In virtue of their capacity for political agency, political agents can possess special rights, powers, and responsibilities, such as rights to political participation and freedom of speech. Traditionally, political theorists have assumed that only cognitively unimpaired adult humans are political agents, and thus that only those humans can be the bearers of these rights, powers, and responsibilities. However, recent work in animal rights theory has extended the concept of political agency to (...) nonhuman animals. In this article, I develop an account of political agency that identifies the capacities that one must possess to be a political agent and captures the fact that political action is a distinctive type of action. Crucially, this account makes sense of the standard assumption that only some humans count as political agents, and explains why few nonhuman animals, human infants, and severely cognitively impaired humans are likely to possess the capacity for political agency. I go on to reject the view, recently advanced by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, that nonhuman animals can be ‘nonintentional political agents’. I conclude by suggesting that most nonhuman animals, as well as human infants and humans with severe cognitive impairments, cannot straightforwardly be assigned rights to political participation. (shrink)

In this essay I challenge the idea that political agency must be central to the concept of citizenship. I consider this question in relation to whether or not domesticated animals can be understood as our fellow citizens. In recent debates on this topic, both proponents and opponents of animal citizenship have taken political agency to be central to this question. I advance two main arguments against this position. First, I argue against the orthodox view that (...) claims political agency is a requirement of citizenship. This position ignores both how citizenship is understood in practice by modern, liberal democracies, as well as the separate functions of citizenship. Further, there are no plausible ways we can consistently extend citizenship to humans regardless of intellectual ability, while denying it to domesticated animals. Nevertheless, I argue that it is important to distinguish two ways in which citizenship is enacted: Citizenship as Membership and Citizenship as Responsible, Political Agent. Domesticated animals should be understood as citizens, despite the fact that they are not responsible, political agents. Second, I challenge the view, put forward by Donaldson and Kymlicka, that animals are capable of certain forms of political agency. I argue that political agency is not crucial to whether, and how, the preferences of these animals matter for political decision-making. The upshot of my argument is that political agency matters much less to debates about the citizenship of non-human animals than both sides of this debate have been inclined to think. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a relational approach to the question of animal agency. We distinguish between agency and action and, using three examples of non-human animal behaviour, explore how human-other animal interactions might be understood in terms of action, agency and resistance. In order to do this we draw on the distinction between primary and corporate agency found in the work of Margaret Archer, arguing that, while non-human animals are able to act (...) and to exercise primary agency, they are unable to exercise corporate agency. Animals are therefore agents; they act and their actions have consequences, they also resist conditions which they do not like and, in some circumstances, are able to change the conditions of their agency. We discuss the place of animals in the social world and the political implications of this way of viewing animal agency. (shrink)

Should animal advocates be allowed to publicly display graphic footage of how animals live (and die) in industrial animal use facilities? Cube of truth (‘cube’) demonstrations are a form of animal advocacy aimed at informing the public about the realities of animals’ experiences in places such as slaughterhouses, feedlots, and research facilities, by showing footage of mostly lawful practices within these workplaces. Activists engaging in cube-style protests have recently been targeted by law enforcement agencies in two Australian (...) states on the basis that the footage on display was too offensive to be shown in public. In this paper, I argue that these justifications do not stand up to scrutiny. Using an original politics of sight analysis, this paper demonstrates how the democratic costs associated with targeting cube protests outweigh the costs to the public. Cube activists are engaging in public dialogue by drawing attention to sites of potential injustice, and are playing an important role in highlighting the agency of the animals involved in exploitative industries. I further make the case that, where such demonstrations fall foul of the law, they should be regarded as legitimate acts of civil disobedience. (shrink)

Human beings are both needy and dignified. How should we think about the relationship between our neediness and our worth? Card argues well that our vulnerability to luck is intertwined in the very conditions of moral agency. We can see the merit of her approach even more clearly by turning to some difficulties the Stoics have in preserving dignity while removing vulnerability. Stoicism does, however, help us to sort through the difficulties involved as we try to combine love of (...) particular people with respect for all human life. Richardson is correct to suggest that love itself can animate the concern for all humanity; I also agree with him that institutions must play a major role in any solution to problems of inequality between nations. Although the “capabilities approach” offers an attractive account of one part of the goal of just political institutions, combining, as Moody‐Adams suggests, respect for difference with a commitment to universal norms, I now believe that the capabilities account should be combined with a form of Rawlsian political liberalism that protects spaces within which citizens may pursue the good as they understand it. (shrink)

This article puts Arendt’s conception of non-human animal appearance into a productive dialogue with recent developments in critical animal studies and animal rights theory within which notions such as agency, zoopolis, and animal agora play an important role. By reinterpreting the animal condition in Arendt’s account of the human condition, it demonstrates her potential contribution to political theory in a world where non-human-animals and nature are seen as making claims of entry into the (...) political community. By emphasizing Arendt’s later work, in which she expresses an openness towards the possibility that non-human animals are drawn to appear, the article indicates how Arendt might help us, both to rethink the boundaries of the political community beyond the human species, and to recognize the political agency of non-human animals. (shrink)

Sanctuary traditionally meant something different for humans and nonhuman animals, but this is changing. Animals are increasingly seen as subjects, and, similar to human sanctuaries, animal sanctuaries are increasingly understood as political spaces. In this article I compare human and nonhuman sanctuaries in order to bring into focus under- lying patterns of political inclusion and exclusion. By investigating parallels and differ- ences I also aim to shed light on the role of sanctuaries in thinking about and working (...) towards new forms of community and democratic interaction, focusing specifically on the role of political agency and voice. I begin by briefly discussing the political turn in animal philosophy, in which nonhuman animals are conceptualized as political actors. I then discuss ‘Zatopia’, a thought experiment that shows that viewing sanctuaries as separate from larger political structures runs the risk of repeating violence, and I investigate parallels with certain practices and policies in farmed animal sanctuaries. In order to overcome the obstacles thus identified, I turn to the concept ‘expanded sanctuary’, which explicitly focuses on connections between sanctuary and larger political structures. I discuss two examples of expanded sanctuary in which the agency and voices of those seeking or taking sanctuary are foregrounded: VINE Sanctuary, and the Dutch migrant collective WE ARE HERE. In the final section I briefly touch upon the consequences of these con- siderations for our understanding of sanctuary in relation to political membership and reforming communities. (shrink)

