Frontmatter and Editorial

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:

Some we love, some we hate, some we eat. Such, in a nutshell, is psychologist Harold Herzog’s assessment in his popular book of the same title regarding the obvious inconsistency and ambivalence of human relations with other animals – an ambivalence so ubiquitous and pervasive that it sometimes seems as if we were merely witnessing different historical and cultural inflections of the same underlying anthropological principle. Indeed, one might well argue that human-animal relations have always been a troubled and troubling compound of intimacy and violence, longing and detachment, affection and abjection. While it is, for example, no longer a rarity that people – affluent Westerners in particular – spend small fortunes on those animals classified as ‘pets’ (from the most absurd accessories to expensive state of the art medical treatment), at the same time every year billions of other nonhuman beings, designated ‘vermin’, ‘livestock’ or scientific ‘specimens’, are in for a very different treatment.