Feminism in the Wild

How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior

Ambika Kamath, Melina Packer (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

208 Seiten

2025
MIT Press (Verlag)
9780262049634 (ISBN)

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How dominant culture from sexism and homophobia to racism, capitalism, ableism, and more has limited the science of animal behavior, and how we can free ourselves from these limited perspectives. In Feminism in the Wild, Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer reveal how scientists studying animal behavior have long projected human norms and values onto animals while seeking to understand them. When scientific studies conclude that these norms and values are natural in animals, it makes it easier to think of them as natural in humans too. And because scientists, historically and to this day, largely belong to elite, powerful segments of society, the norms and values embedded into animal behavior science match those of the already powerful. How can animal behavior science escape this trap of naturalizing dominant culture? Drawing from decades of feminist, antiracist, queer, disability justice, and Marxist contributions including those of biologists Kamath and Packer break down persistent assumptions in the status quo of animal behavior science and offer a multitude of alternative approaches. Core concepts in animal behavior science and evolutionary biology from sex categories and sexual selection to fitness, adaptation, biological determinism and more are carefully contextualized and critically reexamined. This unique collaboration between an animal behavior scientist and a feminist science studies scholar is an illuminating and hopeful read for anyone who is curious about how animals behave, and anyone who wants to break free from scientific approaches that perpetuate systems of oppression.

Ambika Kamath is trained as a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She is a founding member of Liminal, a science communication collective. She lives in Oakland, California, on Ohlone land. Melina Packer is Assistant Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, on Ho-Chunk Nation land. She is the author of Toxic Sexual Politics: Economic Poisons and Endocrine Disruptions.

Prologue: Why We Need a Feminist Science of Animal Behavior
Chapter 1: The Stories We Tell About Animals
Chapter 2: Variation Matters
Chapter 3: The Problems with Sex
Chapter 4: Queer Feminist Futures for Animal Sex Science
Chapter 5: You and Me, Us and Them
Chapter 6: Hiding in Plain Sight
Chapter 7: Breaking the Hierarchies that Bind
Epilogue: All That Can Change

Erscheinungsdatum	03.03.2025
Zusatzinfo	12 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUS.
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-13	9780262049634 / 9780262049634
Zustand	Neuware