Cultural zoology

Cultural zoology is a reader’s delicacy and landmark for new generations of debaters and activists in the field of animal-human relations, but also for all those who acquired and reflected on the foundations of animalistics and cultural zoology by studying the author’s classic ‘Animal and Man’, a book of cult status today and immense cultural and theoretical value.

We learn about the position of animals in culture and society through essays on the relationship between animals and language, political theories and ideologies, anthropomorphism, hunting, zoos, the food industry, animals that have special meanings in our culture, pets, the relationship between animals and children, animals in film, legal regulations and many other important topics.

More than most other books that are published here, in this case it is necessary to highlight a few facts about the author, because Cultural Zoology once again confirms his immeasurable contribution in the field to which this work concerns. Moreover, with this book, as well as his previous works, Visković not only “contributes” to cultural zoology, but he is the originator of cultural zoology in our country, the person who conceived that discipline, gave it the first and decisive incentives, and achieved the most significant results in that area so far. To a large extent, his engagement concerned animalistic issues, to which this book is also dedicated.

With his animal rights advocacy, numerous articles on the issue and, last but not least, the book Animal and Man, Visković became a key figure in Croatian animal studies, which is an expression that unites both theoretical works and social activism and legal-political regulation of “animal issues”.

If we go back about fifteen years, to the mid-1990s, we can say that Visković’s author’s workshop was the only animalistically relevant point on the theoretical map of that time, and therefore the source of domestic animalistic discourse in general. With this, he initiated the creation, development, establishment and self-awareness of domestic animalism, both on the theoretical and on the activist level, and the existing legal regulation of these issues is largely the merit of his theoretical work and social engagement.

– Ph.D. sc. Hrvoje Jurić, from the review