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meeshsassycat's review
4.0
Well written but very dense. Quite creative in their application of political theory to animal rights.
synoptic_view's review
5.0
Readable and excellently thought provoking. Highly recommended. It provides a fresh take on many important issues in animal rights theory by embracing a "practical" approach that leverages existing, neoliberal political structures--namely the concept of national citizenship. Their basic argument is that non-human animals should be treated as citizens, in the same way that humans are citizens. Wild animals should be citizens of their own, sovereign states, domesticated animals should be co-citizens in our existing states, and animals that travel between wild areas and human-controlled areas--what the authors refer to as liminal animals--should be treated like travelers or immigrants.
Granting citizenship immediately solves some challenging problems with animal welfare. We all have duties to our co-citizens that include things like protection from harm or undue coercion. So citizenship becomes a path to taking animal welfare seriously. The more challenging part of the argument is that these duties typically go both ways. This raises the question of how non-human animals can participate as citizens given communication barriers.
The authors tackle this argument along multiple dimensions. First, they provide a hierarchy of different ways that one can be a citizen. The minimal requirement is mere existence in a state. Think about citizens of a totalitarian state that controls all political action. The people in that state are still citizens even though they are not allowed to have a political voice. The authors don't advocate for that position for animals, but it is important to note that we already have a broad and flexible concept of what citizenship means.
On the other end of the spectrum, the authors argue that non-human animals can and do communicate their preferences to us all the time, so it is not actually hard to fit non-human animals into a more participatory, democratic idea of citizenship. This argument is where the authors bring in a second important framework--disability studies. The authors point to (traditional rather than critical) disabilities studies frameworks as providing guidance on how to create social and political institutions that allow for meaningful participation by all citizens, regardless of cognitive of physical differences. Again, the authors are leveraging neoliberalism to make progress on animal rights issues that have really bogged down previous theories.
An example of how disability theory applies here. Consider an individual who has a verbal disability, for instance due to a stroke or because they are a baby. With the help of partners (legal guardians, caregivers, etc), that person can still participate in political and social life by working with their partner to communicate via the language that the individual and their partner share. Practically, think of an individual who cannot physically access a polling place for an election. In some states, another designated individual can assist in filling out the ballot and delivering it. An important goal of disability theory is to expand the scope and representativeness of participation through things like changes to voting policies. A similar process could apply to non-human animal participation, with a designated representative of partner helping to interpret preferences.
This framework starts to sound a lot like one of my preferred ways to encourage environmental sustainability, which is to grant legal personhood to features of the environment. The authors don't go into specifics on how partners would be selected or incentivized, but one could imagine, for example, that some fraction of resource rents could go into an account that can be used to fund legal representation, in a similar way that corporations are granted legal personhood and pay for legal representation out of revenues.
Overall, I found the citizenship + disability theory framework really helpful for thinking about domesticated animals. It likely leads to the same place as more traditional animal welfare arguments (namely, emancipation of most domesticated animals), but it is placed in a framework that is both better grounded in our current legal system and which can also encompass liminal and wild animals.
The concept also makes sense for wild animals, although the natural objection is about whether we would be comfortable leaving wild animals to self-govern if we think there are non-human animal rights violations going on in these other, supposedly sovereign places. International law is weak, and what would happen if a country decided to wage war on one of the wild animal nations? It has been too long since I read the book for me to remember the authors' response here, so I should revisit.
Liminal animals pose an even thornier problem. In the citizenship framework, The book presupposes that we are "Kantians when it comes to humans but utilitarians when it comes to animals." One need only look at how immigrants and refugees are treated, however, to see that this is not the case. A major weakness of the book is that it seems to have way too rosy of an image of how humans treat other humans, both in the abstract and in the real world. I still think it would be a tremendous improvement if we treated non-human animals only as badly as we treat other humans, but it is not a panacea.
The other, related weakness is that, as mentioned, the theory relies on, and thus has to accept the baggage of, neoliberal politics. I was surprised by how much progress could be made by accepting this framework, and I certainly see the appeal of trying to "meet the world where it is," but the example of how refugees are treated in practice versus how they might be treated in some more utopian world starts to reveal the cracks in the framework. There is also the unaddressed issue of neoliberalism's sibling, global capitalism, and whether any real sustainability can be achieved while those two hang around. Still, I credit the book with really giving me a lot to think about, and for providing a way to talk about animal welfare even with folks who might be immediately skeptical of more traditional arguments.
Granting citizenship immediately solves some challenging problems with animal welfare. We all have duties to our co-citizens that include things like protection from harm or undue coercion. So citizenship becomes a path to taking animal welfare seriously. The more challenging part of the argument is that these duties typically go both ways. This raises the question of how non-human animals can participate as citizens given communication barriers.
The authors tackle this argument along multiple dimensions. First, they provide a hierarchy of different ways that one can be a citizen. The minimal requirement is mere existence in a state. Think about citizens of a totalitarian state that controls all political action. The people in that state are still citizens even though they are not allowed to have a political voice. The authors don't advocate for that position for animals, but it is important to note that we already have a broad and flexible concept of what citizenship means.
