This volume encompasses thirty insightful essays (including the introduction by editor Lori Gruen), written by thirty-five authors, presenting critical terms to help rethink human–animal relations and what constitutes the knowing subject. From notions of abolition to empathy, from biopolitics to law and from sentience to sociality, it gives a through understanding across the board of the interdiscipinairy field of (human–)animal studies – a field that keeps being referred to as ‘up and coming’. Examples of readers who have captured the ‘wild growth’ of scholarship are Margo DeMello's Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human–Animal Studies (2012) and Linda Kalof's The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies (2014). However, what makes Critical Terms for Animal Studies so valuable is that the contributors were not asked to dully note down the theoretical background of a core concept, but rather to write down what excites them the most about the term. The terms are thus not presented as a set of prescriptive definitions, nor as tools to simply pick up, but show where there is theoretical, philosophical, cultural, political and ethical room to generate new concepts, vocabulary, critical depositions and perspectives to push our thinking further. This approach illustrates animal studies’ normative commitment, which is as much about understanding the world as it is about contributing to solving conceptual and real-world problems regarding human–animal relations.

All essays directly or indirectly refer to the following question posed by Kari Weil in ‘Difference’: what is the difference between humans and animals and what difference does that difference make? Underlying this are epistemological questions – ‘how can we know animals?’ And ‘how can we speak about/for animals within the setting of academia?’ This leads to questions such as Kristin Andrews’s one in ‘Mind’: ‘If the dog does not think in language, can we still use language to describe what the dog is thinking?’ (p. 239), or Victoria A. Braithwaite's question about how pain has been defined scientifically and how it can be recognized in animals. Another question woven through the fabric of most essays as a golden string is how can human–animal entanglements be reimagined? In ‘Biopolitics’, Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel shows how Foucault's philosophy helps analyse animal practices such as fish farming, and how it can offer opportunities for rupturing anthropocentrism. To this end, Lori Gruen puts forward the notion of ‘entangled empathy’, defined as an attunement to and perception of the specific needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes and sensitivities of an animal as part of one's ‘moral experience’ when interacting (p. 148). This ‘reimagining’ of relations is much needed, as Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson observe. In ‘Rights’, the contributors write that concerns about animal rights are often only framed as negative duties, which provide no perspective on ‘what sorts of relations with animals are ethically desirable and indeed seem to implicitly assume that we should not have such interspecies entanglements’ (p. 329). However, simply ‘escaping’ from our inevitable anthropocentrism would be too easy, as also Fiona Probyn-Rapsey argues. She also warns us in ‘Anthropocentrism’ of the possibility of it continuing in another form: ‘does the fact that we now value … stories [of plan-making honeybees and tool-making cows] relate to a fundamental shift in our anthropocentric ways or is it just a continuation in another form?’ (p. 59).

The absence of entanglements and how this is imagined is of importance as well. Thom van Dooren argues that animal studies can help unpack the meaning of what is actually lost when we talk about extinction. These extinctions or near extinctions have consequences even after the last individual of a species has died. As Van Dooren notes, ‘In a world that is inherently relational, absences cannot help but bring about unravelings’ (p. 172). An example he gives is the decline of India's vultures, which led to an increase in the incidence of various diseases as fewer vultures clean environments through scavenging. This, as expected, mostly affects poorer communities. This illustrates how the ‘biological’ animal is never apart from its entanglements with humans (and vice versa), today as well as historically. In this sense, the book can be read by historians as a call to put on new methodological ‘goggles’ to analyse human–animal entanglements in our research and historical sources. The critical terms put forward could help historians to move away from looking at animals as symbols of representation (‘What does the bird represent?’) or mere ‘windows’ into a time period (‘pets as class signifiers in Victorian England’), to instead analyse human–animal interactions by taking into account animals as subjects. Context matters in this regard and an attunement to the embodied is a way to redirect our attention to particular animals in particular situations. Chapters such as ‘Cognition’, ‘Emotion’, ‘Sentience’ and ‘Sociality’ which address what is now scientifically known about these topics can be of use in this endeavour. To give an example of a very practical possible application, marine biologist Lori Marino explains in ‘Captivity’ the state of the art of the scientific knowledge on animal captivity in zoos and aquaria. This could be of direct use for historians of science researching vivisection, veterinarianism, agriculture, breeding practices and biotechnology.

This outstanding reader thus serves as a starting point for anyone interested in applying insights of the field to their own research and for activists looking for theoretical background. It is also meant for scholars in animals studies itself, as it showcases what is happening at the critical ‘edge’ of thinking (to not use the loaded term ‘frontier’). A limitation of the volume is one that is also signalled in the book itself as a shortcoming of the field as a whole. Maneesha Deckha in ‘Postcolonial’ calls for the need to truly embed post-colonialism as a research stance within animal studies and for a greater presence of non-Western epistemologies in maturing the field. Critical Terms for Animal Studies thus simultaneously provides a promise for future growth and a demonstration that the field is coming of age.