Nonhuman animals are unable to exert any direct control over the functioning of democratic institutions –the decisions of which, nevertheless, have a pervasive impact on their lives. Their interests are therefore likelier to be set back or unfairly discounted, and their choices are more vulnerable to arbitrary interference. Because of this, some authors have suggested that we ought to redesign our political institutions so that they are more responsive to the interests of animals. We argue that this strategy fails (...) to address the root of the problem, which is animals’ lack of robust political agency. We defend that, should it become technologically feasible, we have a pro tanto obligation, derived from the values that underpin democracy, to uplift, or radically enhance, the political agency of nonhuman animals, so that they can better participate in mass democratic politics, express their interests as they see them, self-organise to defend them, and hold their representatives accountable. Finally, we explain how our argument manages to resist the most important objections against animal enhancement and, in some cases, it does so better than alternative proposals based on the value of animal well-being. (shrink)

This article, drawing on selected feminist magazines of the 1980s, particularly Feminist Arts News (FAN) and GEN, offers a textual ‘braiding’ of narratives to re-present a history of Black British feminism. I attempt to chart a history of Black British feminist inheritance while proposing the politics of (other)mothering as a politics of potential, pluralistic and democratic community building, where Black thought and everyday living carry a primary and participant role. The personal—mothering our children—is the political, affording a nurturing of (...) alterity through a politics of care that is fundamentally antiracist and antisexist. I attempt to show how Black feminist thought can significantly contribute to democracy in the present and how Black British history and thought, as fundamentally antiracist and anticolonial, can generate a reinvention much needed in the present of a shared British history. I argue for feminist intervention premised upon a politics of care, addressing through activist mothering the urgency of Black absence from prestigious institutions. Such debilitating absence in Britain inhibits the development of scholarship, distorts feminist history and seriously concerns potential Black feminists. From diverse texts, I develop a genealogical narrative supplemented through memory work. This ‘gathering and re-using’ privileges Black women's theorising as a crucial component of the methodological metissage, which includes auto-theorising to develop ideas of resemblance in relation to Black British feminism and feminist kinship. The resultant ‘braiding’, I suggest after Lionnet, questions the absence of intersubjective spaces for reflection on Black British feminist praxis, indicating a direction for British feminists of all complexions. Attentive to the 1980s as historical context while invoking the maternal, I consider what is required to engage generationally, counterwrite the academy and pursue a dynamic process of transformation within a transnational feminism that challenges Black British absence from academic knowledge production, while nurturing its presence. (shrink)

This book offers ethical and political approaches to issues that nonhuman animals face. The recent 'political turn' in interspecies ethics, from ethical to political approaches, has arisen due to the apparent lack of success of the nonhuman animal movement and dissatisfaction with traditional approaches. Current works largely present general positions rather than address specific issues and principally rely on mainstream approaches. This book offers alternative positions such as cosmopolitan, libertarian, and left humanist thought, as well as (...) applying ethical and political thought to specific issues, such as experimentation, factory farming, nonhuman political agency, and intervention. Presenting work by theorists and activists, insights are offered from both ethics and politics that impact theory and practice and offer essential considerations for those engaging in interspecies ethics within the political turn era. (shrink)

What are the more significant broad-based needs of animal health programs in developing countries? Essentially they are: health management programs, delivery systems, disease surveillance and monitoring of livestock movements, and improved technologies that are cost-effective and environmentally sound.Responsible program planning elicits important considerations that strengthen final results if integrated early into project design. Examples of these considerations include•the potential for intervention;•producers' requirements for animal health services;•present and future effect(s) of disease;•trends in livestock production and marketing;•affect of improved (...) class='Hi'>animal health technology on traditional production practices;•recurrent costs; and•affect of government policies on development and application of the technology.For what reasons do some project activities need to be redirected or continually sustained with donor support? A review of the case studies reveals that five major factors critically impact on project longevity. They are 1) initial expense and recurrent costs, 2) labor required, 3) long-term effectiveness, 4) difficulty in achieving objectives, and 5) government policies or civil strife.The U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded animal health projects for 30 years. Unlike most other bilateral projects, nearly one-third have continued for at least a decade. Given the nature of the biological cycle of livestock, animal health projects and programs require long-term commitments. USAID's investments in animal health projects continue to pay dividends despite continuously changing global political priorities and the redefining of development issues. (shrink)

In _Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism_, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment (...) of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals--as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to lead the way through the moral maze that is our relationship with nonhuman animals. Written by an author with an established reputation in this field, the book takes the reader step by step through the main parameters of the debate, demonstrating at each turn the different positions adopted. In the second part of the book, the implications of holding each position for the ethical permissibility of what is done to animals - in laboratories, farms, (...) the home and the wild - are explained. Garner starts by asking whether animals have any moral standing before moving on to assess exactly what degree of moral status ought to be accorded to them. It is suggested that whilst animals should not be granted the same moral status as humans, they are worthy of greater moral consideration than the orthodox animal welfare position allows. As a result, it is suggested that many of the ways we currently treat animals are morally illegitimate. In the final chapter, the issue of political praxis is tackled. How are reforms to the ways in which animals are treated to be achieved? This book suggests that currently dominant debates about insider status and direct action are less important than the question of agency. That is, the important question is not what is done to change the way animals are treated as much as whom is to be mobilised to join the cause. Students of philosophy, politics and environmental issues will find this an essential textbook. (shrink)

Agency without Actors? New Approaches to collective Action is rethinking a key issue in social theory and research: the question of agency. The history of sociological thought is deeply intertwined with the discourse of human agency as an effect of social relations. In most recent discussions the role of non-humans gains a substantial impact. Consequently the book asks: Are nonhumans active, do they have agency? And if so: how and in what different ways? The volume offers (...) a critical state-of-the-art debate of internationally and nationally leading scholars within Sociology, Social Anthropology and STS on agency (Latour, Law, Michael, Rammert etc.). It fosters the productive exchange of empirical settings and theoretical views by outlining a wide range of novel accounts that link human and non-human agency. It tries to understand social-technical, political and environmental networks as different forms of agency that produce discrete and identifiable entities like humans, animals, technical artifacts. It also asks how different types of (often conflicting) agency and agents actors are distinguished in practice, how they are maintained and how they interfere with each other. (shrink)

Let us suppose that we accept that humans can be correctly characterized as agents. Let us further presume that this capacity contrasts with most non-human animals. Thus, since agency is what uniquely constitutes what it is to be human, it must be of supreme importance. If these claims have any merit, it would seem to follow that, if agency can be nurtured through education, then it is an overarching moral imperative that educational initiatives be undertaken to do that. (...) In this paper, it will be argued that agency can indeed be enhanced, and that the worldwide educational initiative called Philosophy for Children, and others like it, are in a unique position to do just that, and, therefore, that P4C deserves our praise and support; while denigrations of such efforts for not being “real philosophy” ought to be thoroughly renounced. (shrink)

