The role of philosophical theory in political activism: animal advocacy and the political turn

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The role of philosophical theory in political activism:

animal advocacy and the political turn

Master’s thesis in Philosophy of a specific discipline (Sociology) University of Amsterdam

Joost Leuven

jleuven@gmail.com

Student number: 10061606

Supervisors: Dr. Robin Celikates and Eva Meijer MA Second reader: Dr. Karen Vintges

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“Seeing social movements as a source of vision and voice, rather than the van-guard of a new world, I am not bothered by the fact that they accomplish so few of their stated goals. These goals are often overdrawn; the importance of protestors, I think, lies more in their moral visions than their practical accom-plishments. They are more like poets than engineers.”

James Jasper

The Art of Moral Protest : Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997: p. 379)

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Although the animal rights movement is certainly winning some battles in the struggle for animal emancipation, it seems it is losing the war. Most philoso-phers, trying to explain the movement’s overall failure, have turned towards the animals rights activists and animal rights organisations themselves, arguing that they are to blame for the movement’s failure, because they adhere to and promote a flawed animal ethic. This thesis will argue that philosophers are mis-taken in this regard. It will discuss recent theoretical developments in animal ethics and explore the role of philosophical theory in contemporary animal advocacy.

The contemporary animal rights movement is one of the rare cases of a social movement that was instigated primarily by the work of moral philosophers. The philosophical writings of authors such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Richard Ryder changed attitudes towards animals in the 1970s, inspired activ-ists and thus helped bring about a new social movement aimed at the emanci-pation of animals (Jasper & Nelkin 1992). Interest in the human-animal rela-tionship and concern for the wellbeing of animals has been growing, both pub-lically and academically (Aaltola 2011). This hasn’t translated though into a decline of the number of animals that are being held captive and killed for hu-man consumption each year. In fact, those numbers still seem to be growing rapidly, as well as the number of animals whose habitat is being threatened by the continued expansion of human settlements (Wadiwel 2009: p. 283-285). Furthermore, while the numbers of people who are vegetarian or vegan might indeed be growing, the number of ex-vegans and ex-vegetarians is growing too (Cooney 2004: p. 85-86). Although the movement has achieved some success, after forty years of activism the emancipation of nonhuman animals still seems almost as far away as it was decades ago. These troubling developments urge philosophers, political scientists and activists to reflect critically on the strate-gy, ideology and tactics of the animal rights movement and try to find an

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an-swer to the question why the animal rights movement seems to be so unsuc-cessful.

The most prominent philosophical debate dealing with the movement’s strate-gy is the ‘abolition or regulation’ debate, which centres on the question wheth-er activists should promote modwheth-erate welfare reforms (such as largwheth-er cages or more humane types of slaughter) to achieve animal liberation or should instead more consistently foster animal rights philosophy and stick to advocating the total abolition of all animal use. While this debate focuses on the strategy of the movement, it is also a debate about the movement’s ideology and philo-sophical theory, as the two main rivalling positions are closely related to two prominent opposing theories within personal ethics, namely utilitarian welfar-ism and deontological rights theory. The choice of activists to promote one or the other of these two theories, lies at the core of the movement’s problems, according to philosophers such as Gary Francione and Robert Garner. Propo-nents of rights theory argue that activists have largely rejected rights theory and have chosen a welfarist philosophy, and they blame this for the movement’s failure, as they believe welfarist messages do not adequately challenge the property status of animals and may even somewhat legitimize animal use. Pro-ponents of welfarism on the other hand argue that it is a strict adherence to rights theory that has been holding the movement back.

In recent years the field of animal ethics has undergone a ‘political turn’, a turn from personal ethics towards political theory. One of the most prominent ex-amples of such a political theory is the one proposed by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka in their book Zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights (2011). They criticize the traditional positions within animal ethics, such as welfarism and rights theory, for focussing too much on negative obligations (such as the right not to be enslaved, killed or experimented upon), whilst ig-noring the positive obligations humans might have towards animals (such as duties to help animals in need, to provide healthcare for animals in the commu-nity and respect animals’ habitat). They propose to supplement universal

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nega-tive rights for animals with group-differentiated posinega-tive rights for animals. They argue that their political theory of animal rights is not only more com-plete and compelling philosophically, but might also solve the animal rights movement ineffectiveness (Donaldson & Kylicka 2011: p. 5, 252-258). In this sense, Donaldson and Kymlicka too, just like the other authors in the ‘abolition or regulation’ debate, argue that the failure of the animal rights movement can be partially attributed to activists fostering a wrong philosophical theory. The academic debate on Zoopolis has mostly focused on its intellectual merits, the extent to which its philosophical theory is able to provide a more compelling and complete picture of what a post-animal liberation society would look like. Little has been said about its strategic and political merits for the animal rights movement and the way a shift in philosophical theory might impact political activism. This thesis aims to remedy this by exploring the relationship between philosophical theory and animal advocacy in relation to the political theory presented in Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis.

Because many philosophers attribute the failure of the animal rights movement to particular philosophical theories that are supposedly being promoted, I will in the first chapter, Philosophical theories on the human-animal relationship, look at the different philosophical theories in contemporary animal ethics. It will discuss the essential characteristics of welfarism and rights theory as well as review Donaldson and Kymlicka’s political theory, answering the first re-search question, namely whether philosophers should take an explicitly politi-cal approach to animal ethics and look at positive animal rights as well as negative ones. This review of the philosophical merits of Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory and the comparison with the other theories will form the basis for the evaluation of the strategic merits of their theory in the third chap-ter.

In the second chapter, The role of philosophy in animal advocacy, I will focus on answering the second research question, namely what role philosophical theory currently plays in animal advocacy and whether this is the role it ought

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to play. I will problematize a basic assumption that many of the authors dis-cussed in the first chapter share, namely that animal activists choose one of the mentioned philosophical theories within animal ethics to adhere to and pro-mote. An overview of the results of sociological research will be given, that seems to indicate quite the opposite, namely that activists are sceptical about the usefulness of philosophy theory. This chapter will not only discuss why it is problematic that activists have such a disregard for philosophical theory, but will also discuss the consequences of these findings for the academic debate on the strategy of the animal rights movement.

