Hand that Feeds

Food plays a major part in shaping human-animal relations, from nurturing farm and zoo animals to bringing wild birds into suburban gardens. Food-mediated interactions create personal interspecies bonds, enrich and alter environments, change species distributions, enable new relationships and reconfigure social perspectives, but also lead to many concerns over health and disease, for example, as well as conflicts over spaces and resources. However, previous attention has almost exclusively focused on the purpose-driven, utilitarian and economic aspects of feeding, rather than the affective and emotional encounters that motivate many feeding practices.Presenting new research and interdisciplinary case studies, The Hand that Feeds considers animal feeding from historic to modern times. The volume explores the nuances and complexity of non-utilitarian feeding relationships, across urban and rural divides, in the wild, on the farm, at the zoo and in the garden, and how our feeding relationships have altered animal distributions and behaviours. The authors scrutinise contrasts between which species are promoted and which are persecuted, and how the species we choose to feed reflects broader world views and cultural values. Ultimately, this volume engages in the discussion of how we feed, why we feed, which animals we deem worthy of feeding and the widespread impacts of feeding relations.