Animal Ethics has long been a highly contested area with debates driven by unease about various forms of animal harm, from the use of animals in scientific research to the farming of animals for consumption. Animal Ethics: The Basics is an essential introduction to the key considerations surrounding the ethical treatment of animals. Taking a thematic approach, it outlines the current arguments from animal agency to the emergence of the ‘political turn’. This book explores (...) such questions as: Can animals think and do they suffer? What do we mean by speciesism? Are humans special? Can animals be political or moral agents? Is animal rights protest ethical? Including outlines of the key arguments, suggestions for further reading and a glossary of key terms, this book is an essential read for philosophy students and readers approaching the contested field of Animal Ethics for the first time. (shrink)

Let us suppose that we accept that humans can be correctly characterized as agents. Let us further presume that this capacity contrasts with most non-human animals. Thus, since agency is what uniquely constitutes what it is to be human, it must be of supreme importance. If these claims have any merit, it would seem to follow that, if agency can be nurtured through education, then it is an overarching moral imperative that educational initiatives be undertaken to do that. (...) In this paper, it will be argued that agency can indeed be enhanced, and that the worldwide educational initiative called Philosophy for Children, and others like it, are in a unique position to do just that, and, therefore, that P4C deserves our praise and support; while denigrations of such efforts for not being “real philosophy” ought to be thoroughly renounced. (shrink)

Agency and representation are viewed as preconditions for democratic action. The dominant understanding of agency and representation is defined in terms of certain capacities and abilities that are considered to constitute the basis of personhood. The article will put into question this understanding and the assumptions that underpin it and argue that it rests on a mistaken conception of human animality – one that reduces the self to an autonomous and disembodied rational mind. The article will also suggest (...) that it is problematic because it marginalizes more than human forms of life – as well as those of us who are differently human – and excludes their points of view from the political processes of world making. In contrast, I will put forward an understanding of agency and representation that is attuned to the relational dimensions of all life on earth. By paying attention to the semiotic propensities that all forms of life share – which entails considering nonlinguistic forms of communication – this article responds to the need for more radically democratic ways of listening, giving voice, and caring for the earth’s beings and the relations that form the conditions for life to flourish. (shrink)

This article examines a handful of recent creative works that reflect speculatively on transgender pasts. I argue that each of these creative texts uses ontological interventions to reimagine moments in trans activist history that scholars have narrated only in terms of the attenuation of sociality and of political participation. These works do this by ratifying trans activists’ relations of reciprocity with extraordinary entities that are not often supported by secular and anthropocentric historiographies. Instead of engaging accounts of coalition work (...) with extraterrestrials, nonhuman animals, and magical powers mainly as sites of “subjugated knowledges”, these creative works all consider the political capacitations afforded by trans collaborations with other-than-human agencies. In order to make this argument, I draw from the recent body of anthropological scholarship known as the “new animism,” and consider the absence of commentary on religion and secularism within the Anglo-American posthuman turn. Ultimately, beyond offering alternatives to historical declension narratives about trans activism, these works urge scholars to consider how relations with “subaltern” agentive forces have become increasingly important to disenfranchised communities’ efforts to negotiate the political debilitations of a post-neoliberal world. (shrink)

From a largely Western phenomenon, the “animal turn” has, in recent years, gone global. Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives is just such a timely product that testifies to this trend.But why Asia? The editors, in their very helpful overview essay, have from the outset justified the volume's focus on Asia and ensured that this is not simply a matter of lacuna filling. The reasons they set out include: the fact that Asia is the (...) cradle of early human settlement and animal domestication; Asia encompasses an extreme diversity of closely connected ecosystems and human cultures; Asia is the place where the world's major religions originated; and, as in other parts of the world, Asia's use of animals for food and other utilitarian purposes constitutes a prominent feature of its culture. All of these factors, they argue, made Asia a unique lab for the exploration of major developments in human civilization and the complexities of human-animal interactions.Based on these premises, the book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on areas that the editors consider to have paramount significance in world history: Part I, “Hunting and Domestication”; Part II “Animals as Food”; Part III “Animals at War”; and Part IV “Animals in Culture and Religion.” As many good works on animal studies do, the volume adopts a truly cross-disciplinary approach, uniting scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, anthropology, art, religion, literature, and cultural studies. It too takes an interregional approach and covers a vast geographical area, stretching from the western edge of Asia in the Levant to Central Asia, where once roamed the horses of the nomadic pastoral tribes, to the other end of Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Temporally impressive as well, the work takes us from the deep history of the Paleolithic period up to the contemporary world, exploring the diverse roles that a wide range of animals—horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, tigers, and so forth—have played in Asia's rich and unique past and present.Strong in archaeology, Part I, “Hunting and Domestication,” responds to the much-called for “deep” or “coevolutionary” history of human-animal relations in recent years. The three chapters discuss, respectively, the roles that proboscideans have played in the diet and culture of early societies in Paleolithic China and beyond; the ways in which animals of all sizes have been increasingly integrated into the diet, daily uses, trade, and warfare in Holocene Negev; and the diversifying roles played by donkeys in the early Bronze Age in Southern Levant as a food source, a means of transport and in ritual sacrifices. Together, they demonstrate, with reference to telling archaeological evidence how the early societies in this region have been highly dependent upon the increasingly sophisticated interactions with and uses of mega-herbivores in the protracted and by no means clear-cut transition from hunting and herding towards the agricultural way of life, affirming the co-existing and co-constituting relations between humans and other animals in the deep past of Asia.The chapters in the section on “Animals at War” equally reveal the crucial roles that animals have played in the military sphere, as either a practical war technology or a show of military power. “Elephants in Mongol History” revisits the thesis of elephant-mounted troops in South and Southeast Asia as a barrier to Mongol expansion. Through its lively account of the pivotal battles in Mongolian history, especially that against India and China, it illustrates with great success the complex interactions between animals (especially elephants, horses, and humans), technology, and the geographical environment, which jointly exercised their influence on the outcome of warfare and degree of success of political rule. Turning away from the dynamic of warfare, the following two chapters explore the biopolitical question of the management of the horse as a bio-resource in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and early Ming Dynasty China, respectively. The first one places its focus on the breeding, procurement, and feeding of the horse subjects in question, while the latter concentrates on the human organization of various resources for the upkeep of government horses—a conventional area of study called “horse administration” in the institutional history of the government in China.The last section, “Animals in Culture and Religion,” examines the changing images of apex predators, such as lions and tigers, in Buddhist perceptions from South Asia to East Asia; the cult of the Horse King in late Imperial China; and the significance of animal signs in Mongolian historiography. They represent an established approach in animal studies that seeks to understand different aspects of human culture through symbolic or metaphorical animals. Instead of treating the animals discussed as mere abstractions, which has been a frequent criticism of works that adopt this approach, the relations between the symbolic animals and their prototype in the natural world were attentively explored. The essay on the cult of the Horse King, for example, closely links the wax and wane of the cult since late imperial China with the changing use and subsequent disuse of the actual horses in agriculture, transportation, commerce, and quotidian life. Yet, classic as these essays on symbolic animals are, one does feel slightly unsatiated when coming to the end of this section, which also marks the end of this volume. Having been reminded early in the introductory essay that Asia was “a major site for the emergence of moral teachings and ethical guidance on the treatment of animals” and how this legacy “still affects the lives of billions of humans to this very day,” one feels naturally rather let down that no article in this volume directly addresses this vital ethical dimension, especially since it belongs to a series on “animal ethics.”Indeed, regarding the task of placing either the nonhuman animals or the ethical relations between humans and other animals center stage, the essays in this volume achieve only varying levels of success. Some authors exhibit a more acute awareness of what “animal studies” or “animal ethics” might entail epistemically and methodically and experiment by paying closer attention to the species-specific characteristics, experience, and agency of nonhuman animals in order to cast off the deified anthropocentrism previously ruled in humanist scholarship. However, others have made no such attempt. For example, in Part II of “Animals as Food,” an essay on the production and consumption of milk in contemporary China, albeit alert to the issue of health hazards to consumers, omits any consideration of the subject from the dairy cows’ perspective under the modern intensive farming system. Moreover, otherwise superb research on the tuna-fishing industry in Japan, with its insightful discussion of the nexus between knowledge economies and imperial politics, too passes over any discussion of the fate of the tuna, whether collectively as a group of living organisms containing 15 species or individually as animals with an embodied experience. One does ponder whether these essays would fit better in a volume on the cultural history of food or on the entwining history of knowledge production, economics, and politics, which conventionally position human interests at the center of research.Taken as a whole, this is an impressive volume that directs our attention to the hitherto understudied world of Asia in animal studies. The long durée, with its interdisciplinary and interregional approach, also most powerfully presents a past in Asia that could not have been the same without the participation of animals at every level, from everyday life to the shaping of cultural values, the construction of belief systems, the building of a national identity, and even the rise and fall of regimes. Scholars and students interested in expanding the frontier of our understanding of the world with a more inclusive “we” should find a wealth of interesting subjects on which to build further research. Finally, the volume also presents a fitting occasion for all scholars committed to animal studies to consider the grave challenge confronting the field that arose alongside its growing respectability and rapid expansion: Should it be oriented toward the destabilization of our previously anthropocentric conception of the world? Or should no such perimeter be imposed, as in this volume? The overall breadth and limitations of this volume leave one pondering this issue. (shrink)

