Overview

This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on what zoos do, few people consider how they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland. Zooland begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and education. Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register, track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals, deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire. Zooland takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the human and the nonhuman.

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9780804783583

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Reviews

"""[Zooland] builds a thorough depiction of the history and contemporary work and goals of zoos and explores the nature of wildness, care, and power by interviewing zoo professionals, animal rights activists, and others, as well as diving into a wide range of legal and scholarly literature from fields as diverse as geography, sociology, animal sciences, and philosophy."" - J. R. Page, CHOICE ""[Zooland] gives a glimpse of zoos, in the same way that zoos give a glimpse of nature: a quick look behind the scenes, at a slightly upward angle, inspiring respect."" - Daniel Engber, Slate Magazine ""Zoos can provide a valuable service to society, but the pursuit of profit has their own drawbacks. Zooland: The Institution of Captivity explores the modern state of the zoo, as forces within the community paint two very different pictures: the zoo has a preserver and educator on the topic of wildlife, and zoo as the carnival, exploiting animals for profit. With sixty interviews with many people voicing their ideas on the topic, Zooland is scholarly and much recommended addition to any wildlife and social issues collection."" - Midwest Book Review ""Irus Braverman has written a wonderful monograph that explores the operation of zoos - institutions that manage to be utterly familiar while retaining an aura of mystery. It will undoubtedly be a popular addition to many academic disciplines."" - Kevin D. Haggerty, Surveillance and Society ""Irus Braverman has written a very important book about zoos. Her Zooland: The Institution of Captivity is a penetrating and insightful study of the business of zoos. It will serve as a basic reference and should be in the personal library of everyone interested in zoos."" - Buffalo News"

Zoos have undergone dramatic transformations in recent decades, and their fundamental purpose and value--to animals and human visitors alike--remain hotly debated. With Zooland Braverman enters the fray, giving voice to the various sides while providing her own informed, thoughtful stance. Arguing for a 'power of care, ' Braverman moves us toward the possibility of zoos that combine concern for individual welfare and the conservation of species. --Ken Shapiro, Executive Director, Animals and Society Institute

Deeply engaging and highly creative, Zooland brings us into a place of manufactured ecologies and microprocessed beings. Braverman offers important insights into the deeply folded architectures of human-animal relations and the complex, multidimen

Zoos can provide a valuable service to society, but the pursuit of profit has their own drawbacks. Zooland: The Institution of Captivity explores the modern state of the zoo, as forces within the community paint two very different pictures: the zoo has a preserver and educator on the topic of wildlife, and zoo as the carnival, exploiting animals for profit. With sixty interviews with many people voicing their ideas on the topic, Zooland is scholarly and much recommended addition to any wildlife and social issues collection. -- Midwest Book Review

Brave and important, this new work puts the governance of animals at the heart of the debates about governance more broadly. Zooland opens up our understandings of social and spatial management, surveillance, classification and control, helping us understand the impact of such human social processes on nonhumans. --David Murakami Wood, Queen's University, Canada, author of Globalization and Surveillance: The Watched World

Author Information

Irus Braverman is Associate Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Geography at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. She is the author of Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine (2009).

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