In the third chapter, The political turn and social movement strategy, I will bring the findings of the previous two chapters together. This chapter will an-swer the third research question, namely what practical consequences a politi-cal turn in philosophipoliti-cal theory would have for the strategy and methods of the animal rights movement. It will argue in favour of a larger role for philosophi-cal theory in advocacy and discuss what it would mean for the animal rights movement to accept a political theory of animal rights and more unambiguous-ly advocate negative and positive rights. At the same time it will be claimed, that we shouldn’t be overly optimistic. It will be argued, that a political turn is philosophically a necessity and that fostering such a philosophy more transpar-ently, is advantageous for the animal rights movement, but that the animal rights movement will still face large opposition from almost all parts of society and that emancipation for animals is therefore not likely to occur any time soon.

Finally, in the fourth chapter, the Conclusion, I will summarise the conclusions of the previous chapters, identify their consequences for the academic debate and discuss their ramifications, not for activists or the animal rights movement, but for philosophers, as, in this discussion about philosophical theory and so-cial movements, it is easy to overlook the role of philosophers themselves .

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1 Philosophical theories on the human-animal relationship

The aim of this chapter is twofold. Firstly it will provide the theoretical back-ground for this thesis by discussing the predominant positions in traditional animal ethics, as well as review Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis. Second-ly, and more importantSecond-ly, in doing so, it will investigate the first research ques-tion, namely whether an explicitly political approach to animal ethics, one that looks at positive animal rights as well as negative ones, is necessary to ade-quately answer all the relevant philosophical questions on the human-animal relationship. This chapter will argue in favour of positive and negative rights for animals, and it will argue that Donaldson and Kymlicka rightfully criticize philosophers in the contemporary debate for focussing too much on negative rights. While Donaldson and Kymlicka should be praised for making a thor-ough and convincing case for a political turn in theorizing about animal rights that finally moves the debate on animal ethics forward, their own political the-ory is not free from shortcomings.

First I will look at the most prominent views within traditional animal ethics (welfarism and rights theory) and argue in favour of inviolable negative rights for animals. Then I will outline the main characteristics of the citizenship ap-proach of Donaldson and Kymlicka, argue in favour of positive rights and dis-cuss the different critiques that have been voiced against it. Finally, I will in-vestigate to what extent their vision radically departs from the traditional ani-mal rights view and end with answering the question how to interpret these recent developments in animal ethics.

1.1 Negative rights and obligations: welfare or rights?

In the traditional philosophical debate on animal ethics, there have been two opposing philosophies that have dominated most discussions regarding the moral status of animals, namely ‘welfarism’ and ‘animal rights theory’ (Sztybel 2010).

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The first of those theories, welfarism, holds that animal suffering is something that matters morally and that ‘unnecessary suffering’ should be avoided as much as possible. Proponents of welfarism usually advocate reforms and regu-lations within animal husbandry to reduce suffering that can be avoided in the human use of animals. The welfarist position usually sees no fundamental problem in using and killing animals for human purposes though, as long as this is done ‘humanely’. In this sense, the welfarist position can be described as the mainstream and most common position on the moral status of animals. It is the position most people in society hold. Philosophically, the welfarist position on the moral status of animals is mostly associated and defended by utilitarian authors.1 As a moral theory, utilitarianism has a long history going back to au-thors such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism defines the ultimate moral good as the maximization of utility, which is usually defined as pleasure, happiness or the absence of pain and suffering (Singer 1979: p. 3, Visak 2011: p. 15-16, 30-34). Proponents of a utilitarian perspective on animal ethics, such as Peter Singer (1975, 1979), have argued that pain should be min-imized indiscriminately, regardless of the biological species that the suffering individual belongs to. The failure to do so has been described as ‘speciesist’, a word that was coined by Richard Ryder and popularized by Peter Singer in his book Animal Liberation (1976), as an analogy to words like racism or sexism.

1_{The term welfarism is in fact used for a spectrum of different, related, philosophical} posi-tions that all advocate the humane use of nonhuman animals. Francione (1996: p. 3), for ex-ample, distinguishes (and criticizes) a type of welfarism he calls ‘new welfarism’, which is a position that many activists hold, according to him, and which recognises the need for invio-lable rights for nonhuman animals, but out of pragmatic reasons promotes welfare reforms instead of more far-reaching abolitionist goals. For a more complete overview of the differ-ent types of welfarism, see Sztybel (2010) and for a more in-depth discussion of what dif-ferentiates ‘new welfarism’ from regular ‘welfarism’ see Francione (2008) and Francione & Garner (2010).

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Utilitarian authors have argued that the interests of animals should be taken more seriously and have pleaded for vegetarianism as a way to reduce suffer-ing. Most of them also maintain though that animals, unlike human beings, do not have an interest in remaining alive or, at least, that death is a lesser harm for animals, because they do not have as many desires for the far future (Visak 2011: p. 73) and are not self-conscious (Francione & Garner 2010: p. 116). Animals wouldn’t be interested in that they are being used, only in how they are being used (Visak 2011: p. 14). Utilitarianism does not accord animals (or human beings for that matter) unalienable rights. According to utilitarianism there would be nothing fundamentally wrong with using or even killing an an-imal, as long as the overall benefits outweigh the costs. For example, Peter Singer says the following in Animal Liberation:

“In any case, the conclusions argued for in this book flow from the principle of minimizing suffering alone. [...] Interestingly, this is true even of the conclusion that we ought to become vegetarians, a conclu-sion that in the popular mind is generally based on some kind of abso-lute prohibition on killing.” (Singer 1975: p. 21)

It is this position, that animals do not have the absolute inviolable right not to be killed or used, that is challenged by animal rights theory, the other dominant theory in animal ethics.

Animal rights theory was first articulated by Tom Regan in his 1983 book The Case for Animal Rights, but has since then more prominently been defended by authors such as Gary Francione (2000/2008), Gary Steiner (2008) and Joan Dunayer (2004). While ‘animal rights’ can refer to any list of rights of animals, animal rights theory, as it is usually understood, holds that animals, just like human beings, have certain inviolable rights. Most authors who write from this position, believe animals have many different inviolable rights (Dunayer 2004: p. 139-147), but focus on one basic (negative) right, namely the right not to be

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killed or used, believing this fundamental right to be the basis for all other rights. This basic right is sometimes described as the ‘right to be treated with respect’ (Regan 2004: pp. 9-10), ‘the right to life and liberty’ (Donaldson & Kymlicka 2014a) or the ‘right not to be treated as the property of others’ (Fran-cione 2008: p. 24). Proponents of rights theory argue that animals deserve such rights because they are sentient or ‘subject of a life’: they experience the world and what happens to them matters to them (Regan 1983, Francione 2008). Be-cause animals can be considered to be ‘selves’, not unlike humans, they too deserve protection in the form of rights. Granting them these rights would mean that many of the practices in which human beings now use animals, need not only to be reformed, but actually to be abolished completely, as they fun-damentally infringe on the basic interests of animals. As Tom Regan (2004) put it:

