This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos
have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we
all have opinions on what zoos do, few people consider how they do
it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with
zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a
glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland.
Zooland begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male
gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of
zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed
themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally
connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and
education.
Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce
spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register,
track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide
by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive
animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive
animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals,
deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire.
Zooland takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo
animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on
us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the
human and the nonhuman.