On the other end of the spectrum, the authors argue that non-human animals can and do communicate their preferences to us all the time, so it is not actually hard to fit non-human animals into a more participatory, democratic idea of citizenship. This argument is where the authors bring in a second important framework--disability studies. The authors point to (traditional rather than critical) disabilities studies frameworks as providing guidance on how to create social and political institutions that allow for meaningful participation by all citizens, regardless of cognitive of physical differences. Again, the authors are leveraging neoliberalism to make progress on animal rights issues that have really bogged down previous theories.
An example of how disability theory applies here. Consider an individual who has a verbal disability, for instance due to a stroke or because they are a baby. With the help of partners (legal guardians, caregivers, etc), that person can still participate in political and social life by working with their partner to communicate via the language that the individual and their partner share. Practically, think of an individual who cannot physically access a polling place for an election. In some states, another designated individual can assist in filling out the ballot and delivering it. An important goal of disability theory is to expand the scope and representativeness of participation through things like changes to voting policies. A similar process could apply to non-human animal participation, with a designated representative of partner helping to interpret preferences.
This framework starts to sound a lot like one of my preferred ways to encourage environmental sustainability, which is to grant legal personhood to features of the environment. The authors don't go into specifics on how partners would be selected or incentivized, but one could imagine, for example, that some fraction of resource rents could go into an account that can be used to fund legal representation, in a similar way that corporations are granted legal personhood and pay for legal representation out of revenues.
Overall, I found the citizenship + disability theory framework really helpful for thinking about domesticated animals. It likely leads to the same place as more traditional animal welfare arguments (namely, emancipation of most domesticated animals), but it is placed in a framework that is both better grounded in our current legal system and which can also encompass liminal and wild animals.
The concept also makes sense for wild animals, although the natural objection is about whether we would be comfortable leaving wild animals to self-govern if we think there are non-human animal rights violations going on in these other, supposedly sovereign places. International law is weak, and what would happen if a country decided to wage war on one of the wild animal nations? It has been too long since I read the book for me to remember the authors' response here, so I should revisit.
Liminal animals pose an even thornier problem. In the citizenship framework, The book presupposes that we are "Kantians when it comes to humans but utilitarians when it comes to animals." One need only look at how immigrants and refugees are treated, however, to see that this is not the case. A major weakness of the book is that it seems to have way too rosy of an image of how humans treat other humans, both in the abstract and in the real world. I still think it would be a tremendous improvement if we treated non-human animals only as badly as we treat other humans, but it is not a panacea.
The other, related weakness is that, as mentioned, the theory relies on, and thus has to accept the baggage of, neoliberal politics. I was surprised by how much progress could be made by accepting this framework, and I certainly see the appeal of trying to "meet the world where it is," but the example of how refugees are treated in practice versus how they might be treated in some more utopian world starts to reveal the cracks in the framework. There is also the unaddressed issue of neoliberalism's sibling, global capitalism, and whether any real sustainability can be achieved while those two hang around. Still, I credit the book with really giving me a lot to think about, and for providing a way to talk about animal welfare even with folks who might be immediately skeptical of more traditional arguments.
daytonm's review
4.0
A vital and original approach to animal ethics, focusing on our positive obligations to nonhumans in different contexts: domestication (dogs, chickens, etc.), the wild, and in between (urban crows/coyotes, feral cats, suburban deer, pigeons, house mice, etc.). The writing is kind of dense and I think the authors are too committed to simply extending conventional liberal political theory (which I'd argue falls short in some respects even as it applies to humans, let alone nonhumans) instead of challenging it. The book pushed my thinking in terms of the function of basic, inviolable rights (for humans and nonhumans alike), how much we owe domestic species (and whether they'd be better extinct--the authors say no), and more.
Also did a better job than most animal rights writing of incorporating ecological concerns into a theory of human/wilderness interaction, though I'm surprised they didn't go further in their critiques of human infrastructure (though of course they go further than most people would). They accepted that certain risks to nonhumans are necessary more readily than I would have expected them to given their more radical stance regarding domestic animals (though I think this follows from their liberal conception of citizenship and international relations). Derrick Jensen would have said tear the whole thing down, heh, and I'm not sure who's right.
Anyway, highly highly recommended to anyone interested in this stuff, these are ideas we absolutely need to start grappling with.
Also did a better job than most animal rights writing of incorporating ecological concerns into a theory of human/wilderness interaction, though I'm surprised they didn't go further in their critiques of human infrastructure (though of course they go further than most people would). They accepted that certain risks to nonhumans are necessary more readily than I would have expected them to given their more radical stance regarding domestic animals (though I think this follows from their liberal conception of citizenship and international relations). Derrick Jensen would have said tear the whole thing down, heh, and I'm not sure who's right.
Anyway, highly highly recommended to anyone interested in this stuff, these are ideas we absolutely need to start grappling with.
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