“When it comes to how humans exploit animals, recognition of their rights requires abolition, not reform. Being kind to animals is not enough. Avoiding cruelty is not enough. Whether we exploit animals to eat, to wear, to entertain us, or to learn, the truth of animal rights re-quires empty cages, not larger cages.” (Regan 2004: p. 10)

Because it is wrong to exploit animals for human gain, the animal rights posi-tion rejects animal husbandry as well as the domesticaposi-tion of animals. In this regard, rights theory differs fundamentally from welfarism, as it is a deontolog-ical normative ethic, not a utilitarian one, judging the morality of actions not on the basis of the consequences of those actions, but on whether they follow cer-tain principles or rules. The aim is not simply to reduce animal suffering, but to do justice to animals. The animal rights position holds that justice, in the case of animals, requires not merely reform, but complete abolition of the use of animals, similar to how human slavery needed to be abolished completely (Re-gan 2010b). It is because of this stance, that the rights position is sometimes also referred to as the ‘abolitionist position’ or ‘the abolitionist approach’.

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Both positions argue that animal interests should be taken more seriously and problematize many of the ways human beings currently interact with nonhu-man animals. The animal rights position goes one step further than the welfar-ist position though in arguing that animals deserve inviolable rights. One of the strongest arguments made in defence of animal rights is the one that is de-scribed as ‘the argument from marginal cases’. In short, this argument con-cludes, that there can be made no morally relevant distinction between animals and certain ‘marginal’ groups within human society, like infants or comatose patients, who, like animals, lack many of the qualities we often associate with adult human beings, like purposiveness, self-consciousness, memory, imagina-tion etc. The claim made by the argument from marginal cases is, that since in ordinary conduct people generally do not want to deny individuals belonging to these ‘marginal groups’ inviolable rights, we should also accord those rights to animals, since there is no reasoned justification for treating them differently. While there is a lot of controversy about what the philosophical foundation of inviolable rights in general should be, the argument from marginal cases makes a convincing claim that all individuals, human or nonhuman, regardless of their further mental capacities, deserve protection of their basic interests. The argu-ment from marginal cases can be considered an important arguargu-ment in favour of animal rights, because it shows that all attempts to limit a theory of rights to human beings, fail (Dombrowski 1997: p. 4; Francione 2000: p. xxvi).2

In the next section, I will delve into Donaldson and Kymlicka’s political theo-ry, that argues that nonhuman animals not only deserve inviolable negative rights, such as rights not to be used or killed, but positive ones as well. I will

2_{For a more detailed exploration of these issues, see Francione (2000), Ryder (2011) or} Stei-ner (2008). For a more detailed analysis of the argument from marginal cases and the many controversies surrounding it, see Daniel Dombriwski’s Babies and Beasts: The Argument

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discuss its main characteristics, as well as the main points of critique that have been voiced against it.

1.2 Positive animal rights

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s political theory of animal rights was first presented in Zoopolis: a Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011) and later expanded upon in subsequent publications (2014a, 2014b, 2014c). It is part of a recent political turn in contemporary animal ethics, a turn from personal ethics to political theory3.

For a long time the academic debate on animal ethics that was started in the 70s and 80s, had mostly been standing still, being dominated by a discussion on personal ethics. Throughout the years many different authors have tried un-successfully to revitalize this debate4. The political turn in animal ethics though seems to be successful in reviving interest in this academic field.

3_{Other examples of recent publications on the human-animal relationship from the} perspec-tive of political philosophy are Robert Garner’s A Theory of Justice for Animals (2013) and Alasdair Cochrane’s Animal Rights without Liberation (2012). While Donaldson and Kymlicka’s political theory can be seen mostly as a supplement to traditional abolitionist animal rights theory, Garner and Cochrane both take a different direction. Donaldson and Kymlicha’s theory places a large emphasis on both agency and dependency, as they base a large part of their work on existing literature related to citizenship of people with cognitive disabilities. Cochrane (2012) doesn’t place such an emphasis on agency, arguing that ani-mals are not autonomous agents and have no interest in liberty itself. Garner (2013) focuses on developing a nonideal theory of animal justice, that describes the transitions from where we are to where we want to be.

4_{Clare Palmer (2001), for example, has developed a relational account of animal ethics and} Richard Ryder (2001, 2011) has attempted to merge utilitarianism and rights theory in a completely new ethical theory he calls ‘Painism’, that is very much inspired by Rawlsian social contract theory and that blends consequentialist considerations with rights theory’s respect for the inviolability of individuals.

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Donaldson and Kymlicka analyse the traditional animal rights debate and criti-cize its focus on negative rights and duties. They point out that in the contem-porary philosophical debate authors writing from the welfarist and the rights position have mostly focused on arguing in favour of universal basic negative rights or obligations (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: p. 6-7, p. 261). While the different positions discussed previously acknowledge the existence of positive rights or duties to some extent, both have failed to adequately address what these would entail. Donaldson and Kymlicka argue that this is problematic, both philosophically and practically, and see this limited view on the human-animal relationship as the reason not only for the intellectual stagnation of the philosophical debate in the past decades, but also as the reason for the political stagnation, the ineffectiveness, of the animal rights movement.

Donaldson and Kymlicka aim to supplement the traditional theory of universal negative rights for animals, with a theory of differentiated positive rights, based on the position of animals within the mixed species community, forming a ‘Zoopolis’. Because such a theory gives a more ‘optimistic’ and complete picture of the future of human-animal relations, as it no longer solely empha-sises how people should not relate to animals, but also gives a perspective on how people should relate to them, Donaldson and Kymlicka hope it will be more effective in convincing the public.

