Feral Animals in the American South - An Evolutionary History

This book retells American southern history from feral animals' perspective, examining social, cultural, and evolutionary consequences of domestication and feralization.

List of contents

1. The trouble with ferality: domestication as coevolution and the nature of broken symbioses; 2. Making and breaking acquaintances: the origins of wildness, domestication, and ferality in prehistoric Eurasia; 3. When ferality reigned: establishing an open range in the colonial South; 4. Nascent domestication initiatives and their effects on ferality: claiming dominion in the antebellum South; 5. Anthropogenic improvement and assaults on ferality: divergent fates in the industrializing South; 6. Everything in its right place: wild, domestic, and feral populations in the modern South; Epilogue: cultivating ferality in the Anthropocene.

About the author

Abraham H. Gibson is a Fellow in Residence at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He also teaches in the Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania. He has published extensively and has earned fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

Summary

Operating within the context of a global history of feralization, this book focuses on providing a fresh perspective on both the American South and the human condition. It charts the social, cultural, and evolutionary consequences of domestication and feralization, while examining humans' relationships with dogs, pigs, and horses in the American South.

Product details

• Authors: Abraham Gibson, Abraham H Gibson, Abraham H. Gibson
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2018
• EAN: 9781316610091
• ISBN: 978-1-316-61009-1
• No. of pages: 245
• Series: Studies in Environment and History; Studies in Environment and His; Studies in Environment and History; Studies in Environment and His
• Subjects: Guides > Nature; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); NATURE / General, History of Science, Animal behaviour, History of the Americas, Zoology and animal sciences