Year: 2022
Type: book-review
Abstract: Whales are omnipresent in the consciousness of modern society, but their public and scientific perceptions have significantly shifted over the last several hundred years. Today, there is a broad attempt to protect and study whales and their habitats, even while sustainable commercial and Indigenous fisheries continue. For the past several millennia humans have interacted with and exploited whales – but it is the critical period since ca. ~1700 that dominates our public understanding of these animals primarily due to their extreme over-exploitation during this era. Further, the dichotomy between protecting whales versus exploiting whales is real, not always mutually exclusive, and palpably stressful both within society and within this text. That is one reason why this Senri Ethnological Studies volume edited by Nobuhiro Kishigami is such a significant contribution to the whale literature, especially for those interested in the state of modern humanwhale interaction and the historical processes that led to the current structure of whale science, protection, regulation and exploitative fisheries.
DOI: 10.1086/721964
Author: Cyler Conrad
Institutions: Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of New Mexico
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G1017065088, G1279347439, G6410514744
OpenAlex ID: W4313563317