Animal Housing And Human Animal Relations

This book provides an in-depth investigation into the practices of animal housing systems with international contributions from across the humanities and social sciences. By attending to a range of different sites such as the zoo, the laboratory, the farm and the animal shelter, to name a few, the book explores material technologies from the perspective that these are integrated parts of a larger biopolitical infrastructure and questions how animal housing systems, and the physical infrastructures that surround central human-animal practices, come into being. The contributions in the book show in various ways how physical infrastructures of animal housing are always part of a much broader sociocultural and political infrastructure, where the material reality of housing systems combines with human and animal agents, with politics, and with practices. As such, the book explores what kind of practices and relations develop around the physical structures of animal housing, and by whom, and for whom, they are developed. This innovative collection will be of great interest to student and scholars in animal studies, more than human studies, geography, anthropology, and sociology.

This diverse, global, and interdisciplinary volume explores the existing research, practice, and ethical issues pertinent to the field of human-animal interactions (HAIs), interventions, and anthrozoology, focusing on the perceived physical and mental health benefits to humans and the challenges derived from these relationships. The book begins by exploring the basic theoretical principles of anthrozoology and HAI, such as the evolution and history of the field, the importance of language, the economic costs and current perspectives to physical and mental wellbeing, the origins of domestication of animals, anthropomorphism, and how animals fit into human societies. Chapters then move onto practice, covering topics such as how animals help childhood and adulthood development, pet ownership, disability, the roles of pets for people with psychiatric disorders, the links between animal and domestic abuse, and then more widely into the therapeutic roles of animals, animal-assisted therapies, interactions outside the home, working animals, animals in popular culture, and animals in research, for leisure, and food. Including chapters on a wide range of animals, from domesticated pets to wildlife, this collection examines the benefits yet also reveals the complexity, and often dark side, of human-animal relations. Interweaving accessible commentaries with revealing chapters throughout the text, this collection would be of great interest to students and practitioners in the fields of mental health, psychology, veterinary medicine, zoology, biology, social work, history, and sociology.

As Julie Urbanik vividly illustrates, non-human animals are central to our daily human lives. We eat them, wear them, live with them, work them, experiment on them, try to save them, spoil them, abuse them, fight them, hunt them, buy and sell them, love them, and hate them. Placing Animals is the first book to bring together the historical development of the field of animal geography with a comprehensive survey of how geographers study animals today. Urbanik provides readers with a thorough understanding of the relationship between animal geography and the larger animal studies project, an appreciation of the many geographies of human-animal interactions around the world, and insight into how animal geography is both challenging and contributing to the major fields of human and nature-society geography. Through the theme of the role of place in shaping where and why human-animal interactions occur, the chapters in turn explore the history of animal geography and our distinctive relationships in the home, on farms, in the context of labor, in the wider culture, and in the wild.

Anthrozoology, the study of human-animal interactions (HAIs), has experienced substantial growth during the past 20 years and it is now timely to synthesise what we know from empirical evidence about our relationships with both domesticated and wild animals. Two principal points of focus have become apparent in much of this research. One is the realisation that the strength of these attachments not only has emotional benefits for people, but confers health benefits as well, such that a whole area has opened up of using companion animals for therapeutic purposes. The other is the recognition that the interactions we have with animals have consequences for their welfare too, and thus impact on their quality of life. Consequently we now study HAIs in all scenarios in which animals come into contact with humans, whether as pets/companions, farm livestock, laboratory animals, animals in zoos, or in the wild. This topical area of study is of growing importance for animals in animal management, animal handling, animal welfare and applied ethology courses, and also for people within psychology, anthropology and human geography at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. It will therefore be of interest to students, researchers, and animal managers across the whole spectrum of human-animal contact.

The second edition of this book contains chapters that discuss the role of the stockperson in animal welfare, including attitudes, human-animal interactions, human and animal behaviour and improvement of human-animal interactions in animal production. This book is intended for those with an interest in human-animal interactions, including trainers, livestock farm managers, students and academics.

The city includes opportunities as well as constraints for humans and other animals alike. Urban animals are often subjected to complaints; they transgress geographical, legal as and cultural ordering systems, while roaming the city in what is often perceived as uncontrolled ways. But they are also objects of care, conservation practices and bio-political interventions. What then, are the "more-than-human" experiences of living in a city? What does it mean to consider spatial formations and urban politics from the perspective of human/animal relations? This book draws on a number of case studies to explore urban controversies around human/animal relations, in particular companion animals: free ranging dogs, homeless and feral cats, urban animal hoarding and "crazy cat ladies". The book explores ‘zoocities’, the theoretical framework in which animal studies meet urban studies, resulting in a reframing of urban relations and space. Through the expansion of urban theories beyond the human, and the resuscitation of sociological theories through animal studies literature, the book seeks to uncover the phenomenon of ‘humanimal crowding’, both as threats to be policed, and as potentially subversive. In this book, a number of urban controversies and crowding technologies are analysed, finally pointing at alternative modes of trans-species urban politics through the promises of humanimal crowding - of proximity and collective agency. The exclusion of animals may be an urban ideology, aiming at social order, but close attention to the level of practice reveals a much more diverse, disordered, and perhaps disturbing experience.