Critical animal studies
Encyclopedia
Critical Animal Studies is a term increasingly used by a wide range of academic groups who variously link it to what is otherwise known as "Animal Studies" (AS), "Human-Animal Studies
" (HAS), or "Posthumanism
." Yet, there are key differences in terms of the ideological and methodological approaches to animal issues between these various fields, as well as the overt or implicit political aims of such research. For instance, many non-critical scholars in Animal Studies (AS) or Human-Animal Studies (HAS) deny that research on animals requires an advocacy perspective. The term AS is rooted in the field of lab animal research, other forms of vivisection, and the land-grant university study of animals for agriculture. HAS, while itself not a critical field by definition, was founded by animal advocate scholars, but HAS generally lacks a strong normative and socially reconstructive agenda. Similarly, interdisciplinary Posthumanist scholars often reduce ethical matters related to nonhuman animals to a poststructural analysis of what the "animal" or "human" means as either representational symbol or linguistic sign. Such politics of representation can have a political character, but it is generally distinguished by a mood of postmodern ambiguity that does not correlate with a strong activist agenda. By contrast, Critical Animal Studies (CAS) was initially developed to provide a scholarly forum for studying the animal liberation movement, guided by a normative commitment to the abolition of animal suffering in all of its many forms.
, Anthony J. Nocella, II and Richard V. Kahn
in 2006/7, as an attempt to provide an interdisciplinary academic forum for the wider theorization of animal liberation
politics through the Center on Animal Liberation Affairs (CALA)
, founded by Steve Best and Anthony J. Nocella, II and in 2001 (later to be known as the Institute for Critical Animal Studies). In the ensuing years, Lisa Kemmerer and Carol Gigliotti joined as members of the directorial board of the Institute. In 2009, Best and Kahn left the Institute over disagreements about the direction of its theory and practice, which they felt was becoming less radical and true to the original vision of articulating a critical and liberatory theory of society deeply rooted in understanding that the domination of nonhuman animals is foundational to the domination of society and nature generally.
Today, CAS is much larger than ICAS and is quickly growing into a highly respected international field of study with programs (see Brock University), working-groups, book series, conferences, forums, books, journal, and sessions.
CAS scholars come from a wide variety of disciplines and fields affiliate with it, including sociology
, peace and conflict studies
, social work
, feminist theory
, anthropology
, film studies
, media studies
, art
, art history
, history
, environmental studies
, geography
, political science
, religious studies
, philosophy
, queer theory
, disability studies
, and critical race theory
.
; Donna Haraway
; Gary L. Francione
; Anthony J. Nocella, II; Richard V. Kahn
; Lisa Kemmerer; Carol Gigliotti; Pattrice Jones; Cary Wolfe
; Carl Boggs; Richard Twine; Amy Fitzgerald; Richard White; Annie Potts; Julie Andrzejewski; Philip Armstrong; Norm Phelps; Stephen Clark; Jodey Castricano; Piers Beirne; Peter Singer; Tom Regan; John Sorenson; Andrew Fitz-Gibbon; Leesa Fawcett; Caroline Kaltefleiter; Amie Breeze Harper; Charlotte Laws; Lauren Corman; Matthew Calarco; Steven Rosen; Anastasia Yarbrough; Bill Martin; David Nibert
; Constance Russell; Maxwell Schnurer; Nicola Taylor; Barbara Noske; Nicole Pallota; Susan Thomas; Bianka Atlas; Laura Shields; Vasile Stanescu; Sarat Colling; Nick Cooney; Jim Mason; Will Tuttle
; Bruce Friedrich; Joan Dunayer; Helena Pedersen; Mark Rowlands; Judy Carman; Ingrid Newkirk
; Sherryl Vint; John C. Alessio; Steven M. Wise
; James K. Stanescu
Human-animal studies
Human–animal studies is a new academic field that examines the relationships between nonhuman and human animals. It includes scholars from a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, biology, and philosophy....
" (HAS), or "Posthumanism
Posthumanism
Posthumanism or post-humanism is a term with five definitions:#Antihumanism: a term applied to a number of thinkers opposed to the project of philosophical anthropology....
." Yet, there are key differences in terms of the ideological and methodological approaches to animal issues between these various fields, as well as the overt or implicit political aims of such research. For instance, many non-critical scholars in Animal Studies (AS) or Human-Animal Studies (HAS) deny that research on animals requires an advocacy perspective. The term AS is rooted in the field of lab animal research, other forms of vivisection, and the land-grant university study of animals for agriculture. HAS, while itself not a critical field by definition, was founded by animal advocate scholars, but HAS generally lacks a strong normative and socially reconstructive agenda. Similarly, interdisciplinary Posthumanist scholars often reduce ethical matters related to nonhuman animals to a poststructural analysis of what the "animal" or "human" means as either representational symbol or linguistic sign. Such politics of representation can have a political character, but it is generally distinguished by a mood of postmodern ambiguity that does not correlate with a strong activist agenda. By contrast, Critical Animal Studies (CAS) was initially developed to provide a scholarly forum for studying the animal liberation movement, guided by a normative commitment to the abolition of animal suffering in all of its many forms.
