Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern America and Africa

This book deals with peoples' practices, perceptions, emotions and feelings towards aquatic animals, their ecosystems and nature on the early modern Atlantic coasts by addressing exploitation, use, fear, empathy, otherness, and indifference in the relationships established with aquatic environm...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Brito, Cristina
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Amsterdam Amsterdam University Press 2023, 2023
Series:Environmental Humanities in Pre-modern Cultures
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: JSTOR Open Access Books - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:This book deals with peoples' practices, perceptions, emotions and feelings towards aquatic animals, their ecosystems and nature on the early modern Atlantic coasts by addressing exploitation, use, fear, empathy, otherness, and indifference in the relationships established with aquatic environments and resources by Indigenous Peoples and Europeans. It focuses on large aquatic fauna, especially manatees (but also sharks, sea turtles, seals, and others) as they were hunted, consumed, venerated, conceptualised, and recorded by different societies across the early colonial Americas and West Africa. Through a cross-cultural approach drawing on concepts and analytical methods from marine environmental history, the blue humanities and animal studies, this book addresses more-than-human systems where ecologies, geographies, cosmogonies, and cultures are an entangled web of interdependencies
Item Description:"Amsterdam University Press". - Acknowledgements Introduction: Magnificent and mighty monsters of nature 1. The case of Matto, the manatee <cite>A Manatee in a Lake</cite> 2. Cosmogonies, aquatic deities, and water myths of origin <cite>(My) Mermaid of the Island</cite> 3. Aquatic monsters: From imaginary animals to sharks, caimans and sea lions 4. Beliefs about and practices in nature: From living creatures to resources and symbols <cite>Water Wor(l)ds</cite> 5. (Early) modern 'naturecultures': A co-constructed narrative of the world <cite>The Roundness of Earth and Time</cite> Index
Physical Description:270 pages illustrations