Bellwether Histories is a collection of eight essays and an introduction. The aim of the book is to examine how “the ideologies of animal disposability and human exceptionalism” result in ecological consequences, animal extinctions, and an increased sense of human exceptionalism (ix). The essays cover topics such as understanding animals as property, capital, and infrastructure; they also address animals as ecologically damaging, endangered, and surplus. Five of the essays address issues related to animals commonly considered to be agricultural animals—livestock. One other essay discusses insects and birds with an eye to how they can provide ecosystem services for agricultural crops and livestock animals. Two of the remaining chapters focus on the lives and deaths of animals in zoos and one on the feeding of wildlife, using elk in 1914 Wyoming as an example.
The introduction discusses mules used in coal mines in order to set the stage for understanding the...