Overview
Critical Animal Studies (CAS) was introduced by Steven BestSteven Best
Steven Best is an American animal rights activist, author, talk-show host, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso...
, Anthony J. Nocella, II and Richard V. Kahn
Richard V. Kahn
Richard Kahn is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University Los Angeles, where he specializes in ecopedagogy, a form of education for sustainability...
in 2006/7, as an attempt to provide an interdisciplinary academic forum for the wider theorization of animal liberation
Animal Liberation
Animal liberation may refer to:*Animal rights, animals being considered as legal persons**Animal-liberation movement**Abolitionism , an abolitionist approach to animal rights**Veganarchism, a combined theory of animal liberation and anarchism...
politics through the Center on Animal Liberation Affairs (CALA)
Center on Animal Liberation Affairs
The Center on Animal Liberation Affairs is a scholarly center established to advance the study and discourse of animal liberation principles and practices....
, founded by Steve Best and Anthony J. Nocella, II and in 2001 (later to be known as the Institute for Critical Animal Studies). In the ensuing years, Lisa Kemmerer and Carol Gigliotti joined as members of the directorial board of the Institute. In 2009, Best and Kahn left the Institute over disagreements about the direction of its theory and practice, which they felt was becoming less radical and true to the original vision of articulating a critical and liberatory theory of society deeply rooted in understanding that the domination of nonhuman animals is foundational to the domination of society and nature generally.
Today, CAS is much larger than ICAS and is quickly growing into a highly respected international field of study with programs (see Brock University), working-groups, book series, conferences, forums, books, journal, and sessions.
CAS scholars come from a wide variety of disciplines and fields affiliate with it, including sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, peace and conflict studies
Peace and conflict studies
Peace and conflict studies is a social science field that identifies and analyses violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending social conflicts with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition...
, social work
Social work
Social Work is a professional and academic discipline that seeks to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of an individual, group, or community by intervening through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice, and teaching on behalf of those afflicted with poverty or any real or...
, feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, film studies
Film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...
, media studies
Media studies
Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, environmental studies
Environmental studies
Environmental studies is the academic field which systematically studies human interaction with the environment. It is a broad interdisciplinary field of study that includes the natural environment, built environment, and the sets of relationships between them...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, religious studies
Religious studies
Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, queer theory
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
, disability studies
Disability studies
Disability studies is a relatively new interdisciplinary academic field focusing on the roles of people with disabilities in history, literature, social policy, law, architecture, and other disciplines. Although it has many antecedents, disability studies began to flourish toward the end of the...
, and critical race theory
Critical race theory
Critical Race Theory is an academic discipline focused upon the intersection of race, law and power.Although no set of canonical doctrines or methodologies defines CRT, the movement is loosely unified by two common areas of inquiry...
.
Approach
Critical Animal Studies (CAS) opposes Animal Studies (AS), which is historically rooted in the fields of agricultural and animal research and vivisection. "CAS is the academic field of study dedicated to the abolition of animal and ecological exploitation, oppression, and domination. CAS is grounded in a broad global emancipatory inclusionary movement for total liberation and freedom." .The Institute for Critical Animal Studies describes ten tenets for Critical Animal Studies such that it:
- 1. Pursues interdisciplinary collaborative writing and research in a rich and comprehensive manner that includes perspectives typically ignored by animal studies such as political economy.
- 2. Rejects pseudo-objective academic analysis by explicitly clarifying its normative values and political commitments, such that there are no positivist illusions whatsoever that theory is disinterested or writing and research is nonpolitical. To support experiential understanding and subjectivity.
- 3. Eschews narrow academic viewpoints and the debilitating theory-for-theory’s sake position in order to link theory to practice, analysis to politics, and the academy to the community.
- 4. Advances a holistic understanding of the commonality of oppressions, such that speciesism, sexism, racism, ablism, statism, classism, militarism and other hierarchical ideologies and institutions are viewed as parts of a larger, interlocking, global system of domination.
- 5. Rejects apolitical, conservative, and liberal positions in order to advance an anti-capitalist, and, more generally, a radical anti-hierarchical politics. This orientation seeks to dismantle all structures of exploitation, domination, oppression, torture, killing, and power in favor of decentralizing and democratizing society at all levels and on a global basis.
- 6. Rejects reformist, single-issue, nation-based, legislative, strictly animal interest politics in favor of alliance politics and solidarity with other struggles against oppression and hierarchy.
- 7. Champions a politics of total liberation which grasps the need for, and the inseparability of, human, nonhuman animal, and Earth liberation and freedom for all in one comprehensive, though diverse, struggle; to quote Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
- 8. Deconstructs and reconstructs the socially constructed binary oppositions between human and nonhuman animals, a move basic to mainstream animal studies, but also looks to illuminate related dichotomies between culture and nature, civilization and wilderness and other dominator hierarchies to emphasize the historical limits placed upon humanity, nonhuman animals, cultural/political norms, and the liberation of nature as part of a transformative project that seeks to transcend these limits towards greater freedom, peace, and ecological harmony.