Within current political, social, and ethical debates – both in academia and society – activism and how individuals should approach issues facing nonhuman animals, have become increasingly important, ‘hot’ issues. Individuals, groups, advocacy agencies, and governments have all espoused competing ideas for how we should approach nonhuman use and exploitation. Ought we proceed through liberation? Abolition? Segregation? Integration? As nonhuman liberation, welfare, and rights’ groups increasingly interconnect and identify with other ‘social justice movements’, resolutions to these questions have become (...) increasingly entangled with questions of what justice and our ethical commitments demand on this issue, and the topic has become increasingly significant and divisive. -/- The book considers how this question, and contemporary issues facing nonhumans (such as experimentation, hunting, and factory farming) should be answered by drawing on both theory and practice in order to provide grounded, yet actionable, ways forward. -/- Indicatively, the book covers topics such as: • The intersection between interspecies ethics and the ethics of war and self-defence • Nonhuman animals as political subjects and acting agents • Whether we should intervene for nonhuman animals in cases of natural disaster • Various explorations of why the nonhuman movement may not be succeeding as well as it could be • Comparisons between the nonhuman movement and other social movement • Arguments for and against intervening to help or save nonhumans, and how far we may go • What intervention could ultimately mean for nonhumans -/- The book is therefore intended not only to provide new and interesting insight into the area and important contemporary discussions, but also to constructively aid the nonhuman movement and unite theory and practice on the crucial issues. With the nonhuman movement and its past approaches currently being questioned as a success, more nonhumans than ever being harmed and exploited, and a growing gulf between activists and scholars, this book will not only be a timely addition to the literature, but an attempt to bridge these gaps and move both theory and practice – and thus the movement and field – forward. (shrink)

In order to explore some of the divergences within new materialism and elucidate their relationship to actor-network theory, this article will develop Latour’s theory of agency and then compare it to those new materialists who uphold a ‘flat ontology’ that includes technological tools and those who uphold an animate/inanimate distinction. In light of the ecological crisis called the Anthropocene, the dissolution of the animate/inanimate distinction will be defended in order to address both polar bears and glaciers, coral reefs and (...) clown fish. Though Latour himself has defended such a dissolution, his political proposals to address the ecological crisis revert back to the modern and dualist position he has himself critiqued for so long. Using the gains of actor-network theory, while differentiating a new materialist ecological politics from that of Latour, will be shown to be necessary in order to find a solution to the crisis of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Biology is instrumental in establishing and perpetuating societal norms of gender and sexuality, owing to its afforded authoritative role in formulating beliefs about what is “natural”. However, philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science have shown how conceptions of gender and sexuality pervade the supposedly objective knowledge produced by the natural sciences. For example, in describing animal relationships, biologists sometimes use the metaphor of marriage, which brings with it conceptions of both cuckoldry and male ownership of female partners. These conceptions (...) have often led researchers to overlook female behavior and adaptations, such as female initiation of mating. Such social norms and ideologies influence both theories and research in biology. Social norms of gender and sexuality also influence school cultures. Although awareness of gender issues has had a major impact in Sweden during recent years, the interventions conducted have been based on a heteronormative understanding of sex; this has rendered sexual norms a non-prioritized issue and thereby rendered non-heterosexuals invisible in teaching and textbooks. Since this research was published in 2007 and 2009, norm critical pedagogics have been included in the Swedish National Agency for Education’s guidelines for teaching. This inclusion represents one way to tackle the recurring problem of heterosexuality being described as a naturalized “normal” behavior and homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals being described from a heteronormative perspective. In this paper, I employ gender and queer perspectives to scrutinize how animal sexual behavior is described and explained in Swedish biology textbooks. The analysis is based in gender and queer theory, feminist science studies, and evolutionary biology. The article begins with an outline a discussion of my theoretical framework, relating gender and queer perspectives on evolutionary biology to a discussion of queer methodology. I then scrutinize some empirical examples drawn from five contemporary biology textbooks used in secondary schools (by students aged 16-18 years old). Finally, I discuss the implications of the textbooks’ representations of animal sexual behavior, the problems of and need for a “textbook-version”, and providing examples of what an inclusive approach to biology education might look like. (shrink)

