Richard W. Bulliet engagingly recounts the dynamic relationship between
humans and animals from prehistory to the present. Bulliet explores four
stages in the history of the human-animal relationship-separation,
predomesticity, domesticity, and postdomesticity. He begins with the
question of when and why humans began to consider themselves distinct
from other species and concludes with the use of species as raw
materials for various animal-product industries. Bulliet discusses the
impact of social and technological developments and changing
philosophical, religious, and aesthetic viewpoints and closes with a
probing look at our current era of postdomesticity, in which many people
remain dependent on animal products, though they have no involvement
with producing animals. By considering the shifting roles of
domesticated animals in human society, as well as their place in the
social imagination, Bulliet reveals the different ways various cultures
have reinforced, symbolized, and rationalized their relations with
animals.