In Zoopolis, they propose to give different groups of animals different positive rights: domesticated animals deserve to get the equivalent of citizenship rights (rights of reproduction, medical care and even some form of political represen-tation), wild animal populations should be treated as sovereign communities and ‘liminal animals’, animals who are neither domesticated nor wild, such as rats, pigeons and other urban wildlife, deserve the equivalent of denizenship rights. Donaldson and Kymlicka shed light on some of the shortcomings of the traditional approaches within animal ethics. Firstly, since most other approach-es have focused on negative rights and obligations alone, it was prone to giving the false impression that there shouldn’t be any human-animal relations at all

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and the best we could hope for, was a future in which animals and humans lived completely segregated lives (Franklin 1999). This of course would be impossible, even if it was desirable, and Donaldson and Kymlicka’s approach fixes this by unambiguously welcoming and acknowledging the place of non-human animals in the community. By granting wild animals sovereignty they point out that ‘just let them be’ is a too simplistic answer to the question of how to interact with wild animals, as interaction is ultimately unavoidable. Just as in the human case, respecting sovereignty is a very active practice, as it re-quires constant monitoring of how our actions might negatively affect their lives and it also sometimes requires active intervention to prevent harm (for example in the case of oil spills). Secondly, by granting domesticated animal citizenship rights, they tackle an issue that most theorists uneasily have avoided until now: while it is easy to reject the practice of domesticating wild animals, it is quite a different and difficult question what the positive rights should be of the animals that we already brought into our community. Simply saying we should take care of them and stop actively breeding new ones, which is what authors traditionally have been saying, does not answer all questions. Lastly, by explicitly introducing the group of ‘liminal animals’, they problematize the fact that current approaches have almost nothing to say about this group of animals, even though they are the type of animals that people are most likely to come in contact with on a daily basis.

While overall Kymlicka and Donaldson’s book has, rightfully, been received with a lot of praise and enthusiasm for tackling some of the shortcomings of traditional approaches (Bailey 2013, Gruen 2013, Meijer 2012), there has also been critique, as their theory has some shortcomings of its own.

It is questionable whether the best way of conceptualizing the place of animals within the larger community is adapting a version of human citizenship. In a review of Zoopolis, Dinesh Wadiwel (2013) voices concern for the fact that their approach draws heavily upon a liberal political framework and the com-mon model of nation-state-based citizenship rights. While it indeed is one of

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appealing aspects of their theory that it ‘works within (rather than without) the logic and toolbox of liberalism’ (Wadiwel 2013: p. 757), it also makes their approach susceptible to the same critique as those existing models of citizen-ship, which, in the human case, are also not uncontroversial or without prob-lems.

For example, Billy-Ray Belcourt criticizes Zoopolis for this in his article Ani-mal Bodies, Colonial Subjects: (Re)Locating AniAni-mality in Decolonial Thought (2014) in which he suggests that ‘Zoopolis is representative of a neoliberal trend in CAS [critical animal studies] wherein the re-construction of animality is only conceivable through settler-colonial epistemologies’ (Billy-Ray Belcourt 2014: p. 3). Belcourt criticizes the theory proposed by Donaldson and Kymlicka for aiming to erase colonized subjects, in this case domesticated an-imals, not by killing them, but by assimilating them, making them abandon indigeneity for settler ways of living. I think this certainly is an interesting per-spective on animal citizenship, but it doesn’t really do justice to the project of Donaldson and Kymlicka. While discussing how their theory differs from tra-ditional animal rights theory, they touch upon the role of animals in shaping what nonhuman citizenship will look like:

“In our view, we need an entirely new starting point. We need to start from the premise that humans and domesticated animals already form a shared community – we have brought domesticated animals into our society, and we owe them membership in it. This is now their home, where they belong, and their interests must be included in our conception of the common good of the community. And this in turn requires enabling animals to shape the evolution of our shared society, contributing to decisions about how much their (and our) lives should go. We need to attend to what sorts of relationships animals themselves want to have with us (and with each other), which are likely to develop over time, and to vary from individual to individual.” (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: p. 100)

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This does not seem like assimilation, and Donaldson and Kymlicka are very reserved about forcing a kind of citizenship onto animals.

Relatedly, Alasdair Cochrane (2014) has criticised Zoopolis for the way it clas-sifies animals. Cochrane argues that in some cases wild animals might even have a more legitimate claim to, for example, a right to healthcare than domes-ticated animals do, and that Zoopolis therefore unfairly restricts those rights to only domesticated animals. He believes many of the group-differentiated rights Donaldson and Kymlicka choose to give to domesticated animal citizens, should actually be seen as universal rights, and he therefore argues for a more ‘cosmopolitan’ Zoopolis. Cochrane shows that the question of what rights should be accorded to what groups, is far from clear and needs to be further debated still. Abandoning the idea of grouping animals in different categories though is likely not a good idea, as it would mean abandoning one of the most novel insights of Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory, namely that the interests of animals, as well as what positive rights they have, differ greatly depending on what kind of animal you are talking about.

Another point of critique of Cochrane (2014) is aimed at the way Donaldson and Kymlicka picture the wild animal community. We might, as Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011: p. 156) propose, treat wild animals as being part of sov-ereign communities, but they do not actually form such communities, and most animals live solitary lives and form predatory relationships with each other. In response to Cochrane, Donaldson and Kymlicka (2014a) have indeed admitted, that wild animals might not form such communities, but argue that granting them sovereignty rights, as if they did, helps fulfil the moral purpose of ac-knowledging their interests, in particular the interest to be left alone and main-tain their own habitat. Granting wild animals sovereignty is a way of acknowl-edging and protecting these interests. This might be a satisfactory answer to the question why it is justified to treat wild animals as if they were part of their own political communities, but it does show that more theoretical work on how to correctly conceptualise wild animal communities, is still necessary.

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One other question one could raise against Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory is the question whether granting animals citizenship will succeed in removing the unjust hierarchy between individuals from different species. While Don-aldson and Kymlicka argue, as was cited above, that individual animals might throughout their lives move from one category to another (a dog, for example, could shift from a domesticated to a more liminal or even a wild lifestyle) and that the animals themselves might also play a part in determining how such society would look like, in the end, it seems, it will still be human beings who decide, whether an individual animal is considered to be a part of our commu-nity, who gets rights, and who does not. Animals clearly have a form of agen-cy, are a part of social networks, and can, either intentionally or unintentional-ly, play a part in effecting social change (Hribal 2007). This doesn’t mean however, they will be able to represent themselves democratically. As Don-aldson and Kymlicka admit (2011: p. 153-154), human beings will most likely have to represent animals politically, and it is unclear how to ensure that the animal’s interests will be fairly represented and speciesist practices will not be continued.

To summarize, it seems that, Donaldson and Kymlicka do make a good case, why it is problematic that the animal ethics debate has focused almost exclu-sively on granting animals negative rights, ignoring the question of positive rights, and what role animals should play within the political community. However, there are still some serious shortcomings and questions related to Donaldson and Kymlicka’s own political theory of animal rights.