This paper examines how the oncomouse became a patentable invention. The oncomouse began life in the laboratory, where it was genetically modified for use as a research tool to assist with the study of human cancer. Its design, a product of genetic modification, made the oncomouse potentially patentable subject matter. The United States was the first jurisdiction to award the patent and several others followed. However, the question of animal patenting was most contentious in Europe and Canada. In this (...) paper I examine debates about animal patenting within the legal and moral spaces created by United States, European and Canadian patent law, focusing on differences that emerged in each case. I argue that oncomouse as a patentable invention was made possible and acceptable as different ways of being mouse as natural animal, research tool and invention were made to cohere: that is as they were made to overlap and depend upon one another. In the paper I use the term "cohere" to describe the logic of animal patenting that emerged with, and was essential to, the outcome in each jurisdiction. I describe an ontological politics of connecting and separating different ways of being mouse, as the oncomouse's genetic modification, risks, benefits, and suffering were juxtaposed with patent law, precedent, laboratory protocols, and understandings of human agency and control. As connections and separations were made, a relation, "natural animal-research tool-invention", was established, and logic of animal patenting emerged: but differently each case. (shrink)

Public controversy over animalbiotechnology is analyzed as a case that illustratestwo broad theoretical approaches for linking science,political or ethical theory, and public policy. Moralpurification proceeds by isolating the social,environmental, animal, and human health impacts ofbiotechnology from each other in terms of discretecategories of moral significance. Each of thesecategories can also be isolated from the sense inwhich biotechnology raises religious or metaphysicalissues. Moral purification yields a comprehensive andsystematic account of normative issues raised bycontroversial science. Hybridization proceeds bytaking concern for (...) all these elements to be a mark ofsound moral character. The advocate of hybridizationinfers that those who employ a strategy ofpurification seek to avoid accountability by dividingissues, and hence are not to be trusted. Lack of trustincreases perceived risk and challenges the legitimacyof government regulations to control social,environmental, and human health risks that areestablished under separate mandate, and administeredby separate agencies.The close alignment between government agencies, theiracademic affines, and the categories of purificationplaces the purified analysis in a favored politicalposition. Legitimation of science-based policy inareas like animal biotechnology becomes problematicbecause the concern of those who would take a hybridapproach (arguably the majority of lay persons) tounderstanding controversial science are excluded.Ironically, this exclusion heightens the perception ofrisk from animal biotechnology. The paper concludeswith a call for procedural approaches to incorporatingthe hybrid view of science‘s moral significance. (shrink)

One of the recurring problems of animal rights advocacy in recent years has been the difficulty of matching up such advocacy with the broadly liberal political environment in which it operates. Animal advocates may score high on compassion for the animal victims of injustice, but much lower when it comes to political compassion for opponents. Fairly or otherwise, those with a robust, partisan commitment to animal rights have secured a reputation for intolerance. So much (...) so, that it may even be difficult to form a plausible picture of what tolerant animal advocacy would look like, without compromising the partisanship of advocates. This paper attempts to unify partisanship and tolerance within a picture of the tolerant animal advocate as someone whose agency is marked by at least two significant constraining features. Firstly, they will engage in negative appraisals of dietary practices, but will not ordinarily move from such appraisals to any overall judgment of the character of others. Hence, they will be in no position to hold that vegetarians or vegans are in some sense better people than meat eaters. Secondly, they will deploy charges of hypocrisy rarely and with caution. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I undertake a critical analysis of the conception of community at work in what is termed “identity-based politics.” Working with Hannah Arendt’s implicit argument about place and visibility, I develop a theory of recognition in order to rethink the nature of community. The ultimate aim of my project develops a recognitive politics, a two-tiered theory of recognition, which takes into account social identities as the condition of possibility for the free political action that so animated Arendt. (...) If we require a place to act freely, in other words, we are visible to one another in that place. My theory of recognition aims to illustrate that traditional philosophical accounts of self-disclosure in political action (including those of Hegel, Marx, and Arendt) do not aim to offer a pure political agency stripped of social identities. Such an understanding of the political as the self-disclosure of our unique identities is possible only if social identities are granted visibility and the possibility of being heard in the first place. Claims such as Arendt’s “right to have rights” consequently understate this vital condition of visibility. In turn, I argue that the condition of “artificial equality” arises from its spatial aspect. The link between visibility and the “right to have rights” is crucial in establishing the conditions of a non-violent and non-identity-based politics. On my view, ‘recognitive politics’ is based on epistemic responsibility in political judgment, which becomes a reflection of our responsibility to affirm plural human existence in the world. (shrink)

Building on contemporary research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind, this book explores how social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states systematically affect our thoughts, feelings, and agency. Human beings are, necessarily, social animals who create and belong to social institutions. But social institutions take on a life of their own, and literally shape the minds of all those who belong to them, for better or worse, usually without their being self-consciously aware of it. Indeed, in contemporary neoliberal (...) societies, it is generally for the worse. In The Mind-Body Politic, Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna work out a new critique of contemporary social institutions by deploying the special standpoint of the philosophy of mind—in particular, the special standpoint of the philosophy of what they call essentially embodied minds—and make a set of concrete, positive proposals for radically changing both these social institutions and also our essentially embodied lives for the better. (shrink)

Placing politics in an ecological perspective that discerns an inextricable connection between human political agency and the forces of nonhuman nature would seem to be a difficult task. While we have grown accustomed to understanding our personal capacities for thought and action as well as the shape of our intimate relations as aspects of our natural inheritance, our political life and reflection remain rife with human exceptionalism. We understand animals to have rudimentary reasoning skills and physical capabilities (...) incredible to us. We also understand some animals gather in social groupings held together by mutual dependence for fulfilling affective needs. But it is difficult to imagine that animals have .. (shrink)

The period of the end of the twentieth — the beginning of the twenty-first century can be called the heyday of human rights movements that advocate the inclusion of new agencies in the political, ethical, social and other fields. Among them arose the animal rights movement, which later developed into a philosophical turn called animal turn, which is now one of the most popular in the Western philosophical and anthropological discourse. Being mostly a media and popular science (...) project, animal turn has been little studied and criticized from an academic point of view. In this article, it is proposed to explore the history of the turn, its development and, most importantly, how the ideas about man, animal and their relationships changed within the framework of animal turn. The new anthropology, which also includes the turn under discussion, inextricably links the concept of man with the concept of boundary, stating it as a necessary element for the constitution of the human self. As a part of a general philosophical trend to expand the discourse of the Other, animal turn suggests to consider the animal as a universal example of Otherness, which can not only coexist with a human, but also be an integral part of his self-perception. The article proposes to consider how the transition from the recognition of animals as "also feeling" was gradually made to the idea of maximum inclusiveness, openness and hospitality. It is also proposed to critically comprehend the new concept of man as a being who strives for maximum positive harmony with himself and the material world. As examples, the texts of the most famous representatives of animal turn are analyzed: P. Singer, T. Regan, J. Derrida, B. Massumi, P. Godfrey-Smith and V. Despre. (shrink)

This collection examines the question of nonhuman animal agency by shifting emphasis from the human perspective toward that of other animals, exploring modes of ...

