Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800

In the early twenty-first century animals are news. Parliamentary debates, protests against fox hunting and television programmes like Animal Hospital all focus on the way in which we treat animals and on what that says about our own humanity. As vegetarianism becomes ever more popular, and animal experimentation more controversial, it is time to trace the background to contemporary debates and to situate them in a broader historical context. Hilda Kean looks at the cultural and social role of animals from 1800 to the present at the way in which visual images and myths captured the popular imagination and encouraged sympathy for animals and outrage at their exploitation. From early campaigns against the beating of cattle and ill-treatment of horses to concern for dogs in war and cats in laboratories, she explores the relationship between popular images and public debate and action. She also illustrates how interest in animal rights and welfare was closely aligned with campaigns for political and social reform by feminists, radicals and socialists.

Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain Since 1800

Politics & Social Sciences

Hilda Kean

Philosophy

Reaktion Books Ltd.

Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West (Picturing History)

In this groundbreaking, highly provocative examination of the Renaissance, Jerry Brotton and Lisa Jardine raise questions about the formation of cultural identity in Western Europe. Through an analysis of the circulation of art and luxury objects, the authors challenge the view that Renaissance culture defined itself in large part against an exotic, dangerous, always marginal East. Featuring more than seventy illustrations, including many in color and some published for the first time, their book provides fascinating insights into the works of Pisanello, Leonardo, Dürer, Holbein, and Titian. Global Interests explores the trade in portrait medals, tapestries, and equestrian art, all items that Brotton and Jardine demonstrate were markers of power and influence in both the West and the East. The authors reveal that this trade represented a remarkably equal exchange between Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman East. Their findings lead them to argue that the East, and in particular the Ottoman Empire of Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent, was not the antithetical "other" to the emergence of a Western European identity in the sixteenth century. Instead, Paris, Venice, and London were linked with Istanbul and the East through networks of shared political and commercial interests. By showing that the traditional view of Renaissance culture is misleading, the authors offer a more truly global understanding of historical experience.

Jerry Brotton

Lisa Jardine

Anthropology

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