The Animal Connection A New Perspective On What Makes Us Human

Author : Pat Shipman
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2011-06-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780393070545

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The Animal Connection by Pat Shipman Pdf

A bold, illuminating new take on the love of animals that drove human evolution. Why do humans all over the world take in and nurture other animals? This behavior might seem maladaptive—after all, every mouthful given to another species is one that you cannot eat—but in this heartening new study, acclaimed anthropologist Pat Shipman reveals that our propensity to domesticate and care for other animals is in fact among our species' greatest strengths. For the last 2.6 million years, Shipman explains, humans who coexisted with animals enjoyed definite adaptive and cultural advantages. To illustrate this point, Shipman gives us a tour of the milestones in human civilization-from agriculture to art and even language—and describes how we reached each stage through our unique relationship with other animals. The Animal Connection reaffirms our love of animals as something both innate and distinctly human, revealing that the process of domestication not only changed animals but had a resounding impact on us as well.

Author : Pat Shipman
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2011-06-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 0393082229

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The Animal Connection: A New Perspective on What Makes Us Human by Pat Shipman Pdf

A bold, illuminating new take on the love of animals that drove human evolution. Why do humans all over the world take in and nurture other animals? This behavior might seem maladaptive—after all, every mouthful given to another species is one that you cannot eat—but in this heartening new study, acclaimed anthropologist Pat Shipman reveals that our propensity to domesticate and care for other animals is in fact among our species' greatest strengths. For the last 2.6 million years, Shipman explains, humans who coexisted with animals enjoyed definite adaptive and cultural advantages. To illustrate this point, Shipman gives us a tour of the milestones in human civilization-from agriculture to art and even language—and describes how we reached each stage through our unique relationship with other animals. The Animal Connection reaffirms our love of animals as something both innate and distinctly human, revealing that the process of domestication not only changed animals but had a resounding impact on us as well.

Author : Melanie Challenger
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2021-03-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780735238138

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How to Be Animal by Melanie Challenger Pdf

What makes us human, and why are we so sure we're different from other animals? Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive, and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal rewrites the remarkable human story and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. Most of our effects on the planet are the consequences of technological improvements and advances in our understanding of natural mechanisms. But why did this cognitive and technological edge come about in the first place and what kind of being has it made us? In How to Be Animal, Challenger brilliantly argues that this dizzying trajectory is the result of a singular characteristic of our species: the struggle with being an animal. Using a combination of memoir, historical texts, interweaving interviews and cultural and environmental history, How to Be Animal is lively and thought-provoking, bursting with ideas. This is a book for anyone who has ever contemplated what humans are and what makes our species so simultaneously brilliant and awful. Even more so, it is a book that asks tantalizing philosophical questions, such as whether and how human life matters. How to Be Animal is a tough-minded but ultimately sympathetic portrait of humanity. It exposes human beings as extraordinary animals defined by a profound struggle. In the third millennium, the way humans respond to being an animal among animals is the greatest and most inspiring challenge we face.

Author : Agustín Fuentes
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2017-03-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781101983959

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The Creative Spark by Agustín Fuentes Pdf

A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight. Agustín Fuentes argues that your child's finger painting comes essentially from the same place as creativity in hunting and gathering millions of years ago, and throughout history in making war and peace, in intimate relationships, in shaping the planet, in our communities, and in all of art, religion, and even science. It requires imagination and collaboration. Every poet has her muse; every engineer, an architect; every politician, a constituency. The manner of the collaborations varies widely, but successful collaboration is inseparable from imagination, and it brought us everything from knives and hot meals to iPhones and interstellar spacecraft. Weaving fascinating stories of our ancient ancestors' creativity, Fuentes finds the patterns that match modern behavior in humans and animals. This key quality has propelled the evolutionary development of our bodies, minds, and cultures, both for good and for bad. It's not the drive to reproduce; nor competition for mates, or resources, or power; nor our propensity for caring for one another that have separated us out from all other creatures. As Fuentes concludes, to make something lasting and useful today you need to understand the nature of your collaboration with others, what imagination can and can't accomplish, and, finally, just how completely our creativity is responsible for the world we live in. Agustín Fuentes's resounding multimillion-year perspective will inspire readers—and spark all kinds of creativity.

