| Political Animals and Animal Politics | |
| Border: | yes |
| Editors: | Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg |
| Series: | Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series |
| Subjects: | Animal ethics, human exceptionalism, political philosophy, political theory, environmental politics, political science, social philosophy, political communication |
| Published: | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pub Date: | 2014 |
| Media Type: | Edited collection |
| Pages: | xii+180 |
| Isbn: | 978-1-137-43461-6 |
Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic, and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors, it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts, respectively concerning institutional change for animals, the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism, and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies, but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism, exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse, and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics.
In part, Political Animals and Animal Politics arose from a workshop that Wissenburg and Schlosberg organised at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, though not all attendees contributed to the volume and not all contributors presented at the workshop. Footage of the workshop appeared in De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon), a 2012 documentary about the Dutch Party for the Animals. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published as part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn.
Reviewers identified the contributions from Driessen, Flanders and Boyer as of particular interest, but challenged the inclusion of chapters focused on the environment. They criticised the book's failure to include contributions from, or sufficiently engage with the work of, the key voices in the politically focused animal ethics literature, such as Robert Garner, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Alasdair Cochrane, Kimberly Smith, or Siobhan O'Sullivan. Wissenburg's chapter was identified as the one that engaged most directly with this literature, but his approach was a negative one. Garner has written that Political Animals and Animal Politics should be praised for its trailblazing, but predicted that it would be superseded by stronger collections on the same theme.
The Dutch green political theorist Marcel Wissenburg and the American green political theorist David Schlosberg organised a workshop entitled "Political Animals and Animal Politics" at the 2012 European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions conference, which was held at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, between 10 and 15 April 2012. The two had been talking for around a year about organising a conference broadly on the theme of "nature, animals and political theory". The workshop aimed to fill a gap in the political literature on the status of nonhuman animals, something, they claimed, previously considered only at the margins of work otherwise about the environment/resource management, or else by those more primarily interested in moral issues. Both Wissenburg and Schlosberg presented papers; papers were also presented by Manuel Arias-Maldonado (University of Granada), Susan Boonman-Berson (Wageningen University and Research), Kurtis Boyer (Lund University), Clemens Driessen (Utrecht University), Chad Flanders (Saint Louis University), Robert Garner (University of Leicester), Margareta Hanes (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Paul Lucardie (University of Groningen), Christopher Neff (University of Sydney), Kaspar Ossenblok (Ghent University), Simon Otjes (Leiden University), Christie Smith (University of Exeter), Mihnea Tanasescu (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Catherine Zwetkoff (University of Liège). For Schlosberg, the workshop, and the wide range of papers presented, illustrated the "coming-of-age of animal politics as a subfield of political theory".The workshop featured a lecture by Michel Vandenbosch, of the Belgian organisation Global Action in the Interest of Animals. On the second day, those involved were joined by Niko Koffeman of the Dutch Party for the Animals and Karen Soeters of that party's Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation think tank. Footage from that day of the workshop, shot by Joost de Haas, was included in the documentary film De Haas in de Marathon (The Pacer in the Marathon, 2012). The film was created by de Haas, who was commissioned by the Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation. It focuses on the Party for the Animals's first ten years, including interviews with people associated with the party and explorations of the party's public reception. The film premiered on 28 October 2012, during a gathering to celebrate the party's 10th anniversary. It has since been made available in numerous languages.[1]
Wissenburg and Schlosberg's workshop formed the basis of Political Animals and Animal Politics, a collection edited by Wissenburg and Schlosberg, earlier versions of many of the volume's chapters having been presented at that time. Originally, the editors had intended to have discussion of political theory, of movements for animals and of real-world politics, but the final volume was somewhat more theory-based than this. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan; it is part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, which is edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. This interdisciplinary series aims to explore the practical and conceptual challenges posed by animal ethics. Political Animals and Animal Politics was published in hardback, softback, eBook, and online formats.
Political Animals and Animal Politics was the first edited collection devoted to the "political turn in animal ethics", and the first "book-length attempt at seeking to define the contours" of this literature. According to Siobhan O'Sullivan, the book may have been the first time that political turn in animal ethics—a phrase that had been used at European conferences for a number of years—appeared in print.[2] This "animal political philosophy" is identified by the editors as an academic literature at the meeting point of animal ethics, political philosophy and real-world (but theory-driven) politics. Wissenburg and Schlosberg posit that this literature, though at one time only a small part of more morally focused animal ethics, has developed into a separate field of enquiry in its own right. They single out two key texts: Robert Garner's 2013 A Theory of Justice for Animals (Oxford University Press) and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's 2011 Zoopolis (Oxford University Press). Recognising the editors' identification of the political turn in animal ethics, Garner, writing with O'Sullivan and Alasdair Cochrane, argues that the literature is both made distinct and unified by its focus on justice; contributions to this literature, these authors argue, "imagine how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals. Put simply, the essential feature of the political turn is this constructive focus on justice."
