Over almost 30 years, Roger Ballen has produced some of the most compelling and thought-provoking images in contemporary photography. His work is unflinching, confronting and always deeply moving. With its roots in the photo-documentary tradition, Ballen's approach has expanded to become an unforgettable vision of the human condition.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

This book aims to show how film can increase awareness of the plight of farmed animals without exploiting them. Much has been written on the rights of animals, be they in the wild or circuses, hunted, experimented on, used for entertainment, or slaughtered and consumed. However, there has been little that has examined in any detail the filming of farmed animals, and nothing on a declaration of rights for such animals, thus leaving them in a limbo of neglect. Stephen Marcus Finn offers a manifesto on how to foster the rights of farmed animals in filming and sets out to rectify this lacuna.

Explores the gender divide over our treatment of animals, exposing the central role of masculinity in systems of animal exploitation [including hunting]. Luke develops a new theory of how exploitative institutions do not work to promote human flourishing but instead merely act as support for a particular construction of manhood. [from publisher description].

The growing popularity of alternative therapies poses challenging questions for the medical establishment and the state. By confronting these questions, The Healing Bond makes an important contribution to current debates about health care. The contributors, who are all experts in the fields of health care, social science and the law, focus on the relationship between patient and healer in both orthodox and non-orthodox forms of healing practice. They consider whether different forms of healing involve widely differing conceptions of the role and responsibilities of the healer, and deal with topical issues such as medical litigation, codes of ethics for complementary practitioners, and co-operation between orthodox and complementary medicine.

From distinctive portraits and complex photographic tableaux to YouTube sensations, the work of prominent African photographer Roger Ballen is given a fresh perspective in this volume. For nearly half a century Roger Ballen has been shooting black-and-white film--a member of the last generation to work in that medium. He started his career taking portraits of rural Afrikaaners in their homes and has lately been moving toward more staged sets, and embellishing his photographs with expressionistic graffiti-type drawings. This retrospective book follows the development of line and drawing in Ballen's body of work, which is often characterized by complex interior arrangements of people, animals, and furnishings. In more recent work the artist has come out from behind the camera lens to engage with line more directly--including a luminous series of photographs that began with drawing on glass. Psychologically edgy and seductively beautiful images result. This volume also addresses the use of drawing and line in Ballen's newest work in videography. This astonishing collection reveals the breadth of Ballen's work, which moves fluidly between photography and drawing, harshness and beauty, raw expression and technical prowess.

Literary transformations from human to animal have occurred in myths, folklore, fairy tales and narratives from all over the world since ancient times, and have always provided a narrative space for depictions of power, agency, and the radical nature of change. In Following the Animal, these transformations are analysed with regards to their use in modern literature from northern-most Europe, with specific attention being paid to the insights they provide regarding the human-animal relationship, both generally in the industrialized West, and against the background of more specific circumstances in the Nordic area. In three analytic chapters, focusing respectively on Swedish author August Strindberg’s novel Tschandala (1887), Finnish author Aino Kallas’s novel The Wolf’s Bride (1928), and Danish author Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen’s short story “The Monkey” (1934), along with discussions of a range of other authors and texts, the reader is introduced to several traditions of literary production that both connect to, and differ from, Anglophone and other literature in fascinating ways. In addition to the insights it provides concerning the uses of human-animal transformations in modern Nordic literature, and their significance in relation to “the question of the animal”, Following the Animal also offers literary scholars and students alike a series of useable and transferable strategies for approaching texts from a “more-than-anthropocentric”, human-animal studies perspective. In phrasing and employing the interpretational method of “following the animal” over the text’s surface, up metaphorical elevations, down material wormholes, and in constant dialogue with previous research, this book contributes greatly to both human-animal literary studies specifically, and to the field of literary scholarship generally, in both an international and northern-European context.