the classic one of someone who really doesn't read science fiction. We are told the science fiction genre is 'based explicitly on engagement with aliens.' Very few of the SF books I read could be classified in this way.
It's an interesting take on humans as a sociological phenomenon, with some lovely illustrations - but it really doesn't do what it says on the tin.
From here we move onto a series of chapters on aspects of the human species, taking in the broad concepts of beast (what makes us different, if anything, from the other animals), hominin (the origin of our species), she (the place of women in society), god (not exactly surprisingly, religion), and alien (the position of the 'other', plus literal aliens) with a conclusion labelled 'Inhumanism', which returns to the theme of 'what makes us human', keeping on the sociological/anthropological lines.
Once we get into these detailed sections, we rapidly move away from what might be expected of the format - I can't imagine that the other animals in the series (ranging from Albatross to Zebra) were treated in this way. What we get is a view dominated by the social sciences, with very little biology - which seems highly limiting. Some specifics were a touch depressing - I couldn't see the point, for example, of dedicating over a page in a relatively short book to Freud's outdated concepts. Similarly (and what finally lost it a star), the alien section's treatment of Science Fiction is the classic one of someone who really doesn't read science fiction. We are told the science fiction genre is 'based explicitly on engagement with aliens.' Very few of the SF books I read could be classified in this way.
It's an interesting take on humans as a sociological phenomenon, with some lovely illustrations - but it really doesn't do what it says on the tin.
December 13, 2020
This is a wonderful wee book! It’s part of a series called ‘Animal’ (one book per animal, from Albatross to Zebra) from Reaktion Books, so even the existence of ‘Human’ in the mix makes for an intriguing start.
In short, the book looks to work out what it means to be human, by looking at things deemed to be ‘not human’ - beasts, machines, aliens, women - and each chapter feels like a glorious interdisciplinary whimsical encyclopaedia post.
This book got me pondering! It was also the chosen book for the yearly ‘One Book’ scheme at the UCL STS department (where I'm doing my PhD), so I’m super grateful they chose it as I’m not sure I’d have stumbled upon such a beaut wee read.
In short, the book looks to work out what it means to be human, by looking at things deemed to be ‘not human’ - beasts, machines, aliens, women - and each chapter feels like a glorious interdisciplinary whimsical encyclopaedia post.
This book got me pondering! It was also the chosen book for the yearly ‘One Book’ scheme at the UCL STS department (where I'm doing my PhD), so I’m super grateful they chose it as I’m not sure I’d have stumbled upon such a beaut wee read.
December 10, 2020
Written for the “Animal” series from Reaktion books (which now extends to almost 100 different categories of animal, from Albatross to Zebra), Human by Amanda Rees and Charlotte Sleigh proceeds the only possible way, which is to eschew any definitive effort to define the human and instead to offer an intellectual and cultural history of the debates over how to define the boundaries of the human.
Rees and Sleigh proceed by way of examining a variety of ‘asymmetric counterconcepts’ to ‘the human,’ showing how intellectuals and cultural producers have defined the human in contrast to beasts, to machines, to other hominins, to women, to gods, and to aliens. All of these distinctions have been politically vexed, of course, often resulting implicitly or explicitly in the denigration or degradation of various peoples and groups. While the book glances at debates and exemplary intellectuals from outside the west, the primary focus is on these debates in the world of North Atlantic anthropological science and Anglophone cultural sphere. Much attention is paid in particular to depictions of the boundaries of the human in popular films and visual media (the book is lavishly illustrated), demonstrating how abstruse debates among intellectuals made their way into popular understandings of the human.
Particularly excellent is the chapter discussing the changing views of Neanderthals, and the way in which this has almost always reflected changing views of how distinct “apex modern humans” (e.g. well educated white men) are from other humans across the globe: the more more one privileged educated white men, then more one denigrated the Neanderthals, and conversely, the more one considered the whole modern family of man equal, the more Neanderthals tended to be included in that family. Even the nomenclature can immediately be used to tell where one falls in this debate: is it homo neanderthalensis or is it homo sapiens neanderthalensis?