1.3 Interpreting the political turn

Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis distinguishes itself from the traditional theories in that it places more emphasis on positive rights and on the place of animals within the political community. Their theory still is however unmis-takably an abolitionist theory of animal rights, as it rejects the property status

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of animals, acknowledges that they have inviolable negative rights, and funda-mentally rejects practices such as animal experimentation, domestication and slaughter. Authors of the traditional animal rights approach might focus their attention on negative rights, but they have not argued against positive rights. Most of them acknowledge that animals should have positive rights and also argue that humans and animals cannot be completely segregated. For example, Joan Dunayer (2004: p. 141) acknowledges that free-living animals can’t be completely isolated from humans, as animals constantly cross the boundaries of human settlements and humans encounter (liminal) animals on a daily basis, in public parks for example. She sees this as a reason why animals need more rights than just a basic right not to be killed, but also rights of territory, as well as positive rights to own property for example.

Also, Donaldson and Kymlicka’s position on domesticated animals is less of a radical break and more of a supplement to existing rights theory. Donaldson and Kymlicka criticize the fact that proponents of animal rights theory as well as activists and organisations often argue in favour of the extinction of domes-tication animal species and are supportive of sterilization programs for stray animals. Their critique is justified and highly relevant, as these sterilization programs systematically violate animals’ basic rights of reproduction and their bodily integrity. It is quite disturbing that these practices that violate animals’ positive and negative rights, are often being promoted, funded and organised by animal rights organisations. Gary Francione has fiercely criticized organisa-tions such as PETA for ‘humanely’ killing stray animals, but he maintains that the sterilization of stray animals is consistent with the animal rights position (Francione & Garner 2010: p. 80).

Both philosophical positions fundamentally agree though on the fact that hu-mans have positive obligations towards those animals we have brought into our community. For example, Gary Francione has on multiple occasions urged people to adopt stray animals and argued that we have a positive duty towards those animals (Francione & Garner 2010: p. 79). Furthermore, both positions

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also agree, that some human intervention in the reproduction of domesticated animals is necessary and seems almost unavoidable. Donaldson and Kymlicka are in favour of exercising control over breeding these animals to undo harmful damage we did to their genetic make-up through centuries of breeding:

“[H]uman breeding of animals has resulted in a wide array of health problems – breathing problems, shortened lifespans, increased vulnera-bility to temperature extremes, flesh-to-bone ratios which mean that adult animals cannot support their own weight, and so on. Animals are incapable of making mating decisions to reverse these processes. […] This means that humans, at least for the foreseeable future, need to ex-ercise some control over breeding in the interests of domesticated ani-mals.” (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: p. 148)

So, the main point of disagreement lies in what our positive obligations to these animals are exactly, what types of human alterations are considered harmful and to what extent humans should intervene to help undo these changes.

Most traditional rights authors argue that through the domestication process itself animals have been harmed, as they have lost their independence and have become more docile, making them easier to handle for their human owners. Philosopher Stephen Thierman (2010) has argued that human beings still hold a lot of regulatory and disciplinary power over animals’ bodies through these breeds, and it could be argued that for the creation of a level playing field, which one could consider necessary if we want to fully accept these animals in society as our equals, human beings first would need to let go of that control. It would seem that Donaldson and Kymlicka underestimate the extent to which humans still exercise control over animals in this regard and more extensive restrictions are required than they seem to suggest. Nevertheless, while this certainly is a very important point in which Donaldson and Kymlicka disagree with most other proponents of animal rights theory, it doesn’t mark a

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funda-mental departure, as the difference in opinion is more a difference in degrees than in kind.

While it therefore seems that the points of disagreement with traditional animal rights theory and Donaldson and Kymlicka’s political theory are not fundamen-tal and it is more of a supplement than a replacement of existing theory, their theory does signify an important turn in the way the human-animal relationship is approached. By no longer ignoring the issue of positive rights but instead fully embracing those rights and giving them a central place within a political theory, Donaldson and Kymlicka do not only manage to improve upon current animal rights theory, but also manage to provide a clear vision of what it would mean to actually accept animals as part of the community and what kind of obligations and rights that would entail.

1.4 Conclusion

This chapter focused on the first research question, namely whether philoso-phers should take an explicitly political approach to animal ethics, one that looks at positive animal rights as well as negative ones. The overview of the main development within contemporary animal ethics, focussing on the recent political turn, shows this ‘political turn’ is warranted: philosophers should take an explicitly political approach to animal ethics, not only because this shifts the debate to the more complicated questions that have thus far been mostly ig-nored, namely those questions related to what negative and positive duties the community owes to animals, but also because this would entail creating a more clear vision of what a future society with animal rights would actually look like, which thus far also has been missing. In this regard, Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis, while not free from some shortcomings, is unprecedent-ed and marks an important turn in the way the animal question is approachunprecedent-ed.

Now that we have explored philosophical theory and the question of how to interpret the recent political turn, the next two chapters will take a closer look

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at animal advocacy and in particular the role these philosophical theories play in contemporary animal rights campaigns.

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2 The role of philosophical theories in animal advocacy

As was already discussed in the introductory chapter, the contemporary animal rights movement seems to be in a strategic stalemate, also referred to as a ‘po-litical impasse’ by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011: p. 252): four decades of activism have not been able to change the basic nature of the human-animal relationship and bring the animal rights movement any closer to its goal of dismantling the human-animal dualism. The human-animal relationship is still characterized by a huge inequality between humans and other animals. Almost always animals are seen and treated as inferior to human beings and throughout the course of history, humankind has found increasingly more and effective ways of exploiting animals to service its own needs and requirements (Swabe 1997). Through a process of rationalization, these practices have grown in scale and intensity. The breeding and killing of farm animals, for example, is now carefully rationalized and the health of the animals is constantly being monitored. If there is an outbreak of an epidemic disease, animals are killed pre-emptively on a large scale.

Practices such as factory farming are only the most vivid examples though of how our control over the animal body has become more effective and efficient. The same level of control over animal life can be observed regarding the com-panion animals, as they are routinely disciplined (to come, to stay, to sit etc.). We also control their main life functions, as they can only eat, when we give them food. They can only go outside, when we allow them to, and we also con-trol whether (and with whom) they can procreate. Often they are taken to the vet and are sterilized. This prevents unwanted offspring, unwanted by human beings that is. It also makes most animals more docile and easy to manipulate. Humans do not only try to control animal bodies however, but also their popu-lations as a whole, exterminating pests, hunting down wild animals, calling it ‘wildlife management’ (Palmer 2001, Thierman 2010: p. 356-358). Despite all

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attempts of the animal rights movement, this basic relationship of almost total domination continues relatively undisturbed up to this day.

