Themes in Environmental History, 4.

Compiled by Sarah Johnson

Comprising essays selected from Environment and History and Environmental Values, these inexpensive paperbacks address important aspects of environmental history through theoretical essays and case studies. The readers are attracting increasing interest from course-organisers. Animals examines human relationships with non-human others, exploring dynamics of exploitation, preservation and cultural interpretation. The essays, whose animal actors range from whales to goats, cormorants to crocodiles, cover such diverse topics as hunting, farming, conservation and display. The authors are alive to the complexities and conflicts inherent in human–animal interactions: as friend, as food, as object of ethical discourse or of power-play between human societies, this volume shows that there is no simple answer to the question posed in the opening essay – ‘An Animal: What is it?’ Read more.