University of Chicago Press
Contesting Leviathan: Activists, Hunters, and State Power in the Makah Whaling Conflict
Key Metrics
- Les Beldo
- University of Chicago Press
- Paperback
- 9780226657400
- 8.9 X 5.9 X 0.5 inches
- 0.7 pounds
- Social Science > Anthropology - Cultural & Social
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
In Contesting Leviathan, anthropologist Les Beldo describes the complex judicial and political climate for whale conservation in the United States, and the limits of the current framework in which whales are treated as large fish managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Emphasizing the moral dimension of the conflict between the Makah, the US government, and antiwhaling activists, Beldo brings to light the lived ethics of human-animal interaction, as well as how different groups claim to speak for the whale--the only silent party in this conflict. A timely and sensitive study of a complicated issue, this book calls into question anthropological expectations regarding who benefits from the exercise of state power in environmental conflicts, especially where indigenous groups are involved. Vividly told and rigorously argued, Contesting Leviathan will appeal to anthropologists, scholars of indigenous culture, animal activists, and any reader interested in the place of animals in contemporary life.
Author Bio
Les Beldo is a cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. His research examines the ethics of human-animal interaction expressed or implied in various forms of hunting, activism, and scientific management.
He completed his PhD at the University of Chicago in 2014.
His dissertation provides an ethnographic account of the continued conflict over Makah indigenous whaling in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. His previous research on the anthropology of morality has been published in the journal Anthropological Theory. He co-authored, with Richard Shweder, an entry on the concept of culture for the Second Edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Source: Center for Humans & Nature
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