Political and moral philosophers working in the field of animal ethics have argued, that the ineffectiveness of the animal rights movement can be traced back to the philosophical theory that underlies the different campaigns by ani-mal rights organisations. In this regard the different theories discussed in the previous chapter are all fundamentally alike: rights theorists such as Gary Francione have claimed the movement is failing because it is promoting a flawed (welfarist) philosophy and the solution would be to adopt a more aboli-tionist one (Francione 1996), whereas welfarist theorists have instead claimed, that it is the other way around, and campaigns being too abolitionist would be what is holding the movement back. Likewise, authors such as Donaldson and Kymlicka have argued that a political turn in philosophical theory, more em-phasis on positive rights and a place for animals within the political communi-ty, might be the key to solving the movement’s problems, as the traditional animal rights approach, with all of its flaws and shortcomings, has evidently failed to gain traction. But are those philosophers actually correct in their as-sumptions on how activists promote philosophical theory?

This chapter will concentrate on the second research question, namely what role philosophical theory currently plays in advocacy and what role it ought to play. There is a discrepancy between on the one hand how philosophers as-sume the influence of philosophical theory to be on contemporary animal ad-vocacy and on the other hand what social studies indicate that the role of philo-sophical theory in fact is. This role is in fact rather small, because activists avoid taking clear philosophical positions and advocating them. I will show why this is problematic: the critical ideas formulated in animal rights theory are of vital importance for the instigation of social change.

In this chapter I will often refer to ‘the animal rights movement’ or ‘animal rights activists and organisations’. It is questionable to what extent one can

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actually speak of an ‘animal rights movement’. There is a large variety of peo-ple who in different ways contribute to the cause of animal rights. Some are grassroots activists, others members of more professionalized non-profit organ-isations. Some are politicians, others are artists, and yet others are scholars. All of these people not only often have different methods, but also different ideo-logies, and some authors have even suggested that there really is no ‘animal rights movement’ at all (Francione 1996). Yet, despite the many differences, there are many similarities as well. Most of the philosophers in the debate about movement strategy have focused on discussing the campaigns by the grassroots activists and larger non-profit organisations and on what type of philosophy they adhere to. I will do so as well. Unless indicated otherwise, when using the term ‘animal rights movement’ I refer to these activists and organisations. Not only is there precedence for this in the existing literature, but it also makes sense to focus on these, as they are often the ones most pre-sent and active within the public discourse.

2.1 The philosophical debate on movement strategy

One of the most prominent authors in the debate on the strategy of the animal rights movement is Gary Francione, a proponent of animal rights theory, who, in his book A Rain Without Thunder (1996) argued that the animal rights movement has been a failure due to the ideological and strategic choices made by animal rights organizations and activists. He argued that campaigns that advocate welfare reforms within animal husbandry (such as larger cages or more humane types of slaughter) are actually counter-productive, as they only serve to legitimize rather than challenge the property status of animals, sooth-ing the conscience of consumers, and only attacksooth-ing the most gratuitous acts of violence within animal husbandry, while accepting the use of animals as a giv-en (Visak 2011: p. 14). Furthermore, he argued that what underlies these stra-tegic choices, was a fundamental rejection of one philosophical theory in fa-vour of another. Francione argues, that activists have explicitly rejected the philosophical doctrine of animal rights in favour of welfarism. He further

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claims, that the solution to the political ineffectiveness of the animal rights movement lies in campaigns that more clearly and consistently advocate ani-mal rights, focussing on promoting veganism as a moral baseline and the com-plete abolition of animal exploitation. In short, he proposes a more ‘abolitionist approach’ to advocacy by fostering animal rights philosophy. Similar views are shared and voiced by many of the prominent proponents of animal rights theo-ry, such as Tom Regan (Francione and Regan 1992), Joan Dunayer (2004) and Gary Steiner (2008).

While the abolitionist rejection of welfare reforms and the claim that these re-forms are counter-productive is highly controversial, it is interesting to note that most authors who oppose such a position (often coming from a welfar-ist/utilitarian theoretical background) view this strategic dilemma too as fun-damentally a question of ideology and philosophical theory. For example, Rob-ert Garner, who supports welfarism (which he calls the ‘protectionist ap-proach’), argues similarly, that the failure of the movement can be attributed to activists from grassroots organisations and larger NGOs, fostering the wrong philosophical theories. In his view though, the choice for rights theory, instead of welfarism, has been detrimental to the movement’s effectiveness. Similarly Ingrid Newkirk, debating Francione and Regan, argued that the political prob-lems of the animal rights movement lie with the strict rights philosophy that many activists adhere to. This philosophy would be too absolutist and would be divisive (Newkirk 1992: p. 44). The problems, according to her, do not lie pri-marily with outside forces, but can be pripri-marily traced back to activists adher-ing to and promotadher-ing the wrong philosophical theory.

What becomes clear is, that all of these authors not only believe that activists have indeed clearly chosen for one particular theory, but also that this choice of philosophical theory has a major influence on the practical strategy of animal advocates. Such views are not only present within the traditional approaches to animal ethics, as authors of the political turn too share these views. Looking again at Donaldson and Kymlicka, we see that while they acknowledge that

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there are many obstacles outside of the movement that are partly to blame for the limited amount of success the movement has generated, they too argue that the philosophical theory that activists currently promote and adhere to, might be part of the problem. Similar to the authors who support the traditional posi-tions, Donaldson and Kymlicka argue that a change in philosophical theory, namely a theory that pays more attention to animals’ positive rights, might help overcome the political impasse, which they attribute to flaws in the philosophy theory that activists have supposedly been advocating until now. While they do not think this will lead to dramatic changes in the short term, as social change is more likely to occur due to other strong incentives such as economic or envi-ronmental ones (Donaldson & Kymlicka: p. 253), they do believe a change in theory can offer the movement valuable strategic resources (Donaldson & Kymlicka 2010: p. 252). Ignoring the question whether this claim might be true (whether it is, will be discussed in chapter 3), this does illustrate that they too make the same empirical assumptions, namely that activists and organisations clearly favour one philosophical doctrine above others, that the philosophical choices they make for one doctrine instead of others, has a large impact on the practical strategy of their advocacy, and that, overall, these philosophical theo-ries are actively promoted.

Philosopher Luis Chiesa (2014) has noted, that in the debate about the ideology and strategy of the animal rights movement many authors make empirical claims that are insufficiently supported by scientific evidence. Relatively little scientific studies have been conducted that look at the strategy of animal rights organizations. This remains a major problem for the academic debate on ani-mal ethics. Some of those studies, however few, tell us something about the role philosophical theory plays in determining the practical strategy of animal rights campaigns and messages. The next section will discuss the results of these studies and show that many of these empirical claims made by philoso-phers seem to be wrong.

