Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age - Hardcover

Kim, Claire Jean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107044944 ISBN 13: 9781107044944

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Dangerous Crossings offers an interpretation of the impassioned disputes that have arisen in the contemporary United States over the use of animals in the cultural practices of nonwhite peoples. It examines three controversies: the battle over the "cruelty" of the live animal markets in San Francisco's Chinatown, the uproar over the conviction of NFL superstar Michael Vick on dogfighting charges, and the firestorm over the Makah tribe's decision to resume whaling in the Pacific Northwest after a hiatus of more than seventy years. Claire Jean Kim shows that each dispute demonstrates how race and species operate as conjoined logics, or mutually constitutive taxonomies of power, to create the animal, the Chinese immigrant, the black man, and the "Indian" in the white imagination. Analyzing each case as a conflict between single optics (the optic of cruelty and environmental harm vs. the optic of racism and cultural imperialism), she argues for a multi-optic approach that takes different forms of domination seriously, and thus encourages an ethics of avowal among different struggles.

About this title

Book Description

Dangerous Crossings offers an interpretation of the impassioned disputes that have arisen in the contemporary United States over the use of animals in the (cultural) practices of nonwhite peoples - specifically, the marketing of live animals as food by Chinese immigrants in San Francisco's Chinatown, the operation of a dogfighting ring by NFL star quarterback Michael Vick, and the resumption of whale hunting by the Makah tribe in northwest Washington state.

About the Author

Claire Jean Kim is a Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where she teaches classes on comparative ethnic studies, minority politics, intersectionality, and human-animal studies. Her first book, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (2000) won two awards from the American Political Science Association - the Ralph Bunche Award for the best book on ethnic and cultural pluralism and the Best Book Award from the Organized Section on Race and Ethnicity. Dr Kim has also written numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is an associate editor of American Quarterly and a guest editor, with Carla Freccero, of a special issue of American Quarterly entitled Species/Race/Sex (2013). She is the recipient of a grant from the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and she has been a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1107044944
• ISBN 13: 9781107044944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 354