Zooland

"Braverman's Zooland engages with the new zoos of the 21st century. It is an innovative book, adding a new chapter to understanding how zoos evolve . . . Drawing upon Foucault, Braverman's ethnography of North American zoos presents an innovative, bold, and in-depth study of how zoos are conceived, managed, organized, spatialized, recorded, managed, and governed." -- Eve Darien-Smith * <I> Political & Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR)</I> * "Zooland: The Institution of Captivity views the history of American zoos through a different lens, relating the history of animal regulation and government to Michel Foucault's discussion of panopticon and pastoral power . . . Braverman's treatment of the history and the practice of modern zoos is comprehensive in both its research and presentation . . . [W]ith this Foucaultian approach it is certainly appropriate to apply the ideas of both the panopticon and pastoral power to the care of captive animals. This book provides a detailed perspective on the pertinent issues facing the modern zoological park." -- Tanya Mueller * <i>Journal of Anthropological Research</i> * "This book is a timely addition to the growing literature on zoos and human-animal relations . . . [T]here is much [in this book] to interest anthropologists . . . [I]t is a study that deserves to be taken seriously . . . [T]his book may garner as much interest from anthropologists and scholars of governance and institutional life and from those interested in regimes of value and property. It is also, I believe, a text that will help engage students in the kinds of anthropological questions these areas of inquiry aim to provoke." -- Adam Reed * <i>Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute</i> * "Irus Braverman's recent book Zooland is a wonderful read on a topic that is of both historical and current interestzoos . . . Braverman does an admirable job of walking the line between zoo advocacy and condemnation and tracing an important historical and cultural shift in the self-understandings of those involved in the increasingly bureaucratized and professionalized institutional care and control of zoo animals. One gets a sense from the book and the voices of her interview subjects that zoo professionals really do care about these animals . . . The book puts forward their perspective fairly and with a great deal of compassion. On the other hand, it is steadfast in highlighting the contradictions and problems with zoo messaging that many of us have experienced and have probably only dimly perceived on a visit to our local zoo." -- Angela Fernandez * <i>Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)</i> * "The book's most striking chapters go beyond animal bodies to consider zoo databases, regulations, and the new technologies that bring animal bodies into being. Braverman's exploration of the backstage practices of zooland makes for fascinating reading . . . Zooland stands as an admirable achievement and a welcome addition to the literature on zoos, as well as showing how biopolitics encompass more than human life. Braverman's research really gets to the heart of the paradox that the institution of captivity is an expression of care, even if that care justifies death and suffering." -- Franklin Ginn * <I>Environment and Planning D</i> * "[Zooland] builds a thorough depiction of the history and contemporary work and goals of zoos and explores the nature of wildness, care, and power by interviewing zoo professionals, animal rights activists, and others, as well as diving into a wide range of legal and scholarly literature from fields as diverse as geography, sociology, animal sciences, and philosophy." -- J. R. Page * <i>CHOICE</i> * "[Zooland] gives a glimpse of zoos, in the same way that zoos give a glimpse of nature: a quick look behind the scene

Irus Braverman is Associate Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Geography at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. She is the author of Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine (2009).