In this introduction, we address some of the complexities associated with the emergence of medicine’s bodies, not least as a means to ‘working with the body’ rather than simply producing a critique of medicine. We provide a brief review of some of the recent discussions on how to conceive of medicine and its bodies, noting the increasing attention now given to medicine as a technology or series of technologies active in constituting a multiplicity of entities – bodies, diseases, experimental objects, (...) the individualization of responsibility for health and even the precarity of life. We contrast what feminist theorists in the tradition of Judith Butler have referred to as the question of matter, and Science and Technology Studies with its focus on practice and the nature of emergence. As such we address tensions that exist in analyses of the ontological status of ‘the body’ – human and non-human – as it is enacted in the work of the laboratory, the randomized controlled trial, public health policy and, indeed, the market that is so frequently entangled with these spaces. In keeping with the recent turns toward ontology and affect, we suggest that we can regard medicine as concerned with the contraction and reconfiguration of the body’s capacities to affect and be affected, in order to allow for the subsequent proliferation of affects that, according to Bruno Latour, marks corporeal life. Treating both contraction and proliferation circumspectly, we focus on the patterns of affects wrought in particular by the abstractions of medicine that are described in the contributions to this special issue. Drawing on the work of A.N. Whitehead, we note how abstractions such as ‘medical evidence’, the ‘healthy human body’ or the ‘animal model’ are at once realized and undercut, mediated and resisted through the situated practices that eventuate medicine’s bodies. Along the way, we touch on the implications of this sort of perspective for addressing the distribution of agency and formulations of the ethical and the political in the medical eventuations of bodies. (shrink)

The idea that humans are clearly distinguished from other animals and from the natural world in general is a cornerstone of European philosophy and culture at least from the sixteenth century onward. Often, this idea is related to understandings of ‘humanism’ that emerged in that period and legitimized regimes of power and control over non-European cultures; it also sanctioned the exploitation of the natural world in the form of extractive capitalism. Critiques of Eurocentric mindsets hinge on certain understandings of ‘humanism,’ (...) arguing for a transformation or even abandoning of humanist traditions in the sense of ‘posthumanism’ or ‘critical posthumanities.’ In their selective interpretation of European humanism—exemplified with Immanuel Kant’s philosophy—the current critique shows elements of an Occidentalist construction of humanism. If we want to overcome the idea that humans—and within that group particularly the white, male, educated Europeans—are the ‘masters of the world,’ we are confronted with conceptual challenges that need philosophical and theoretical reflection. The ontological and epistemological implications of non-anthropocentric ways of thinking and knowing provide a clear alternative to some problematic aspects of European philosophy and humanism. Engaging with new interpretations of other-than-human agency, relational understandings of animism, and intra-active production of knowledge can provide a relevant contribution to the ongoing discussion across intellectual, cultural, and political fields, an approach that takes the specificity of human animals seriously without identifying them as the center of knowledge and power. (shrink)

This thesis makes two claims: first, that conflict is constitutive of human agency, and second, that this understanding of agency in terms of conflict makes politics a problem about the will. I develop an argument to show how these two claims weave together to create the fabric of Kant’s account of political willing. From this Kantian approach to conflict and agency, the systematic question animating this thesis thereby arises: what are the conditions that make political (...) willing possible? This thesis defends the notion of political willing as a placeholder for a number of inter-woven conditions that make political life in common possible. As a form of rightful interaction between free agents of choice, this form of willing emerges in Kant from the constitutive features of what it means to be an agent in a world with others agents. This relation between agents makes conflict unavoidable, a conflict which only a will that is public, omnilateral, and coercive, can rightfully resolve. I trace the development of this model of political willing in three spheres of Kant’s thought: individual ethics, teleology, and politics. I conclude that Kant’s view of politics is, in some ways, more Hobbesian than Hobbes’: for Kant, conflict cannot and should not be fully eradicated, if we are to take seriously equality between agents. Life under the state is not conflict-free, but rather it is a sphere made to preserve and to safeguard the boundaries of a shared political life, always prone to conflict. (shrink)

Against the background of a profound critique of human rights, cosmopolitan universalism and humanistic political agency offered by writers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt and Jenny Edkins, this essay seeks to recover and rethink the figure of humanity. Arguing that the critique of biopolitics and sovereignty unwittingly frustrates visions of human dignity and agency that can serve as a resource against its abuses, the essay argues that a vision of interdependent, indebted, and dispersed human being (...) – one that can never be reduced to the ego or subject or an arc of history – is both an undeniable global fact and a normative resource. Conceived as a primary value that should normatively precede and condition politics, even as it never escapes it, humanity is a system of relations with animals, ecosystems, and physical/cosmic environments which occasions profound collective responsibilities. Always intertwined with the powers and terrors of human capacity and action, such a vision is at once a source of philosophical hope and an endless task of critical political work. (shrink)

Moral philosophy has been increasingly concerned with the nature of emotion and its ethical significance. Almost no attention, however, has been paid to disgust, in spite of its evident connections to taboos, exclusionary policies, and severe forms of moral, political, and aesthetic condemnation. This dissertation offers a theory of revulsion. On the basis of this account, it also gives us a way of thinking about intimate or tactile features of moral agency, which play a vital role in maintaining (...) those various practices. ;The analysis begins with a detailed portrait of the expansive and curious realm of disgust and derives from the portrait a set of desiderata by which to build a theory of revulsion. The views of the three primary theorists of disgust are evaluated: the anomaly thesis of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the animal reminder theory of the empirical psychologist Paul Rozin, and the generative lowliness account of the social historian William Ian Miller. None of these satisfies the desiderata, and they also fail for reasons internal to their own viewpoints. The works of Julia Kristeva on abjection and Noel Carroll on art-horror are also considered. ;Both the portrait and the set of desiderata direct attention upon not just objects commonly deemed to be impure, but pollution processes and the wider emotional dynamics with which they are integrated. Due consideration of these various factors reveals that disgust is generally about carnal disvalue, or somatic unwholesomeness, and paradigmatically about filthiness and its smear. Disgust is so concerned because its phenomenology functions as a foretaste of unhealthiness. And it is aided in its task by a physiognomic structure calibrated to various organic signs taken to indicate deeper somatic defilement. One of the special features of such carnal disvalue is the facility with which it extends to larger and more abstract realms of disvalue, like the morally or aesthetically repulsive. These reflections on revulsion suggest that our mortality is as much about the organic or carnal character of living and dying, as it is cessation of life. (shrink)

