Animal History in the Modern City: Exploring Liminality

Description

Animals are increasingly recognized as fit and proper subjects for historians, yet their place in conventional historical narratives remains contested. This volume argues for a history of animals based on the centrality of liminality - the state of being on the threshold, not quite one thing yet not quite another. Since animals stand between nature and culture, wildness and domestication, the countryside and the city, and tradition and modernity, the concept of liminality has a special resonance for historical animal studies. Assembling an impressive cast of contributors, this volume employs liminality as a lens through which to study the social and cultural history of animals in the modern city. It includes a variety of case studies, such as the horse-human relationship in the towns of New Spain, hunting practices in 17th-century France, the birth of the zoo in Germany and the role of the stray dog in the Victorian city, demonstrating the interrelated nature of animal and human histories. Animal History in the Modern City is a vital resource for scholars and students interested in animal studies, urban history and historical geography. Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Figures and Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History Notes Bibliography Chapter 2: Liminal Lives in the New World Liminal lives in Tenochtitlán Blurring and clarifying the borders of human and non-human lives Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 3: Liminal Moments: Royal Hunts and Animal Lives in and around Seventeenth-Century Paris Noble horses and stray dogs: City, court and the animal kingdom Hunting in the city: Louis XIII and the origins of game animals Escaping the city: Versailles and the machinery of life and death Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 4: Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World: Liminality and Nuisance in Glasgow and New York City, 1660–1760 Living nuisances ‘Zombie’ nuisances Resisting liminality Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 5: Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold: An Eighteenth-Century Case Study of Liminal Animal Lives in a Southwest German Hometown Notes Bibliography Chapter 6: The Giraffe’s Journey in France (1826–7): Entering Another World Preamble: Taking the giraffe’s standpoint? Back to the giraffe: Her confusing arrival in Marseilles Winter in Marseilles: Fear, puzzlement, adaptation From Aix to Paris: The trauma of transit Conclusions Notes Bibliography Chapter 7: The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog and the Rise of the Modern Slaughterhouse No ordinary dog: The butcher dog in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Germany The rise of the modern slaughterhouse and the elimination of the butcher dog32 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 8: It’s Just an Act! Dogs as Actors in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Europe Dogs as liminal animals in the modern city Liminal animal actors Munito, the ‘wonderful dog’ Rudolf Lang and his performing dogs Conclusions Notes Bibliography Chapter 9: Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death: The Problem of the Stray in the Victorian City Between wild and domestic: The Battersea Dogs’ Home and the problem of the ‘stray’ Between animal and human: Beastly slumming at the Dogs Home Between life and death: The purgatory of the stray Conclusions Notes Bibliography Chapter 10: Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush: Humans, Leopards and Initiation in West African History Expanding the ethnographic concept of liminality When leopards come to town, the boys go to the forest Colonial migration – or: From leopards to crocodiles Conclusions Notes Bibliography Chapter 11: Betwixt and Between: Making Makeshift Animals in Nineteenth-Century Zoological Gardens Introduction: Articulating the history of the modern zoo Betwixt and between: The zoo and the fair Penning the animal: Imagining and representing captive animals Liminal figures: Zoo workers as middlemen Notes Bibliography Chapter 12: Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin, 1955–61 The liminality of the zoo Playing with the liminal: The design and orchestration of the zoo The liminality of the zoo animal The liminality of the Cold War era Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 13: Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses: Domiciles of the Wild in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Cities Birdhouses Bat bridges Building a wilder urban world Notes Bibliography Index