Skip to main content

Bloomsbury Home

The Once and Future Cow

Agency, Appetite, and the Anthropocene

The Once and Future Cow cover

The Once and Future Cow

Agency, Appetite, and the Anthropocene

Quantity
Pre-order. Available 30 Dec 2025
$36.00 RRP $45.00 Website price saving $9.00 (20%)

Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available

Description

This groundbreaking book shows how cows' choices have influenced the economic, agricultural, and socio-political development of the Americas.

Tracing the interconnected transformations of cattle, land, and labor from the 18th-century colonial Caribbean to the early national period of the 19th century to the present day, Kettler and Yingling demonstrate how cows impact on nearly every major aspect of development in the Americas, including colonization, slavery, our ability to objectify animals we consume, our current foodways, environmental degradation, and the climate emergency. Bringing together research from many fields, but proceeding always in a straightforward, chronological, historical manner underrepresented in other areas of animal studies, this book ultimately restores cattle as subjects of their own lives who in seeking to escape exploitation have deeply affected the legal, property, and geographical frameworks that haunt us today.

Table of Contents

Introduction. States of Being: Agency and Animalia
1. Considering Cattle and the Colonial Caribbean
2. Tasting Cattle in New Ways
3. Conscious Cows: Sugar, Pens, and Policy
4. Denying Empathy in Modernity
5. Contemplating Cruelty
6. Biopower Over the Once and Future Cow
Conclusion: Contemporary Consequences of Consuming Cattle
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 30 Dec 2025
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 240
ISBN 9781350568303
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Andrew Kettler

Andrew Kettler is Assistant Professor of History a…

Author

Charlton W. Yingling

Charlton W. Yingling is Associate Professor of His…

Related Titles

Get 30% off in the May sale - for one week only

Environment: Staging