Of Humans, Pigs, and Souls

Of Humans, Pigs, and Souls
Author: Jadran Mimica
Publisher: Hau
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2020-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781912808311

For the Yagwoia-Anga people of Papua New Guinea, "womba" is a malignant power with the potential to afflict any soul with cravings for pig meat and human flesh. Drawing on long-term research among the Yagwoia and informed by existential phenomenology and psychoanalysis, Jadran Mimica explores the womba complex in its local cultural-existential determinations and regional permutations. He attends to the lived experience of this complex in relation to the wider context of mortuary practices, historical cannibalism, and sorcery. This wider womba complex, including its regional permutations, illuminates the moral meanings of Yagwoia selfhood and its sense of agency and subjectivity. Mimica concludes by reflecting on the recent escalation of concerns with witchcraft and sorcery in Papua New Guinea, specifically in relation to the new wave of Christian evangelism occurring in partnership with the state. A short monograph grounded in ethnographic description, this book is perfect for both graduate and advanced undergraduate teaching.

Wild Souls

Wild Souls
Author: Emma Marris
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 163557496X

Winner of the 2022 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award * Winner of the 2022 Science in Society Journalism Award (Books) * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize “Thoughtful, insightful, and wise, Wild Souls is a landmark work.”--Ed Yong, author of An Immense World "Fascinating . . . hands-on philosophy, put to test in the real world . . . Marris believes that our idea of wildness--our obsession with purity--is misguided. No animal remains untouched by human hands . . . the science isn't the hard part. The real challenge is the ethics, the act of imagining our appropriate place in that world." --Outside Magazine From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with--and responsibilities toward--the planet's wild animals. Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions. Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe--from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way we think about nature-and our place within it.

Mother of All Pigs

Mother of All Pigs
Author: Malu Halasa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781944700348

Hussein's illegal pork business has started to cause some headaches, and not just because of his permanent hangovers-- the town is tired of the smell, a mujahid has arrived on his doorstep, his American niece is visiting, and his sister has joined the Syrian rebel cause, but worst of all, his sow is severely depressed

What It Means to Be Human

What It Means to Be Human
Author: O. Carter Snead
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674987721

A Wall Street Journal Top Ten Book of the Year A First Things Books for Christmas Selection Winner of the Expanded Reason Award “This important work of moral philosophy argues that we are, first and foremost, embodied beings, and that public policy must recognize the limits and gifts that this entails.” —Wall Street Journal The natural limits of the human body make us vulnerable and dependent on others. Yet law and policy concerning biomedical research and the practice of medicine frequently disregard these stubborn facts. What It Means to Be Human makes the case for a new paradigm, one that better reflects the gifts and challenges of being human. O. Carter Snead proposes a framework for public bioethics rooted in a vision of human identity and flourishing that supports those who are profoundly vulnerable and dependent—children, the disabled, and the elderly. He addresses three complex public matters: abortion, assisted reproductive technology, and end-of-life decisions. Avoiding typical dichotomies of conservative-liberal and secular-religious, Snead recasts debates within his framework of embodiment and dependence. He concludes that if the law is built on premises that reflect our lived experience, it will provide support for the vulnerable. “This remarkable and insightful account of contemporary public bioethics and its individualist assumptions is indispensable reading for anyone with bioethical concerns.” —Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue “A brilliantly insightful book about how American law has enshrined individual autonomy as the highest moral good...Highly thought-provoking.” —Francis Fukuyama, author of Identity

The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten

The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten
Author: Julian Baggini
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1847083021

Is it right to eat a pig that wants to be eaten? Are you really reading this book cover, or are you in a simulation? If God is all-powerful, could he create a square circle? Here are 100 of the most intriguing thought experiments from the history of philosophy and ideas - questions to leave you inspired, informed and scratching your head, dumbfounded.

Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West

Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West
Author: Jamie Kreiner
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300255551

An exploration of life in the early medieval West, using pigs as a lens to investigate agriculture, ecology, economy, and philosophy From North Africa to the British Isles, pigs were a crucial part of agriculture and culture in the early medieval period. Jamie Kreiner examines how this ubiquitous species was integrated into early medieval ecologies and transformed the way that people thought about the world around them. In this world, even the smallest things could have far‑reaching consequences. Kreiner tracks the interlocking relationships between pigs and humans by drawing on textual and visual evidence, bioarchaeology and settlement archaeology, and mammal biology. She shows how early medieval communities bent their own lives in order to accommodate these tricky animals—and how in the process they reconfigured their agrarian regimes, their fiscal policies, and their very identities. In the end, even the pig’s own identity was transformed: by the close of the early Middle Ages, it had become a riveting metaphor for Christianity itself.

Pigs in Heaven

Pigs in Heaven
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2009-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061842214

Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts. Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

Weirdbook 31

Weirdbook 31
Author: Doug Draa
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2015-09-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1479407356

Weirdbook returns after a nearly 20-year hiatus under the editorship of Douglas Draa! Here are great fantasy and horror tales by current and upcoming masters of the genre... Chivaine, by John R. Fultz Give Me the Daggers, by Adrian Cole The Music of Bleak Entrainment, by Gary A. Braunbeck Into The Mountains with Mother Old Growth, by Christian Riley The Grimlorn Under the Mountain, by James Aquilone Dolls, by Paul Dale Anderson Gut Punch, by Jason A. Wyckoff Educational Upgrade, by Bret McCormick Boxes of Dead Children, by Darrell Schweitzer The Forgotten, by D.C. Lozar Coffee with Dad’s Ghost, Jessica Amanda Salmonson Missed It By That Much, by Gregg Chamberlain A Clockwork Muse, by Erica Ruppert The Rookery, by Kurt Newton Wolf of Hunger, Wolf of Shame, by J. T. Glover Zucchini Season, by Janet Harriett The Jewels That Were Their Eyes, by Llanwyre Laish The Twins, by Kevin Strange Princess or Warrior?, by S.W. Lauden

Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today

Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today
Author: Melissa Kwasny
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0295742453

Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today comprises two interwoven series—one of linked prose poems called “Another Letter to the Soul” and one of individual lined poems that explore the connection between anima and animal. The volume speaks to and questions the ancient concept of the soul and its contemporary manifestations, including the damaged soul, the American soul, and the blind, gagged soul of history. Melissa Kwasny does not define the soul in traditional religious terms, but in a shamanic, perhaps ecological sense, as the part of being that continues its existence after death. The poems in “Another Letter to the Soul” point inward, addressing the human soul directly, while the individual lined poems search outward, sensing the soul in the plants, animals, rocks, waters, and winds that surround us.

The Good Good Pig

The Good Good Pig
Author: Sy Montgomery
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2006-05-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0345493818

"In loving yet unsentimental prose, Sy Montgomery captures the richness that animals bring to the human experience. Sometimes it takes a too-smart-for-his-own-good pig to open our eyes to what most matters in life.” —John Grogan, author of Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish—and she soon found herself engaged with her small-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible. Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler with something she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventually weighing 750 pounds) to family and home. The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all his glory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural New Hampshire, where his boundless zest for life and his large, loving heart made him absolute monarch over a (mostly) peaceable kingdom. At first, his domain included only Sy’s cosseted hens and her beautiful border collie, Tess. Then the neighbors began fetching Christopher home from his unauthorized jaunts, the little girls next door started giving him warm, soapy baths, and the villagers brought him delicious leftovers. His intelligence and fame increased along with his girth. He was featured in USA Today and on several National Public Radio environmental programs. On election day, some voters even wrote in Christopher’s name on their ballots. But as this enchanting book describes, Christopher Hogwood’s influence extended far beyond celebrity; for he was, as a friend said, a great big Buddha master. Sy reveals what she and others learned from this generous soul who just so happened to be a pig—lessons about self-acceptance, the meaning of family, the value of community, and the pleasures of the sweet green Earth. The Good Good Pig provides proof that with love, almost anything is possible.