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2.2 Social movement culture and activist philosophy

Sociologist James Jasper has published different books and articles on social movements and the animal rights movement in particular. In The Animal Cru-sade: the growth of a moral protest (1992), which he co-authored with sociolo-gist Dorothy Nelkin, the authors discuss how moral sentiments towards ani-mals have gradually changed in the past few centuries. This was partly because of the introduction of companion animals in people’s homes, which caused people to incorporate animals more fully in their own emotional circle, and partly because of new scientific discoveries such as those done by Charles Darwin, which forced people to reconsider the assumed sharp boundary be-tween humans and other animals. Similar arguments on how these social changes influenced people’s perspectives on animals can be found in Franklin (1999) and Pinker (2011). Jasper and Nelkin argue that it were the ideas ex-pressed in the work of philosophers, such as Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1976), that more fundamentally changed the way we look at animals today, and which paved the way for a new social movement, as ‘philosophers served as midwives of the animal rights movement in the late 1970s.’ (Jasper & Nel-kin 1992: p. 90)

In his book The Art of Moral Protest; Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (1997), Jasper uses examples of different new social move-ments, such as the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement and the animal rights movement, to argue that most social movement scholars have ignored culture as one of the important dimensions of protest. Too much have scholars in the past, according to him, assumed protesters to be ‘rational ac-tors’, who weigh costs and benefits and logically follow a strict doctrine. Often there exists in social movements a certain ‘social movement culture’, one that actually opposes making a clear choice between different ideologies and one that instead favours vagueness and ‘decision making by consensus’, which Jasper also refers to as ‘the feminist process’:

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“Most organizations in advanced capitalist societies value clarity of ar-gument, supporting evidence of an objective, factual nature, and critical procedures capable of uncovering incorrect positions, regardless of the feeling of the participants. In contrast, feminist process valued partici-pants’ feelings and emotions. […] The ideal of one position being prov-en against all others was replaced by the incorporation of all perspec-tives into one position, however unwieldy and inelegant. If this could not be done, no position was taken. This process rarely led to clear, concise positions, which would have risked alienating those who disa-greed with them. […] What scholarly observers criticized (using strate-gic criteria of the efficient attainment of external goals) as a reduced ability to achieve stated political goals instead reflected the emotional needs of the movement subculture.” (Jasper 1997: p.191)

While Jasper’s book has been criticized for making somewhat of a straw man argument, portraying the rationalist position within social movement studies as less nuanced than it actually is (Oberschall 1999), it does quite clearly shed light on the role subcultures and rituals play within social movements, as they sometimes actively avoid taking clear philosophical positions and defining clear political goals.

Furthermore, Jasper discusses the cultural processes that play a role in people joining social movements and the way activists try to convince others of the righteousness of their cause. Through the use of rhetoric, symbols and images, activists often try to build on existing cultural symbols, intuitions, worldviews, and ideas to cause moral shock. Jasper gives an example of the way the anti-abortion movement manages to do this:

“They use the brilliant oxymoron ‘unborn baby’. They distribute small label pins shaped like tiny feet. They order their slide presentations to work backwards from babies to embryos, helping the viewer see the

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lat-ter as human rather than an unrecognizable blob. Like animals for the animal activists, fetuses are innocent victims to the anti-abortionist; the idea of killing one is a sufficient moral affront to draw many new re-cruits into the anti-abortion movement” (Jasper 1997: p. 176)

With such a strategy, the anti-abortion movement was able to recruit many people in an early stage to their cause. Jasper identifies similar methods used by animal rights activists. Relying on the fact that people can intuitively distin-guish a happy from an unhappy animal, activists use horrific visual images to convey emotions and cause moral shock in bystanders, who would then, hope-fully, be moved to join the movement (Jasper 1997: p. 175-179).

One extensive recent research looking at the role of philosophical theory in advocacy is Carrie Freeman’s research, published in an article (Freeman 2010) and later in her book Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights (Freeman 2014). She aims to answer the question how much animal rights activists talk about animal rights in their campaigns. Her research con-sisted of an empirical study of flyers and other campaign materials from five different American animal rights organizations (namely PETA, Farm Sanctu-ary, Compassion over Killing, Farm Animal Right Movement, and Vegan Out-reach) as well as some interviews with the five organizations in question. The results showed a few interesting issues related to the role of philosophical theo-ry in advocacy.

Firstly, her research showed that in practice many animal rights campaigns focused exclusively on promoting vegetarianism by highlighting human, in-stead of animal, interests, accentuating the health benefits of adopting a more plant-based diet as well as the environmental impact of meat production (which in the long term would have dire consequences for human wellbeing) (Freeman 2014: p. 113-115). Campaign messages like these were very anthropocentric in their outlook. Secondly, the results also showed that many messages seemed to avoid directly challenging the moral status of animals and the human-animal

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dualism (Freeman 2014: p. 122), instead preferring more conservative and less confronting messages that accept animal husbandry as a given. Thirdly, the interviews with activists showed that many organizations avoid choosing one philosophical doctrine in particular and avoid choosing sides, as that would risk alienating possible supporters:

“Animal rights organisations in my study, especially COK, Farm Sanc-tuary, and PETA, often simplify their deeper animal rights philosophies to create communication strategies based on shallower, or more popular and broad-based, ethical sentiments. Therefore, a relationship exists be-tween theory and strategy, but it is just partial or more at a surface lev-el. Baur [from Farm Sanctuary] commented how he thinks messages do not have to be either animal rights-based or animal welfare-based. Ra-ther, for him, these messages exist on a ‘continuum’. […] For utilitarian reasons, it is more effective to avoid any controversial or ideological terms in favor of a more neutral, but equally representative, term such as ‘compassion’.” (Freeman 2014: p. 193)

Freeman further discusses how organisations such as PETA, similarly, try to stay out of the more academic debate between utilitarianism and rights theory, and focus on promoting compassion in general (Freeman 2014: p. 193-194).

The results of Freeman’s study, which show a general avoidance of clearly advocating the main philosophical positions in the animal ethics debate, are somewhat similar to the results of a study I conducted for my master’s thesis in sociology (Leuven 2014). I made a statistical analysis of press releases of Dutch and American animal rights organisations5, looking at the way these

5_{The selection of organisations was intended to cover grassroots orientated activist groups as} well as larger organisations. These two types of organisations were chosen to make a com-parison possible with research that looked at similar organisations, such as Cherry (2010).

