News Bulletin - Australian Animal Studies Group

LOVING ANIMALS: Toward a New Animal Advocacy by Kathy Rudy. Minnesota
University Press 2011
The contemporary animal rights movement encompasses a wide
range of sometimes competing agendas from vegetarianism to
animal liberation. For people for whom pets are family members—
animal lovers outside the fray—extremist positions in which all
human–animal interaction is suspect often discourage involvement
in the movement to end cruelty to other beings. In Loving Animals,
Kathy Rudy argues that in order to achieve such goals as ending
animal testing and factory farming, activists need to be better
attuned to the profound emotional, even spiritual, attachment that
many people have with the animals in their lives.
Through extended interviews with people whose lives are
intertwined with animals, analysis of the cultural representation of
animals, and engaging personal accounts, she explores five realms
in which humans use animals: as pets, for food, in entertainment, in
scientific research, and for clothing. In each case she presents new
methods of animal advocacy to reach a more balanced and
sustainable relationship association built on reciprocity and connection. Rudy suggests that the
nearly universal stories we tell of living with and loving animals will both broaden the support for
animal advocacy and inspire the societal changes that will improve the lives of animals--and
humans--everywhere.
Kathy Rudy is associate professor of ethics and women‘s studies at Duke University. She is the
author of Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics
and Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Moral Diversity in the Abortion Debate.
A WORLD VIEW OF ANIMAL LAW by Bruce A. Wagman and Matthew Liebman.
Carolina Academic Press, 2011
This is the first book of its kind--an exciting and illustrative survey of
the way different countries and cultures treat animals under the law.
Given the breadth and scope of the legal treatment of animals
around the world, the book presents selected issues and laws in a
text that is readable and helpful to a wide range of readers,
including undergraduate and post-graduate courses in sociology,
cultural anthropology, international law, animal law, and animals in
society.
A Worldview of Animal Law is split into subject areas tied to the
different ways we interact with animals in society, with a focus on
comparing the laws in different countries in the current era. Its
format and wide coverage make it interesting for readers in any
country who want to know about this area of the law, whether for
personal, educational or professional reasons. Unlike many
casebooks on the market, this is not a law school text, and not a
comprehensive survey of one specific country's laws; rather, it
provides a more readable and wider view of the compelling issues that arise regarding the
integration of animals into society.
Bruce Wagman is a partner at Schiff Hardin LLP and an Adjunct Professor of Law at UC Hastings
College of the Law, Stanford Law School, and UC Berkeley School of Law. Matthew Liebman is a
staff attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund.
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