Includes bibliographical references and index.

The history of animals / Aristotle -- Principles of morals and legislation / Jeremy Bentham -- In defense of slavery / Marjorie Spiegel -- Animal liberation or animal rights? / Peter Singer -- The rights of humans and other animals / Tom Regan -- The moral status of animals / Martha Nussbaum -- Becoming-animal / Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari -- An apology for Raymond Sebond / Michel de Montaigne -- From the Letters of 1646 and 1649 / René Descartes -- Speaking for dogs / Clinton R. Sanders and Arnold Arluke -- Wild justice and fair play : cooperation, forgiveness, and morality in animals / Marc Bekoff -- Grief, sadness, and the bones of elephants / Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy -- Orangutan cultures and the evolution of material culture / Carel P. van Schaik [and 8 others] -- The hunter-gatherer prehistory of human-animal interactions / Steven Mithen -- Animal planet / Harriet Ritvo -- Animal pets : cruelty and affection / Yi-Fu Tuan -- The eating of flesh / Plutarch -- Brave new farm? / Jim Mason and Mary Finelli -- The sexual politics of meat / Carol J. Adams -- The promotion of "meat" and its consequences / David Nibert -- Combats of elephants / Pliny the Elder -- On being human in the bullfight / Garry Marvin -- Dogfighting : symbolic expression and validation of masculinity / Rhonda Evans, DeAnn K. Gauthier, and Craig J. Forsyth -- Zoo spectatorship / Randy Malamud -- Hunting and humanity in western thought / Matt Cartmill -- Why look at animals? / John Berger -- The totemic illusion / Claude Lévi-Strauss -- Animals as tradition / Boria Sax -- What is the postmodern animal? / Steve Baker -- The illumination of the animal kingdom : the role of light and electricity in animal representation / Jonathan Burt -- The brown dog riots of 1907 / Coral Lansbury -- Into the laboratory / Lynda Birke -- Hybrid geographies : rethinking the "human" in human geography / Sarah Whatmore -- Dolly's body : gender, genetics, and the new genetic capital / Sarah Franklin -- Cyborgs to companion species : reconfiguring kinship in technoscience / Donna Haraway.

"The study of animals - and the relationship between humans and other animals - is now one of the most fiercely debated topics in contemporary science and culture. Animals have a long history in human society, providing food, labour, sport and companionship as well as becoming objects for exhibit. More contemporary uses extend to animals as therapy and in scientific testing. As natural habitats continue to be destroyed, the rights of animals to co-exist on the planet - and their symbolic power as a connection between humans and the natural world - are ever more hotly contested. The Animals Reader brings together the key classic and contemporary writings from Philosophy, Ethics, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Environmental Studies, History, Law and Science."