
Animals and Death
Hunting, Modernity, and the Crisis of the Wild
Charles Stepanoff(Author)
HAU (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 3. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
350 pages
978-1-914363-53-5 (ISBN)
Description
From pets to prey to food, the hierarchy of animals' relationship to humans has profound anthropological and ecological implications. Modernity has divided animals into two categories: those deemed worthy of protection and affection, and those reduced to raw material for industry. How can we make sense of this strange split between protective love and intensive exploitation? Hunting, which both predates this opposition and continues to unsettle it, provides an exceptional vantage point from which to examine our contradictory relationship with living beings in the midst of an ecological crisis. Drawing on an immersive field study, Charles Stépanoff documents the accelerated erosion of rural biodiversity, and the paradoxical relationships between hunting, protection, and compassion. Over the course of this rich journey, he sheds new light on the anthropological and ecological foundations of the violence inflicted on living beings, as well as on the wild origins of political sovereignty. Ultimately, by questioning the peculiar moral hierarchy that this violence produces today, Stépanoff gives our moral and emotional perception a deeper field of vision.
More details
Language
English
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-914363-53-5 (9781914363535)
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Charles Stépanoff is director of studies in the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Stépanoff is the author of Journeys into the Invisible, also published by HAU.