Entangled Empathy

Author: Lori Gruen
Publisher: Lantern Books
ISBN: 1590565576
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
In Entangled Empathy, scholar and activist Lori Gruen argues that rather than focusing on animal “rights,” we ought to work to make our relationships with animals right by empathetically responding to their needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and unique perspectives. Pointing out that we are already entangled in complex and life-altering relationships with other animals, Gruen guides readers through a new way of thinking about—and practicing—animal ethics. Gruen describes entangled empathy as a type of caring perception focused on attending to another’s experience of well-being. It is an experiential process involving a blend of emotion and cognition in which we recognize we are in relationships with others and are called upon to be responsive and responsible in these relationships by attending to another. When we engage in entangled empathy we are transformed and in that transformation we can imagine less violent, more meaningful ways of being together.

The Multispecies Salon

Author: Eben Kirksey
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376989
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
A new approach to writing culture has arrived: multispecies ethnography. Plants, animals, fungi, and microbes appear alongside humans in this singular book about natural and cultural history. Anthropologists have collaborated with artists and biological scientists to illuminate how diverse organisms are entangled in political, economic, and cultural systems. Contributions from influential writers and scholars, such as Dorion Sagan, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, are featured along with essays by emergent artists and cultural anthropologists. Delectable mushrooms flourishing in the aftermath of ecological disaster, microbial cultures enlivening the politics and value of food, and nascent life forms running wild in the age of biotechnology all figure in this curated collection of essays and artifacts. Recipes provide instructions on how to cook acorn mush, make cheese out of human milk, and enliven forests after they have been clear-cut. The Multispecies Salon investigates messianic dreams, environmental nightmares, and modest sites of biocultural hope. For additional materials see the companion website: www.multispecies-salon.org/ Contributors. Karen Barad, Caitlin Berrigan, Karin Bolender, Maria Brodine, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, David S. Edmunds, Christine Hamilton, Donna J. Haraway, Stefan Helmreich, Angela James, Lindsay Kelley, Eben Kirksey, Linda Noel, Heather Paxson, Nathan Rich, Anna Rodriguez, Dorion Sagan, Craig Schuetze, Nicholas Shapiro, Miriam Simun, Kim TallBear, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Against Empathy

Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062339354
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

For the Love of Lemurs

Author: Patricia Chapple Wright
Publisher: Lantern Books
ISBN: 1590564464
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
In 1986, primatologist Patricia Chapple Wright was given a seemingly impossible task: to travel to the rainforests of Madagascar and find the greater bamboo lemur, a species that hadn't been seen in the wild for thirty years. Not only did Wright discover that the primate still existed but that it lived alongside a completely new species. What followed was a love affair with an animal and a country that continues to this day. In this frank and enchanting sequel to High Moon Over the Amazon, Wright recounts the many challenges she faced, including separation from her daughter, a tempestuous romance with a fellow scientist, and political upheaval that threatens her dream of establishing a national park to ensure the safety of her precious lemurs. But in the end, her tenacity, daring, and passion for this endangered primate lead to extraordinary scientific breakthroughs and help bring the animal back from the brink of extinction.

Tongue-Tied

Author: Nguyen, Hanh
Publisher: Lantern Books
ISBN: 1590565959
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
Words matter: they mold and mirror our values and our reality. And so it is with the language we use to think and talk about species other than our own. In Tongue-Tied, Hanh Nguyen unpacks the many metaphors, meanings, and grammatical formulations that speak to and echo our physical exploitation of other-than-human animals, and shows how they constrain our abilities to relate to our animal kin fairly and honestly. Full of subtle insights and richly suggestive observations, and drawing from Nguyen’s own cross-cultural experiences, Tongue-Tied offers a glimpse of a language that is freed from euphemistic self-deception, one that accepts definition without limitation and difference without hierarchy.

Varieties of Empathy

Author: Elisa Aaltola
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786606119
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
Empathy is a term used increasingly both in moral theory and animal ethics. Yet, its precise meaning is often left unexplored. The book aims to tackle this by clarifying the different and even contradictory ways in which “empathy” can be defined.

Ethics and Animals

Author: Lori Gruen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521717731
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
In this fresh and comprehensive introduction to animal ethics, Lori Gruen weaves together poignant and provocative case studies with discussions of ethical theory, urging readers to engage critically and empathetically reflect on our treatment of other animals. In clear and accessible language, Gruen provides a survey of the issues central to human-animal relations and a reasoned new perspective on current key debates in the field. She analyses and explains a range of theoretical positions and poses challenging questions that directly encourage readers to hone their ethical reasoning skills and to develop a defensible position about their own practices. Her book will be an invaluable resource for students in a wide range of disciplines including ethics, environmental studies, veterinary science, women's studies, and the emerging field of animal studies and is an engaging account of the subject for general readers with no prior background in philosophy.

Animal Studies

Author: Matthew R. Calarco
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429671482
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Prefaced with a brief introduction to the field of animal studies, the text explores the key influential terms, topics and debates which have had a major impact on the field, and that students are most likely to encounter in their animal studies classes. Animal Studies provides a guide to key concepts in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of animal studies, laid out in A-Z format. While Human–Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies are the main frameworks that inform the bulk of the writings in animal studies and the key concepts discussed in the volume, other approaches such as anthrozoology and cognitive ethology are also explored. The entries in the volume attend to the differences in ongoing debates among scholars and activists, showing that what is commonly called “animal studies” is far from a unified body of work. A full bibliography of sources is included at the end of the book, along with an extensive index. The book will be a valuable guide to undergraduate and postgraduate students in geography, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, women’s studies, and other related disciplines. Seasoned researchers will find the book helpful, when researching topics outside of their specialization. Outside of academia, it will be of interest to activists, as well as professional organizations.

Living with Animals

Author: Erin McKenna
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538128225
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Living with Animals brings a pragmatist ecofeminist perspective to discussions around animal rights, animal welfare, and animal ethics to move the conversation beyond simple use or non-use decisions. Erin McKenna uses a case study approach with select species to question how humans should live and interact with various animal beings through specific instances of such relationships. Addressing standard topics such as the use of animals for food, use for biomedical research, use in entertainment, use as companions, use as captive specimens in zoos, and use in hunting and ecotourism through a revolutionary pluralist and experimental approach, McKenna provides an uncommonly nuanced accounts for complex relationships and changing circumstances. Rather than seek absolute moral stands regarding human relationships with other animal beings, and rather than trying to end such relationships altogether, the books urges us to make existing relations better.

Animal Entanglements

Author: Erika Cudworth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538180219
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
This book provides an insight into the everyday lives and experiences of people who live with dogs as companions; and glimpses aspects of the lives of the dogs who share their homes. It is framed sociologically and as such, considers the various forms of power relations which shape the lives of those kept as pets and their human owners. In recounting stories of companion humans and dogs, the co-constituted quality of life is clear. However, while dogs – as agential beings with needs, desires and a point of view – are able to shape outcomes and change aspects of their lived experience, the world they inhabit is profoundly geared to human inhabitants; and the most privileged ones at that. The book revisits the notion of pet keeping as the interplay between domination and affection arguing that these do not exist as a continuum, but a mesh of complex relations played out in the use of homespace, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the in the public world of park and the street. Those living with dog companions, as well as the dogs themselves, find their lives are muddied, both literally and figuratively; boundaries are tested and recast and the complications of inter-species cohabitation negotiated by all parties. Through an innovative theoretical contribution, Cudworth conceptualizes human relations with companion dogs in terms of complex social relations that involve both systemic forms of domination as well as nonhuman agency in shaping social relations and social forms.