This is an extensively re-written second edition of a well regarded and much cited text on the issue of animal protection. It remains the only text to combine an examination of the philosophy and politics of the issue. Its central argument is that the philosophical debate is central to an understanding and evaluation of the substantive issues involving animals and the nature of the movement for change. The book has been thoroughly revised to include major theoretical and empirical developments. (...) Specifically, the "second generation" of animal ethics literature is examined in detail, and attention is paid to the campaigns and public controversy over the export of live animals and the use of animals in research, the impact of genetic engineering on the welfare of animals and the latest developments in the controversy over hunting. (shrink)

The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics is a recent addition to anthologies in the field, joining The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, and The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics. Edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, the book boasts more than 30 contributors, many of them philosophers, but also including sociologists, scientists, theologians, lawyers, psychologists, and animal advocates. The editors were intentionally multidisciplinary in their approach, noting that (...) “there is currently no book series that is a focus for multidisciplinary research in the field,” and calling attention to the need not only for philosophical inquiry into what we owe animals, but also into the “social, legal, cultural, religious and political” influences that “legitimate animal abuse” (p. viii).The book is divided up into four sections: “The Ethics of Control,” “The Ethics of Captivity,” “The Ethics of Killing,” and “The Ethics of Causing Suffering.” Each of these sections includes an editorial introduction and multiple entries spanning diverse issues, including animal research, animal agriculture, hunting, fishing, zoos, the role of animals in religion, the role of language in structuring thought about nonhuman animals, and others. Similarly, the chapters span issues affecting many species, including farmed animals, fish, deer, elephants, whales and dolphins, rodents, companion animals (e.g., dogs and cats), and others.While the book is billed as a “practical” handbook of animal ethics, it does wade into some conceptual territory, tackling such issues as the ethical permissibility of confining and controlling animals, the question of whether (painless) death harms nonhuman animals, and the comparative wrongness of killing humans and nonhuman animals. This said, it largely stays away from more detailed discussion of normative ethical theory and the moral standing of nonhuman animals, focusing instead on the specific ways that humans treat nonhuman animals. In focusing more on practical than theoretical ethics, the Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics both complements and differentiates itself from some other anthologies in the field.The book has several strengths to recommend it, the first being the logic of its organization. The ethically problematic aspects of humans’ treatment of nonhuman animals frequently map onto one or more of the categories of causing suffering, killing, and confining. The organization of chapters under these section headings helps to provide a rational structure to the text, as well as an easy way for the reader to navigate which sections they would like to tackle first (although there is some overlap between sections). With this, the explicit and sustained focus on the ethics of control (section 1) is a welcome and differentiating feature of the text. Much prior work in animal ethics has addressed questions of harming and killing animals, but the ethical permissibility of control per se has received comparatively lesser attention.The multidisciplinary nature of the book is also a selling point. In any anthology on animal ethics, the reader can expect entries from academic philosophers, but the book's inclusion of empirical scientific reviews, sociological and legal analyses, and work in discourse analysis are strengths. One danger in focusing exclusively on what we ought to think and do is that it ignores the influences on how we actually think and act. Many of the book's entries address these influences and thus round out the normative analysis.The middle two sections of the book seem most successful to this reviewer. The section on the ethics of killing contains two well-argued conceptual chapters, coupled with practical analyses of fishing, deer hunting, and religious perspectives on killing nonhuman animals. While animal research and animal agriculture are not directly addressed in this section, the conceptual arguments can be applied to the killing of nonhuman animals in these contexts. The section on the ethics of captivity is not as conceptually strong but contains excellent empirical chapters on the welfare of elephants, whales, and dolphins in captivity. Prior work in normative ethics has established how confinement can be harmful to nonhuman animals by directly causing suffering or depriving them of opportunities for satisfaction (see, e.g., DeGrazia, 2002). However, it is important to complement such theoretical frameworks with substantiation of how captivity actually is harmful to nonhuman animals in virtue of the interests they have and how captivity infringes upon such interests. These chapters argue that captivity is fundamentally (and not conditionally) incompatible with the welfare of elephants, whales, and dolphins.If I have one criticism of the book, it is that it could be stronger on certain conceptual issues. Acknowledging its practical and not theoretical focus, it is nonetheless true that if controlling, confining, killing, and causing suffering to nonhuman animals is wrong, then it is important to say something about why it is wrong—even if that explanation amounts to a short synopsis of more theoretical work done elsewhere. While the question of killing is addressed well, the section on the ethics of causing suffering does not address directly why (or under what conditions) causing suffering is wrong. The chapters in this section are worthwhile reading and review practices causing animal suffering in a variety of contexts. Nonetheless, some additional conceptual front matter would have strengthened the section overall.From a conceptual standpoint, the sections on the ethics of control and captivity seem to hang together. Confinement is a form of control and might be argued against on the grounds that it deprives nonhuman animals of opportunities for satisfaction, directly causes physical injury, or causes psychological distress, anxiety, or boredom. These kinds of arguments fit into interest-based accounts of animal welfare, which in turn can be subsumed under a principle of nonmaleficence: We should not cause harm to animals under some specified set of conditions; confinement harms animals in ways x, y, or z; therefore, we should not confine animals in this way.While such interest-based arguments do make an appearance in the text, several of the book's authors also elaborate an autonomy-based argument against control and confinement: Nonhuman animals have their own kind of autonomy, and just as infringing upon the autonomy of paradigmatic persons is wrong, infringing upon nonhuman animals’ autonomy is also wrong. The problem with this argument is that different kinds of autonomy are likely to be at stake. The wrongness of infringing upon paradigmatic persons’ autonomy is often explained by the facts that we are self-conscious, capable of abstract thought (including language use), and capable of intentionally choosing the kind of life that we want to live (e.g., relating to long-term projects or schemes of personal ethics). It could be argued that because nonhuman animals are not capable of exercising this kind of autonomy, they therefore cannot be harmed by its infringement.Some of the book's authors chip away at this presumption, noting (inter alia) that nonhuman animals have desires to move around and do things that are thwarted by confinement or control, that these desires constitute a form of agency, and that (following previous scholarship) nonhuman animals possess some forms of self-awareness. Specifically, the chapters from Valéry Giroux and Carl Saucier-Bouffard, Lori Gruen, and Carlos Naconecy consider such arguments. Naconecy draws upon David DeGrazia's (2009) analysis of animal self-awareness in making his argument. Though the issue deserves more treatment than I can give it here, it seems that nonhuman animals’ autonomy and self-awareness, even if granted, are of a different sort than that possessed by paradigmatic persons. Specifically, (most) nonhuman animals cannot feel wronged by having their preferences overridden because they are not the kinds of beings who are capable of abstractly considering themselves as autonomous and worthy of self-direction. They may desire things, and thwarting these desires might sometimes harm them, but that is a different kind of argument.Infringing upon nonhuman animals’ (more limited kind of) autonomy might nonetheless be wrong, but if different sorts of autonomy are at stake, then moral arguments relating to paradigmatic persons cannot be directly transposed to nonhuman animals. Some additional argument(s) must be supplied, but (on my reading) the book's contributors stop short of this. Nonetheless, as stated above, the ethics of control and questions of nonhuman animals’ autonomy are not as well trod as other issues in animal ethics. Despite my taking issue with some of the details, the discussions contained in the book's first two sections are worthy reading and help to advance the field.Overall, the book's chapters are well written and cogently argued, and given its breadth, different readers will find different things to value in it. The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics is a welcome addition to the literature. (shrink)