Author : Grant Hayter-Menzies
Publisher : Heritage House Publishing Co
Page : 155 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2021-11-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9781772033724

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Muggins by Grant Hayter-Menzies Pdf

The unusual and moving tale of Muggins, a famed fundraising dog who became a mascot of the Canadian Red Cross during the First World War. Born in 1913 in the home of a millionaire philanthropist, Muggins was a purebred Spitz, a sharp-eared, sharp-nosed, fluffy-tailed sort of dog most often seen in the lap of a lady of leisure. But Muggins defied the odds, rising to unlikely fame during the First World War, when he became Victoria, BC’s most diminutive fundraiser. He was taught to wander through downtown during the war with two change donation boxes tied to his back, and ultimately collected the equivalent of $400,000 for charities and causes including the Red Cross, the Blue Cross, food for poor children and prisoners of war, victims of Jewish pogroms, to name a few. During his short life, Muggins visited ferries and freight liners stopping in Victoria. He appeared in photos with the Prince of Wales and with famous Canadian general Sir Arthur Currie, among other celebrated admirers. He was also a favourite of the rank and file, helping cheer up wounded soldiers at Esquimalt Military Hospital. Muggins was made an honourary first lieutenant by the United States military for his service raising funds in Seattle. And he was so loved by departing soldiers he was more than once nearly taken along to the theatre of war. Based on valuable documents, memorabilia, newspaper and newsreel accounts of Muggins's brief but brilliant career, this book tackles the difficult question of human use of animals in war, at home and on the battlefield. It explores how crucial animals, specifically dogs, have been to wounded veterans recovering from physical and emotional damage—both in Muggins's lifetime and now.

Author : Douglas Sloan
Publisher : SteinerBooks
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2015-10-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781584201953

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The Redemption of the Animals by Douglas Sloan Pdf

As human beings, what is our true relationship to the animals on earth? What is our responsibility to our fellow creatures? Douglas Sloan explores these and other questions in this important book on the human-animal connection. His explorations are based on personal experience and wide-ranging research into the work of Rudolf Steiner and others, including scientist students of the inner life of animals and committed defenders of animal wellbeing. Rudolf Steiner describes how from the beginning of creation humans and animals have been united in deep kinship. A loss of the sense of this human–animal connection has resulted in an immense animal suffering the world over. Especially in their suffering, the animals now pose for the modern human being many pressing and perplexing questions. Are the animals conscious? Do they have feelings like ours? Do they experience pain? Do the animals have a spiritual reality and experience? Do the animals have souls and selves? Do the animals have capacities for cognitive intelligence, emotional empathy, language, and memory? Is there a crucial difference between the human and the animal, a basic difference in kind, or only a difference in degree? Do animals have rights? Are we justified in using the animals as we wish—eating them, hunting them, experimenting on them? Rudolf Steiner presents a vision of the ultimate redemption of the animals from their suffering. What is the nature of this redemption? What is our responsibility in making it happen? In exploring these and related questions with the help of Rudolf Steiner’s work and that of others on the issue, we can begin to see the importance in our time of our relating to the animals in a completely new way—a relationship that understands and respects the animals’ inner spiritual being, and one that requires a deep grasp of our own spiritual being in relation to theirs. In this book, Douglas Sloan seeks to help us toward this new relationship with the animals, both in concept and in everyday action.

Author : Arthur Walker-Jones
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2019-10-03
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780567689429

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Psalms Book 2: An Earth Bible Commentary by Arthur Walker-Jones Pdf

Arthur Walker-Jones presents an Earth-focused reading of the second book of Psalms, focusing upon the many nonhuman animals that appear repeatedly within the text. In the first commentary to explore the implications of the natural and cultural history of animals for the interpretation of Psalms, Walker-Jones moves beyond the standard treatment of animals as mere metaphors for human concerns, or background to human stories. Instead, Walker-Jones draws upon the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, incorporating this into ecocritical analysis and arguing for the similarity between the two approaches, including recognizing that the oppression and liberation of humans is interrelated with the oppression and liberation of Earth and all its creatures. Walker-Jones looks at foxes, sheep, goats, cattle, doves, snakes, lions, snails, dogs, and deer, which all appear in Psalms 42–72, taking into account that many of these animals co-evolved with humans and created the particular ecological niche of the highlands east of the Mediterranean. Perceiving Earth in various ways-as refuge, as enemy, as Rock, and as fertile and joyous-this volume brings an entirely new ecological perspective to the Psalms.

Author : Linda Kalof
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 736 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2017-02-01
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780199927159

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The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies by Linda Kalof Pdf

Intellectual struggles with the "animal question"-- how humans can rethink and reconfigure their relationships with other animals-- first began to take hold in the 1970s. Over the next forty years, scholars from a wide range of fields would make sweeping reevaluations of the relationship between humans and other animals. The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies brings these diverse evaluations together for the first time, paying special attention to the commodification of animals, the degradation of the natural world and a staggering loss of animal habitat and species extinction, and the increasing need for humans to coexist with other animals in urban, rural and natural contexts. Linda Kalof maps these themes into the five major categories that structure this volume: Animals in the Landscape of Law, Politics and Public Policy; Animal Intentionality, Agency and Reflexive Thinking; Animals as Objects in Science, Food, Spectacle and Sport; Animals in Cultural Representations; and Animals in Ecosystems. Written by international scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, law, history, English, art, sociology, geography, archaeology, environmental studies, cultural studies, and animal advocacy, the thirty chapters in this handbook investigate key issues and concepts central to understanding our current relationship with other animals and the potential for coexistence in an ecological community of living beings.