- 9. Openly supports and examines controversial radical politics and strategies used in all kinds of social justice movements, such as those that involve economic sabotage from boycotts to direct action toward the goal of peace.
- 10. Seeks to create openings for constructive critical dialogue on issues relevant to Critical Animal Studies across a wide-range of academic groups; citizens and grassroots activists; the staffs of policy and social service organizations; and people in private, public, and non-profit sectors. Through – and only through — new paradigms of ecopedagogy, bridge-building with other social movements, and a solidarity-based alliance politics, is it possible to build the new forms of consciousness, knowledge, social institutions that are necessary to dissolve the hierarchical society that has enslaved this planet for the last ten thousand years.
Related Authors
Steven BestSteven Best
Steven Best is an American animal rights activist, author, talk-show host, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso...
; Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
; Gary L. Francione
Gary L. Francione
Gary Lawrence Francione is an American legal scholar. He is the Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law & Philosophy at Rutgers School of Law-Newark....
; Anthony J. Nocella, II; Richard V. Kahn
Richard V. Kahn
Richard Kahn is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University Los Angeles, where he specializes in ecopedagogy, a form of education for sustainability...
; Lisa Kemmerer; Carol Gigliotti; Pattrice Jones; Cary Wolfe
Cary Wolfe
Cary Wolfe currently teaches English at Rice University, and is a published author. He was born and grew up in North Carolina.-Education:In 1984 Wolfe read Interdisciplinary Studies in English, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill, where he received a B.A. with Highest...
; Carl Boggs; Richard Twine; Amy Fitzgerald; Richard White; Annie Potts; Julie Andrzejewski; Philip Armstrong; Norm Phelps; Stephen Clark; Jodey Castricano; Piers Beirne; Peter Singer; Tom Regan; John Sorenson; Andrew Fitz-Gibbon; Leesa Fawcett; Caroline Kaltefleiter; Amie Breeze Harper; Charlotte Laws; Lauren Corman; Matthew Calarco; Steven Rosen; Anastasia Yarbrough; Bill Martin; David Nibert
David Nibert
Dr. David Alan Nibert is an American sociologist, author, and professor of Sociology at Wittenberg University. He co-organized the "Section on Animals and Society" of the American Sociological Association. In 2005 he received their "Award for Distinguished Scholarship." Nibert connects animal...
; Constance Russell; Maxwell Schnurer; Nicola Taylor; Barbara Noske; Nicole Pallota; Susan Thomas; Bianka Atlas; Laura Shields; Vasile Stanescu; Sarat Colling; Nick Cooney; Jim Mason; Will Tuttle
Will Tuttle
Dr Will Tuttle, PhD, is an award-winning American author, speaker, educator, pianist and composer. He is a former Zen monk and a PhD graduate from the University of California, Berkeley. He has been awarded a Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award His wife Madeleine is a visual artist...
; Bruce Friedrich; Joan Dunayer; Helena Pedersen; Mark Rowlands; Judy Carman; Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk is a British-born animal rights activist and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the world's largest animal rights organization...
; Sherryl Vint; John C. Alessio; Steven M. Wise
Steven M. Wise
Steven M. Wise is an American legal scholar who specializes in animal protection issues, primatology, and animal intelligence. He teaches animal rights law at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, John Marshall Law School, Lewis & Clark Law School, and Tufts University School of Veterinary...
; James K. Stanescu
Literature
- Harway, Donna (2008). "When Species Meet". Minnesota.
- Best, Steven and Nocella, Anthony J. (2004). Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals. Lantern Books.
- Best, Steven and Nocella, Anthony J. (2006). Igniting A Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth. AK Press
- Kahn, Richard (2010). Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement. Peter Lang.
- Kemmerer, Lisa (2006). In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals. Brill Academic Publishers.
- Gigliotti, Carol ed. (2009).Leonardo's Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals. Springer.
- Twine, Richard (2010). Animals as Biotechnology – Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies. Earthscan.
See also
- IntersectionalityIntersectionalityIntersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw . Intersectionality is a methodology of studying "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations"...
- Human-animal studiesHuman-animal studiesHuman–animal studies is a new academic field that examines the relationships between nonhuman and human animals. It includes scholars from a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, biology, and philosophy....
- Critical theoryCritical theoryCritical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
- EcopedagogyEcopedagogyThe ecopedagogy movement is an outgrowth of developments in critical pedagogy, a body of educational ideas and practices influenced by the philosopher, Paulo Freire...
- EcofeminismEcofeminismEcofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
- Abolitionism (animal rights)Abolitionism (animal rights)Abolitionism within the animal rights movement is the idea that focusing on animal welfare reform not only fails to challenge animal suffering, but may prolong it by making the exercise of property rights over animals appear acceptable. The abolitionists' objective is to secure a moral and legal...