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press releases challenged the symbolic boundary between humans and other animals, and what type of ideology they advocate (rights or welfare). Within the field of social movement studies, scholars such as Cherry (2010) and La-mont and Molnar (2002) have looked at how activists in different movements question dominant worldviews and try to ‘shift’ and ‘dismantle’ symbolic boundaries (e.g. the division between men and women in the case of the femi-nist movement or the boundary between humans and other animals in the case of the animal rights movement). The results of my study showed that organisa-tions from both countries often seem to avoid blatantly challenging the human-animal symbolic boundary, similar to what Freeman’s study suggests. While it was possible to identify certain press releases that clearly advocated a rights philosophy or a welfarist philosophy (e.g. they were pleading for inviolable rights or advocated reforms aimed at making the industry more humane), most press releases did neither and instead seemed to be focused on promoting a type of ‘conscious consumerism’. This third type of press releases primarily addressed the audience as consumers, instead of, for example, political actors or citizens. Again many campaign messages were very anthropocentric in character, approaching the issue from the perspective and the interests of the human consumer (price, health etc.), while de-emphasizing the interests of the consumed animal.

Such findings are further supported by a study by sociologist Corey Wrenn (2013), in which she compares the tactics of the contemporary animal rights movement with the tactics of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Both movements have a lot in common in this regard as they show a large variety of similar tactics, ranging from violent direct action

The Dutch organisations were: Wakker Dier, Bite Back, Anti-Dierproef Coalitie, Wakker Dier, and Partij voor de Dieren. The American organisations were: Compassion over Kil-ling, Humane Society of the United States, and PETA.

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to legislative efforts. One of the tactics Wrenn discusses in more detail is con-sumer-based resistance. One way activists tried to protest against slavery in those days was through boycotts on slave-produced products, such as rum or sugar. These campaigns, Wrenn explains, were one of the first to frame issues of social justice in terms of consumer responsibility and the activists hoped that through such economic pressures they would be able to help bring about the abolition of slavery sooner. Indeed, consumer boycotts and the purchase of fair-trade products have proven to provide effective economic incentives for social change, so it is not surprising that the animal rights movement has adopted similar tactics. However, Wrenn argues that in the case of the animal rights movement, the focus on consumer responsibility and a compassionate lifestyle should not be seen as merely a chosen tactic, but as something deeply ingrained with the philosophy of the activists, as consumer-based resistance has become, as she described it, ‘the linchpin’ of their advocacy.

This is also somewhat similar to what Elisa Aaltola describes in her article The Philosophy behind the Movement: Animal Studies versus Animal Rights (2011). In this article Aaltola investigates the relationship between academic animal studies and the animal rights movement and she aims to give a sketch of the true philosophy behind the movement. She argues that many animal rights ac-tivists shun overly theory-based approaches and reject strictly adhering to a doctrine of deontological rights theory or utilitarian welfarism. Describing this attitude, she refers to an article by Cora Diamond (2008) in which she discuss-es Coetzee’s The Livdiscuss-es of Animals (1999). Diamond views an over-emphasis of philosophical theory as a deflection, an attempt to escape into theory and run away from the horrific reality of the animal exploitation we face every day. The focus of activists, Aaltola argues, does not lie on winning philosophical arguments, but instead on conveying certain basic emotions and experiences of shock and disgust, the same that initially motivated the animal rights activists themselves.

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To support the claims made in her article Aaltola conducted a small survey research among British animal rights activists, many of whom expressed such sentiments and were weary of theory. Discussing their responses, Aaltola writes the following:

“It seems that many within the grassroots movement are critical of theo-ry. In the responses, few referred to philosophical works as their main inspiration. A common animal rights metaphor talks of a burning build-ing full of animals, which is witnessed by an activist and a theorist. The theorist discussed the moral status of animals and embarks on meta-physical pondering, while the activist runs in and saved the animals. This sentiment is epitomized in the rather popular slogan: ‘You are a terrorist? Thank God. I thought you said you were a theorist!’ Thus, there is a sense of elemental practicality to grassroots activism, which adds to the uniqueness of its philosophical ramifications.” (Aaltola 2011: p. 404)

Activists, according to Aaltola, are not cold rational and calculative agents, who focus on winning a philosophical debate through rational argument, but instead they are more often interested in conveying emotions, and she describes this as a distinct ‘activist philosophy’ (Aaltola 2011: p. 405).

Looking at these sociological studies, the overall impression one gets is that in contemporary animal advocacy the role of philosophical theories, such as those described in Chapter 1, is quite small. There is a certain culture within social movements and, in particular, in the animal rights movement, of activists ac-tively avoiding philosophical theorizing and taking clear positions in such mat-ters. Instead their campaigns rely on conveying primary emotions and shock. Furthermore, it seems that within the animal rights movement, activists often prefer conservative, anthropocentric and consumerist messages. This shows a reluctance to transparently challenge the human-animal boundary.

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There is a clear disparity between what we perceive here and how the philoso-phers that were discussed earlier, portray the role of philosophical theory to be, as activists do not actively reject one theory and choose to foster the other, but seem to reject clearly advocating any philosophical theory at all. One might be tempted to argue that activists simply choose to foster an anthropocentric phi-losophy, instead of one of the dominant theories within animal ethics. This is only partially true though, as it was shown that activists shy away from taking clear philosophical positions in general.

Based on these findings, one can conclude that the empirical assumptions of philosophers, such as Gary Francione, are wrong. Before we discuss what these findings mean for the philosophical debate on the strategy and ideology of the movement, and specifically for the theory of Donaldson and Kymlicka, we will first discuss whether this minor role of philosophical theory within animal ad-vocacy is a problem for the animal rights movement.

2.3 Changing the way people think

Both Stephen Thierman (2010) and Timothy Pachirat (2011) analyse the power practices and politics involved with upholding the human-animal dualism, through case studies of modern-day slaughterhouses. In Apparatuses of Ani-mality: Foucault Goes to a Slaughterhouse Thierman uses Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary and regulatory power to argue that in modern-day slaughter-houses systems of surveillance are used to prevent authentic interaction be-tween human and nonhuman individuals, as well as to transform their bodies into docile bodies (and in the case of animals, Thierman notes, further trans-form docile bodies into dead bodies) (Thierman 2010: p. 103). The architectur-al design of the slaughterhouse enforces these hierarchies, as spatiarchitectur-al separation limits the possible ways of interaction between different groups. Furthermore a Panopticon-like situation is created by positioning the managers’ offices on

The role of philosophical theory in political activism: animal advocacy and the political turn

The role of philosophical theory in political activism:

animal advocacy and the political turn

Table of Contents

0

Introduction

1

Philosophical theories on the human-animal relationship

2

The role of philosophical theories in animal advocacy