Author : Mario Wenning,Nandita Batra
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2018-11-27
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781498557832

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The Human–Animal Boundary by Mario Wenning,Nandita Batra Pdf

The Human–Animal Boundary shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the question “what is human?” with the question “what is animal?” The objective is to expand the imaginative scope of human–animal relationships by combining perspectives from different disciplines, traditions, and cultural backgrounds.

Author : Mieke Roscher,André Krebber,Brett Mizelle
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 647 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2021-06-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110536553

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Handbook of Historical Animal Studies by Mieke Roscher,André Krebber,Brett Mizelle Pdf

Author : Scott A. Midson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2020-06-25
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780567689962

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Love, Technology and Theology by Scott A. Midson Pdf

This volume explores love in the context of today's technologies. It is difficult to separate love from romanticist ideals of authenticity, intimacy and depth of relationship. These ideals resonate with theological models of love that highlight the way God benevolently created the world and continues to love it. Technologies, which are designed in response to our desires, do not necessarily enjoy this romanticist resonance, and yet they are now remodelling the world. Are technologies then antithetical to love? In this volume, leading theologians have brought together themes of theology, technology and love for the first time, exploring different areas where notions of love and technology are problematized. In a world where algorithms and artificial intelligences interact with us and shape our lives in ever more intricate and even intimate ways, we might feel attachments to and through machines that suggest sentiments of love while also changing how we think about love. Does love always have to be reciprocal? How can we enact love and care for others with technologies? Whose desires do technologies serve – consumers, corporations, creatures? This volume offers a systematic review of the challenges of living in a technologically saturated world, by means of critical application of, as well as reflection on, theological discussions about love.

Author : David A. Nibert
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780231525510

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Animal Oppression and Human Violence by David A. Nibert Pdf

Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and growth-curbing epidemics of infectious disease. Nibert centers his study on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, a practice that has been largely controlled by elite groups and expanded with the rise of capitalism. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. In his view, conquest and subjugation were the results of the need to appropriate land and water to maintain large groups of animals, and the gross amassing of military power has its roots in the economic benefits of the exploitation, exchange, and sale of animals. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals. Nibert links domesecration to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, including the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves; global warming; and world hunger, and he reviews the U.S. government's military response to the inevitable crises of an overheated, hungry, resource-depleted world. Most animal-advocacy campaigns reinforce current oppressive practices, Nibert argues. Instead, he suggests reforms that challenge the legitimacy of both domesecration and capitalism.

Author : Tom MacFaul
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2015-11-20
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781107117938

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Shakespeare and the Natural World by Tom MacFaul Pdf

This book explores the rich range of meanings that Shakespeare finds in the natural world, enabling new readings of his works.

Author : Daniel R. Headrick
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 625 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190864712

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Humans Versus Nature by Daniel R. Headrick Pdf

"This book is about the ongoing conflict between humanity and the natural environment. Over the past 200,000 years, humans have multiplied and populated the Earth. When they domesticated plants and animals and replaced foraging with agriculture and herding, they depleted natural resources, deforested the land, and caused mass extinctions. But nature has agency too, causing pandemics of plague, smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases and a climate change called the Little Ice Age. In recent centuries, industrialization has accelerated extinctions, deforestation, and resource depletion, even in the oceans. Twentieth-century developmentalism and mass consumerism have caused global warming and other climate changes. Environmental movements have argued for the need to mitigate the negative consequences of technological and economic change. The future of humanity and the Earth depends on choices between achieving a sustainable balance between humans and nature, carrying on as before, or learning to manage the biosphere. environment, mass extinction, domestication, agriculture, pandemic, industrialization, developmentalism, consumerism, global warming"--

Author : Kendra Coulter
Publisher : Springer
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2016-04-29
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781137558800

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Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity by Kendra Coulter Pdf

In this thought-provoking and innovative book, Kendra Coulter examines the diversity of work done with, by, and for animals. Interweaving human-animal studies, labor theories and research, and feminist political economy, Coulter develops a unique analysis of the accomplishments, complexities, problems, and possibilities of multispecies and interspecies labor. She fosters a nuanced, multi-faceted approach to labor that takes human and animal well-being seriously, and that challenges readers to not only think deeply and differently about animals and work, but to reflect on the potential for interspecies solidarity. The result is an engaging, expansive, and path-making text.