This paper situates abortion in the context of women’s duties to themselves. I argue that Kant’s fundamental moral requirement to respect oneself as a rational being, combined with Kant’s view of our animal nature, form the basis for a view of pregnancy and abortion that focuses on women’s agency and moral character without diminishing the importance of their bodies and emotions. The Kantian view of abortion that emerges takes abortion to be morally problematic, but sometimes permissible, and sometimes (...) even required. I first sketch Kant’s account to duties to oneself, highlighting duties to oneself as an animal and moral being. Next, I discuss pregnancy and the challenges it poses to women’s self-preservation, development, and efficacy as rational human agents. I then give my main argument: that abortion is morally problematic because it is antagonistic to an important subset of morally useful emotions that we have self-regarding duties to protect and cultivate. I argue that self-regarding moral considerations ground a rebuttable deliberative presumption against maxims of abortion for inclination-based ends. Finally, I consider three objections to this account of abortion : that it rests on implausible assumptions about the effects of abortion on women’s morally useful sentiments; that it portrays the virtuous agent’s reasoning about abortion as objectionably self-regarding; and that it fails adequately to recognize the moral significance of the fetus as a potential rational being. (shrink)

Although critiques of humanism are not new, the currency of posthumanist discourse on the nonhuman – the animal, the environment, or the object – suggests rising concerns about humanity’s place in the ecological order. This article interrogates Cary Wolfe's posthumanist framework as he approaches the questions of activism and agency in the context of animal ethics and disability politics. By drawing attention to the contradictions in his own commitments to rethinking human exceptionalism, I examine how Wolfe's appeal (...) for a more compassionate account of ethics vis-à-vis the notion of ‘trans-species empathy’ can be more gainfully addressed through the work of feminist and quantum physicist Karen Barad. This essay contends that by preserving the difference between the human and the nonhuman as something that is given rather than interrogated, the assumption of ‘the human’ as a self-contained identity is left unchanged and unchallenged. (shrink)

The essays in this Focus section expand the notion of writing insect histories of science by attending to matters of space and scale, ecological relationships, and institutional silences. They magnify diverse understandings about how the worlds of insects are noticed and understood by humans, what has historically counted as “insect,” and who narrates histories (of science). In doing so, the collection offers methodological suggestions for studying tiny animals in history that broaden the scope of often overlapping material, cultural, linguistic, (...) class='Hi'>political, ethical, economic, and biological domains. It is precisely this magnified attention that foregrounds the domains’ interdependence and is necessary to make sense of additional bearers or forms of agency. (shrink)

Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other (...) adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants. (shrink)

This paper situates abortion in the context of women’s duties to themselves. I argue that the fundamental Kantian requirement to respect oneself as a rational being, combined with Kant’s view of our animal nature, form the basis for a view of pregnancy and abortion that focuses on women’s agency and characters without diminishing the importance of their bodies and emotions. The Kantian view of abortion that emerges takes abortion to be morally problematic, but sometimes permissible, and sometimes even (...) required. After sketching Kant’s account of duties to oneself, I discuss the challenges pregnancy poses to women’s agency. I then argue that abortion is morally problematic because it is antagonistic to an important subset of morally useful emotions that we have self‐regarding duties to protect and cultivate; thus, there is a rebuttable deliberative presumption against maxims of abortion for inclination‐based ends. I close by considering objections. (shrink)

In a wide range of contemporary debates on Japanese cultures of technological practice, brief reference is often made to distinct Shinto legacies, as forming an animist substratum of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmological imaginations. Japan has been described as a land of Shinto-infused ‘techno-animism’: exhibiting a ‘polymorphous perversity’ that resolutely ignores boundaries between human, animal, spiritual and mechanical beings. In this article, we deploy instances of Japanese techno-animism as sites of theoretical experimentation on what Bruno Latour calls a symmetrical (...) anthropology of nature-cultures. In staging a dialogue between actor-network theory and Japanese techno-animism, we show how Shinto cosmograms provide an enlivening and alternative diffraction device on several of the ontological motifs manifested in Latour’s work. In particular, by mobilizing the territory of a ‘new’ animism debate in anthropology – manifested in the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – we attempt to infuse Latourian ‘multinaturalism’ with new, other-than-western analytical energy. Extending actor-network theory, we argue, Shinto cosmograms offer an interesting vantage point for interpreting the immanent, affective, enchanting and enabling powers of non-humans in contributing to collective life. By thus broadening the ‘cosmopolitical’ imagination beyond Latour’s own European-Catholic frame of reference, Shinto techno-animism offers up a wider reflection on contemporary entanglements of science, politics, ecology and cosmos. This reflection, we conclude, opens up a new intellectual territory, allowing us to trace techno-animist streams of thinking both ‘East’ and ‘West’, beyond the confines of the scientific naturalism indigenous to European thinking. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 368-389, April 2022. Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that (...) it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 368-389, April 2022. Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that (...) it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants. (shrink)

This book explores and critically reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. In light of the changing relationship between the state, the market and the society, it seeks to map both theoretically and empirically contemporary forms of global political agency. This book reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. More specifically, it empirically analyses a range of different forms of political (...) class='Hi'>agency and explores their significance for understanding and enacting global politics. Reflecting the efforts of scholars from a variety of disciplines from political theory and Sociology to Geography and International Relations, it brings into conversation a wide spectrum of theoretical approaches including Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism and historical institutionalism. The contributors compare a range of forms of political agency; exploring their significance for the theory and practice of global politics; and reflect on the tensions and synergies generated by recent efforts to conceptualise them.Demonstrating an innovative and interdisciplinary approach Contemporary Political Agency will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, sociology, political economy and political theory. (shrink)