Description
How our understanding of and relationship to hedgehogs reveals the complex interactions between culture, technology, bodies, conservation, and care for other animals.
Across the globe, the bumbling hedgehog has been framed in a variety of ways throughout history—as a symbol of both good and bad luck, of transformation, of vengeance, and of wit and reincarnation. In recent years, it has also, in different parts of the world, been viewed as a pest for its predation on ground-nesting birds and has thus become a target for culling. In Hedgehogs, Killing, and Kindness, Laura McLauchlan explores how human actors have interacted with hedgehogs and other species through time and attends to the questions these interactions raise when it comes to ending and preserving life in the name of species conservation and wildlife rehabilitation.
Grounded in rich empirical material and careful critique, Hedgehogs, Killing, and Kindness traces the author’s own more-t