Lexington Books
Pages: 232
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-66691-480-1 • Hardback • February 2025 • $110.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-66691-481-8 • eBook • February 2025 • $45.00 • (£35.00) (coming soon)
Barbara K. Jones spends her time teaching anthropology and researching human perceptions of nature.
Chapter 1: Narratives as Discourse
Chapter 2: Reconsidering the Boundaries that Wildlife Stories have Built
Chapter 3: American Bison: Why is it our national mammal?
Chapter 4: Caribou: When being called a reindeer must really matter
Chapter 5: Gray Wolf and Grizzly Bear: Little Red Riding Hood and the Teddy Bear
Chapter 6: American Beaver: Made Beaver
Chapter 7: The Question of Social Carrying Capacity
“Language is often an overlooked point of leverage in wildlife struggles. In Un-Natural Discourse in the Age of Anthropogenic Landscapes, Barbara Jones shows how terms like ‘invasive’ or ‘nuisance wildlife’ can preclude conversation. In contrast, she notes, advocates actively reclaiming the narrative with terms like ‘ecosystem services’ and ‘restoration’ can effectively reshape the outcome.”
— Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.
“Today’s wildlife face unprecedented challenges as humanity changes the way, where, and how they can live at ever faster rates. Barbara Jones's Un-Natural Discourse in the Age of Anthropogenic Landscapes: How We Imagine Wildlife offers fact-based stories of these wildlife difficulties and sometimes not-so happy endings to reveal not only their causes, but how, as our human dominance perspective changes, and the chance for a mutual way forward exists for all living things.”
— Gregg Servheen, retired wildlife biologist and natural resource manager
"Jones skillfully combines multi-sited ethnography with a history of past and current perspectives on human-wildlife interactions in her call to reimagine how we perceive human relationships with wildlife and their ecosystems before its too late. Un-Natural Discourse will prove prescient for how future human societies will merge with the lives of their non-human neighbors."
— Anthony Balzano, Sussex County Community College