Flight Ways
Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A leading figure in the emerging field of extinction studies, Thom van Dooren puts philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences and his ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions. Unlike other meditations on the subject, Flight Ways incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists, and general readers into the experience of living among and losing biodiversity.
Each chapter of Flight Ways focuses on a different species or group of birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows, and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. Written in eloquent and moving prose, the book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world—the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead. He bolsters his studies with real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life, sparking our sense of curiosity, concern, and accountability toward others in a rapidly changing world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Looking holistically at the process and fact of extinction, van Dooren, an environmental philosopher and anthropologist from Australia's University of New South Wales, poses provocative questions about the meaning of species loss. Van Dooren arranges each chapter by species and larger taxonomic groups of birds on the edge of extinction, and then superbly explores the implications of interspecies "entanglements" within ecosystems and the fact that species should be "understood as vast intergenerational lineages, interwoven in rich patterns of co-becoming with others." Van Dooren works to situate humans more appropriately than they have been: "In focusing on entanglements, this book aims to present alternative understandings of extinction to those grounded in entrenched patterns of human exceptionalism.'" While explaining how human activities are largely responsible for the decline of his subjects albatrosses, Asian vultures, Australian little penguins, whooping cranes, and Hawaiian crows van Dooren also investigates the ethical implications of captive breeding programs designed to stave off extinction, at least temporarily. Behind the scenes of the successes lies the "violent reality of the way in which much of this care for species and environments is practiced," contradictions which become "the messy work of ethical conservation for our time."
