Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader Book

Before we had Millennials to pick on, there were the Victorians. Whether it be the proliferation of pornography or the hysteria surrounding diseases and their control, the Victorians have always availed themselves as a congenial target for social historians. This book takes a fun Foucauldian swipe at their antics pertaining specifically to their changing relationship with animals, and those who owned them. This was quite the popular book when it first came out in the middle 80s and it's easy to understand why. Ritvo's writing is very readable and the material both accessible & entertaining to the general reader. Each chapter deals with a separate subject that relates to the overall theme of animals and the Victorians' use of power to dominate and then management them. One chapter focuses on the special Victorian cachet of raising prized beef. A male aristocratic pastime that masqueraded as public service. This fatty nonsense is enhanced by the reflexive fad of aristocratic ladies fascinated by the prestige of serving a roast "that could be identified by name". The next chapter targets the Victorian need for control through "pure" breeding of pets. The quest for the creation of the ideal breed in a dog denotes the Victorian imagination, rather than any scientific prowess. Breeds were spun mostly out of fancy. The search for cat breeds met with much less success as fur coloration proven almost entirely the sole distinction between felines. The example of the bulldog is especially entertaining as the author accuses it of being hardly a breed to begin with, but rather "a motley group of similarly talented animals". Talented as to bull baiting, it's original job function, the rise of the breed is particularly noteworthy as its extinction seemed almost certain after parliament banned bull baiting in the early nineteenth century. A national symbol created at the same time it's bereft of its utility. There's a moral packed in there, somewhere..... The emergence of humane institutions gets and deserves their own chapter. Victorians might not have cared a whit for their neighbor, but the sight of a horse being beaten on the thoroughfare plagued their sensitive nerves. The progress of the stigma against the abuse of animals is chronicled alongside the necessary beginnings of enforcement. The author takes note that if the upper classes couldn't outlaw the lower classes, they could still take them to court. There's progress for you. Ritvo then moves from the domestic scene to the international, the last two chapters focus on the transformation of menageries into zoos proper, as well as the journey from "big game hunting" in the extended empire to the management of animal species through preservation and law enforcement, however feeble and class oriented. This is history compartmentalized into its delimited period. A reader might get the mistaken and farcical impression that the Brits paid no mind to animals before the late eighteenth century. The English, or some of them, anyway, have undoubtedly always loved their pets and then went hunting when the mood attached itself. Yet the nineteenth century on the whole does appear to be a singular time of transition in England and its power politics in social life seems somewhat ever-present. Certainly, Ritvo's book ably demonstrates that subtle and unsubtle power dynamic is as much a four legged affair as two. This begs the question: when man eventually casts his eye of concern on other living creatures, is this the moment when the problems of those others really begin?