Rees and Sleigh proceed by way of examining a variety of ‘asymmetric counterconcepts’ to ‘the human,’ showing how intellectuals and cultural producers have defined the human in contrast to beasts, to machines, to other hominins, to women, to gods, and to aliens. All of these distinctions have been politically vexed, of course, often resulting implicitly or explicitly in the denigration or degradation of various peoples and groups. While the book glances at debates and exemplary intellectuals from outside the west, the primary focus is on these debates in the world of North Atlantic anthropological science and Anglophone cultural sphere. Much attention is paid in particular to depictions of the boundaries of the human in popular films and visual media (the book is lavishly illustrated), demonstrating how abstruse debates among intellectuals made their way into popular understandings of the human.
Particularly excellent is the chapter discussing the changing views of Neanderthals, and the way in which this has almost always reflected changing views of how distinct “apex modern humans” (e.g. well educated white men) are from other humans across the globe: the more more one privileged educated white men, then more one denigrated the Neanderthals, and conversely, the more one considered the whole modern family of man equal, the more Neanderthals tended to be included in that family. Even the nomenclature can immediately be used to tell where one falls in this debate: is it homo neanderthalensis or is it homo sapiens neanderthalensis?
January 19, 2021
I came this book from Verlyn Klinkenborg's review of the Reaktion series on animals. He liked the book on Humans because rather than being paen to our infinite wonder it focuses more on our narcissistic obtuseness.
We mistreat our own kind with insistent, pointless regularity; constantly diminish and degrade the animals we desperately need; pretend we can be some kind of other - cyborg or God and we can't truly figure out which of them or why.
Now we are generating our own impact on the planet we inhabit. We call this the age of the Anthropocene. We are usurping the age of Holocene, the couple thousand years of retreat from the ice age. King of the Hill we are! The big cheese, the species with the ability to destroy life on earth with our nuclear weapons and our massively excessive carbon emissions.
"Human" the book doesn't struggle to define our essence, our humanity so much as to define what we aren't and most often don't want to be. We don't want to be lower version of ourselves like a female or a poorer version and we definitely need to feel superior to animals. At one time we felt humbled before the idea of a God but in our unending hubris we are hoping to usurp that role for ourselves too.
The crisis of climate change and the fact that we did and are doing it to ourselves could be our chance to re-calibrate our role and to harmonize it with other life on Earth. My guess is that the more we assume more reasonable roles as animals, as just one of the millions of species on the planet, the better off life on this planet will be. Knowing myself as I do with all my grandiose notions of my uniqueness, I'm not too hopeful for my species taking a smaller and more integrated role in life on planet Earth. But hope and luck maybe all we got.
We mistreat our own kind with insistent, pointless regularity; constantly diminish and degrade the animals we desperately need; pretend we can be some kind of other - cyborg or God and we can't truly figure out which of them or why.
Now we are generating our own impact on the planet we inhabit. We call this the age of the Anthropocene. We are usurping the age of Holocene, the couple thousand years of retreat from the ice age. King of the Hill we are! The big cheese, the species with the ability to destroy life on earth with our nuclear weapons and our massively excessive carbon emissions.
"Human" the book doesn't struggle to define our essence, our humanity so much as to define what we aren't and most often don't want to be. We don't want to be lower version of ourselves like a female or a poorer version and we definitely need to feel superior to animals. At one time we felt humbled before the idea of a God but in our unending hubris we are hoping to usurp that role for ourselves too.
The crisis of climate change and the fact that we did and are doing it to ourselves could be our chance to re-calibrate our role and to harmonize it with other life on Earth. My guess is that the more we assume more reasonable roles as animals, as just one of the millions of species on the planet, the better off life on this planet will be. Knowing myself as I do with all my grandiose notions of my uniqueness, I'm not too hopeful for my species taking a smaller and more integrated role in life on planet Earth. But hope and luck maybe all we got.
March 16, 2020
More philosophical than the other titles in this excellent series, due to the different perspective required when examining ourselves, rather than another species. What defines a human? is a question explored by looking at the differences we see between us and the non-human.
Fascinating questions, fascinating answers. Good stuff.
Fascinating questions, fascinating answers. Good stuff.
September 25, 2020
An easy read in that it feels like your following someone’s train of thought (in a good way!). It makes you think twice about what you think you know - going need to read a little more about some of the elements and perspectives like imhumanism !
September 25, 2021
Interesting topics (what does it mean to be human, what makes humans different from other animals, are humans special, what is a person) but the presentation seemed confused. The authors seemed to get mixed up as to which idea was being discussed at any given time. Also not the clearest writing style, to my mind. But thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews