Human Cruelty, Animal Suffering, and American Culture, 1900-Present
Behaving Like Animals: Human Cruelty, Animal Suffering, and American Culture, 1900-present The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation McGrath, Timothy Stephen. 2013. Behaving Like Animals: Human Cruelty, Animal Suffering, and American Culture, 1900-present. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10974708 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2013 – Timothy Stephen McGrath All rights reserved. Professor Nancy Cott Timothy Stephen McGrath Behaving Like Animals: Human Cruelty, Animals Suffering, and American Culture, 1900-present Abstract What does it mean to be cruel to an animal? What does it mean for an animal to suffer? These are the questions embedded in the term “cruelty to animals,” which has seemed, at first glance, a well defined term in modern America, in so far as it has been codified in anti-cruelty statutes. Cruelty to animals has been a disputed notion, though. What some groups call cruel, others call business, science, culture, worship, and art. Contests over the humane treatment of animals have therefore been contests over history, ideology, culture, and knowledge in which a variety of social actors— animal scientists, cockfighters, filmmakers, FBI agents, members of Congress, members of PETA, and many, many others—try to decide which harms against animals and which forms of animal suffering are justifiable.
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