Political Animals and Animal Politics has three key aims, and, correspondingly, its chapters are split into three sections. These aims are the analysis of three key "innovations" that the editors identify in the book's introduction. The first of these is the move, in animal ethics, from thinking about personal change to thinking about the implementation of rules or norms of conduct at the societal level. The second of these is a possible rapprochement between animal ethics and ecologism (environmental ethics and green political theory). The third is the increased presence of animal protection laws for the benefit of nonhuman animals themselves. Aside from the introduction, the book features ten single-authored chapters: three in Part I: The Politicization of the Animal Advocacy Discourse, three in Part II: The Rapprochement between Animal Ethics and Ecologism, and four in Part III: The Introduction of Laws and Institutions for the Benefit of Animals.
| Section | No. | Chapter title | Author(s) | Affiliation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Introducing Animal Politics and Political Animals" | and David Schlosberg | Radboud University/University of Sydney | |
| Part I: The Politicization of the Animal Advocacy Discourse | 2 | "Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide in the Anthropocene" | University of Málaga | |
| 3 | "An Agenda for Animal Political Theory" | Radboud University | ||
| 4 | "Public Reason and Animal Rights" | Saint Louis University | ||
| Part II: The Rapprochement between Animal Ethics and Ecologism | 5 | "Articulating Ecological Injustices of Recognition" | University of Exeter | |
| 6 | "Ecological Justice for the Anthropocene" | University of Sydney | ||
| 7 | "Animal Deliberation" | Wageningen University and Research | ||
| Part III: The Introduction of Laws and Institutions for the Benefit of Animals | 8 | "Animal Party Politics in Parliament" | Groningen University | |
| 9 | "The Limits of Species Advocacy" | Lund University | ||
| 10 | "Slaughter and Animal Welfarism in Sweden 1900–1944" | Stockholm University | ||
| 11 | "The Rights of Nature: Theory and Practice" | Free University of Brussels |
Political Animals and Animal Politics was reviewed by Garner for Environmental Values, and the philosophers Jeremy David Bendik-Keymer, Josh Milburn, and Dan Hooley for Environmental Ethics, the Political Studies Review and the Journal of Animal Ethics respectively. Garner lamented the absence of many of the key voices in the political theory literature on animal ethics—such as Cochrane, Donaldson and Kymlicka, O'Sullivan, Tony Milligan, Kimberly Smith or Garner himself—in the book, meaning that Political Animals and Animal Politics "takes on the role of an observer of this debate rather than directly contributing to it in a leading sense". He also felt that the book offered little consideration of the details of the work of these leading theorists, identifying the absence of discussion of Cochrane's interest-based rights approach, a superficial consideration of Regan's account of animal rights, an oversimplification of his own position and a lack of context to understand the respective work of Kimberly Smith and O'Sullivan. He considered Wissenburg's chapter to be the only one that engages with the debate about the political turn in general, but noted that Wissenburg's approach is a negative one; Garner considered this unsurprising, given that Wissenburg is a green political theorist with little sympathy for "animal political theory".
Bendik-Keymer praised the book as having a "report-from-a-cutting-edge-conference quality", characterising two conceptual divides as shaping the volume: first, the distinction between theories endorsing human exceptionalism and those not; and, second, the disconnect between theory and practice. For him, the essays of part three—effectively three case studies—illustrated ways that the "actual practice of politics evince psychological and pragmatic concerns that do not fit neatly into normative foundations". The core philosophical debate (about human exceptionalism) takes place in parts one and two. In part one, he suggested, essays assumed (and sometimes supported) human exceptionalism, sometimes framing it as the only justified way to include animals in politics, while human exceptionalism was denied in part two. It is Bendik-Keymer's view, in line with part one but against part two, that one need not reject anthropocentrism to "open up ecological thought". Anthropocentrism, he argued, can be "open to ecological identifications, having humane virtues, and showing responsibility for our behavior", though this is often denied in environmental ethics. Parts two and three, Bendik-Keymer felt, reveal "the need for aviable politics of animals to be grounded in an adequate experience of community". The area of research that the book exposes, he argued, is animal community, and, in particular, whether animals' roles as co-creators of community (though not politics) calls for their recognition as political agents, rather than simply being included in politics through the ethical concern of human political agents.
Milburn questioned the success of the volume in achieving its second stated goal, concerning rapprochement between animal and environmental ethics; he considered the contributions respectively of Christie Smith, Schlosberg, and Tanasescu to be more clearly in the domain of environmental ethics than animal ethics, questioning the extent to which they belong in a volume about "animal politics". Similarly, Hooley argued that Political Animals and Animal Politics was "less of a work in the emerging field of animal politics than it is a collection of essays in the field of environmental politics". Alternatively, he claimed it could be viewed as a mixed work, noting that the contributions from Flanders, Otjes, Boyer and Svärd offered new contributions to the literature on animals and politics. Hooley thought it surprising that few authors engaged with the work of Donaldson and Kymlicka, and was critical of Wissenburg's discussion of the pair, which he claimed was "all too brief and ultimately disappointing".
Milburn thought that the opening chapters (and introduction) did well to establish the volume, and was happy with the inclusion of the more empirical contributions, given their potential theoretical significance. He picked out the chapters by Driessen, Boyer, and Wissenburg respectively as highlights, suggesting that the contributions of Driessen and Boyer seemed to challenge the volume's second stated goal, and noting that, though it was strong, he disagreed with the claims of Wissenburg's chapter. Garner highlighted the contributions of Flanders and Driessen, and commended the editors for putting together the book. Hooley concluded his review by claiming that the book offered something to those interested in the place of animals in politics, but that much of its contents would be of more interest for those looking to read about environmental political theory.
Garner identified Political Animals and Animal Politics as the first edited collection devoted to the political turn in animal ethics. Though he claimed that it was likely to be superseded, he argued that Political Animals and Animal Politics should be "welcomed for its trailblazing". Subsequent collections identified in reviews of the literature in the political turn include Garner and O'Sullivan's The Political Turn in Animal Ethics and Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade's Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues. Another publication identified in these reviews is the open access journal Politics and Animals; this published its first issue in 2015 with an "editorial collective" consisting of Boyer, Svärd, Katherine Wayne and Guy Scotton.[12]
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