Overview

In her groundbreaking new book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Melanie Joy explores the invisible system that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and eat others without knowing why. She calls this system carnism. Carnism is the belief system, or ideology, that allows us to selectively choose which animals become our meat, and it is sustained by complex psychological and social mechanisms. Like other isms (racism, ageism, etc.), carnism is most harmful when it is unrecognized and unacknowledged. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows names and explains this phenomenon and offers it up for examination. Unlike the many books that explain why we shouldn't eat meat, Joy's book explains why we do eat meat -- and thus how we can make more informed choices as citizens and consumers.

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9781573244619

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Reviews

A thoughtful book full of substance and style. It should be required reading. --Kathy Freston, author of The New York Times bestselling Quantum Wellness

Why We Love Dogs ... is an altogether remarkable book that could transform the way society feels about eating animals. You cannot read this book without learning something new and without pondering your relation to the animal world. This is a profound and deeply satisfying book that is destined to become a classic. --Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of the best-selling When Elephants Weep , Dogs Never Lie about Love , The Pig Who Sang to the Moon , and The Face on Your Plate A thoughtful book full of substance and style. It should be required reading. --Kathy Freston, author of The New York Times bestselling Quantum Wellness Institutionalized, socially sanctioned violence on an unprecedented scale causes the needless suffering of billions of animals every year. In her groundbreaking book, Melanie Joy shakes up the completely arbitrary thinking that enables people to, at the same time, treat some animals as friends and look the other way while others are ruthlessly exploited as commodities. --Gene Baur, president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary and author of Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food One of the most thought-provoking books in decades. The realization that we've been conditioned throughout our entire lives to think and act a certain way toward animals, and that we've been so disconnected from ourselves and our fellow beings, gives us a chance to make our choices freely. --Heather Mills This eye-opening book makes us question what we really mean when we say we love animals. Anyone who has ever loved a dog or a cat or a hamster or a bird will find abundant food for thought here. --John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America , The Food Revolution , and Healthy at 100 Through the use of narrative, often bordering on biography, the arguments being put forth by Joy are very well exemplified. The images conjured are ever so vivid that it would be difficult to stop once one starts reading it. The reader is immediately and often unknowingly drawn on. The volume is extremely readable, theory and jargon free as it is. However, that is not to say that the analysis is nonscientific or arbitrary. Rather, the arguments are firmly anchored to sound psychological theorization. People from all walks of life, across age and educational backgrounds would find this book immensely interesting. People advocating vegetarianism, professors and students of psychology, scholars from other areas of social science, and even public administrators in food departments would gain considerably from this extremely well written book. --Rita Agrawal, PhD, co-author, Applied Social Psychology: A Global Perspective

Author Information

Melanie Joy, Ph.D. is a psychologist, professor, and author. She teaches psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is the leading researcher on carnism, the ideology of meat production and consumption. She is the author of Strategic Action for Animals: A Handbook on Strategic Movement Building, Organizing, and Activism for Animal Liberation.

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