Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals

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Summary: Beyond Boundaries book review
Review: Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals, Barbara Noske, Buffalo: Black Rose Books, 1997, 253pp.

Beyond Boundaries, by Barbara Noske, examines the human-animal relationship as well as the animal-human side. Quite often her discourse centers on the notion of power in this centuries old relationship. This is extremely apparent in the discussions about domestication, perspective, and devaluing nature. The book's construction can be reduced into three parts. The first section of Beyond Boundaries, chapters one and two, focuses on the phenomenon of human animal domestication, a forced human-animal relationship which shows the extent to which humans can control and exploit animal resources. Chapters four and five examine human ideas, constructions, and discourses about animals and about humans in relation to animals. The last section explores the animal-human relationship, where the consideration is given to the non-human animal's perspective in nature.

The three themes in Barbara Noske's Beyond Boundaries are (1) the human-animal relationship, (2) the object-status animals are assigned, and (3) humanity's need to reevaluate its perception of animals. The author puts forth very thought provoking arguments. She challenges the social construction of contemporary human-animal relationships and argues that animals should be portrayed as independent beings with special traits and behaviors that contributed to their interactions with people. She also argues that people should adopt a more critical and specific approach to animals. Non-human animals have a wider range of consciousness than do people, according to Noske. She believes that animals are self-aware and have an awareness of their group, biocommunity, other species, and biosphere. Noske explains that to define animals as human-like is to do them a disservice and treat them ahistorically. Instead of increasing their ecological worth, it reduces them to a less aware human status.

Barbara Noske is a philosopher and a cultural anthropologist, but essentially she is a cultural critic. In Beyond Boundaries she critiques the culture of nature. She argues for an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating animals (where humans and non-humans are equal) and nature (where humans are not exclusive of their environment). Barbara Noske tears down the socially constructed boundaries that exist between human and non-human animals. Beyond Boundaries is an asset to feminists, animal activists, scholars, farmers, veterinary clinicians, and anyone interested in the human-animal condition. The author takes a position that few scholars have concerning animals. Some readers may define Noske's views as extreme, especially those people that support an anthropocentric and androcentric worldview. They can not fathom such an integrated view of women, men, animals, and nature. Beyond Boundaries makes one reevaluate their belief systems about nature and their place in it. This book also calls for the creation of an integrated science between anthropology and zoology, which has been created since the book's original publication in 1989. Barbara Noske attacks the way women, animals, and nature have been subordinated by man and exiled literally, emotionally, and physically beyond boundaries.