[Please note that this version of this text has been recovered from an early draft due to a server crash. There may be a few typos and even mistakes in the following]
This thesis is about deliberate harm in human-nonhuman relations. It is about the social construction of
institutionalised and internalised knowledge and societal categorical attitudes
about both human and nonhuman animals on interlinked macro and micro
levels. It is therefore about how human
individuals, groups, and whole societies use such knowledge, social attitudes,
and taught assumptions to make claims about human-nonhuman relations in a
variety of social contexts.
The primary concern here,
as a contribution to an emerging interest in the ‘sociology of human-animal
relationships’ (Scarse 1998) or ‘the discipline of animal studies’ (Baker
1996), and as an example of what may be regarded as a ‘nonspeciesist zemiological perspective’
(more of which below), is to provide a sociological analysis of exploitative
human attitudes toward nonhuman animals in particular, and toward ‘the natural
world’, or ‘nature’, in general. It is
suggested that the following pages help to reveal that the varied ways in which
nonhuman animals are routinely perceived and systematically treated in modern
societies are inevitably and intrinsically linked to the ways in which members
of society are encouraged to view them, both instrumentally and, less
obviously, sentimentally (Jasper 1999).
As the principal focus of
this thesis is the socially-constructed nature of attitudes to human-nonhuman relations, it is about significant social claims-making
that constructs important society-wide
ideas about human and nonhuman beings as general categories. Within societies in which the use and
exploitation of other animals is institutionalised and overwhelmingly
internalised, nonhuman animals are generally regarded as human resources;
treated as if they were items of food, or experimental ‘models’, for
example. Moreover, the sentimental use
of nonhuman animals as ‘family companions’ is widely accepted and encouraged,
even by individuals and organisations that express concern about the human
treatment of other animals.
That nonhumans may be
systematically used as human resources is an ethical issue. The thesis investigates the particular claims-making
that asserts that humans are morally justified in exploiting nonhuman animals
for human (and sometimes nonhuman) ends.
Such claims have been constructed in societies that explain the
justification to utilise nonhumans in terms of the moral significance of human
interests and the relatively trivial regard of nonhuman interests. Thus, in most human societies, animals other
than human are regarded, in law, as human property, as ‘things’ (Francione
1995).
‘Things’ are codified in
law as the private property of ‘persons’, be they human beings or corporations
(thus distinct from ‘people’). In law,
the interests of persons tend to systematically override the interests of
‘things’: indeed, the notion that a ‘thing’ can have any interests at all is
legally problematic. In this sense, the
social construction of human-nonhuman relations creates legitimate exploiters
of nonhuman property. What this thesis
sets out to do is explore how the ‘species barrier’ - understood to exist
between human beings on the one hand and all other animals on the other - is
culturally transmitted as morally significant.
Much to the chagrin of traditionalist opponents of most things
‘politically correct’ (such as philosopher Roger
Scruton [2000]), psychologist Richard Ryder (2000) suggests that a new ‘ism’
was recognised in the 1960s and 1970s. This
is the notion of speciesism. According to Ryder, speciesism functions in a
similar manner to sexism and racism: it represents a socially constructed
prejudice that may, and should, be challenged as an ethical and legal
matter. The assertion that society may
be ‘speciesist’ has created new claims about right and proper relations between
human beings and other animals.
In that nonhuman animals
are conventionally regarded as ‘utilisable natural resources’, the harming of
their interests is socially sanctioned, and has been historically justified by
means of theological, philosophical and social discourses. A whole series of claims continue to be made
suggesting that there is a ‘vast gulf’ between the moral
worth of human beings and the corresponding worth of
nonhuman animals. Human beings around
the globe are traditionally brought up from childhood to believe
that their own species (if not ‘race’) is
in various ways ‘special’. This ‘vast gulf
thesis’ is culturally transmitted within processes of socialisation and
significantly, in Ryder’s terms, the vast majority of human beings are
practising speciesists - and before they can be regarded as ethically aware social and moral agents.
The sociology and social
philosophy of Zygmunt Bauman (1989; 1993) suggests the devastating consequences
for human beings of the routine,
linguistic - and, indeed, bureaucratic - use of ‘us’ and ‘them’
categories. Specifically in terms of the
relationships between human beings and other sentient animals, the present
dissertation attempts to explore connections between such relationships and
these categories. This involves gaining
a clear understanding of what human beings tend to think of themselves and other
animals as categories (Baker 1993);
and thus, what ‘they’ have been socially constructed as. In general, therefore, much of this work is
designed to explore sociologically exactly what terms such as ‘animal’,
‘animals’, ‘beasts’ and so forth are said to mean in contemporary Western
cultures; that is, in those very societies informed by centuries of philosophy
and theology that frequently talks about nonhuman animals in order to speak
about human ones.
The thesis seeks to
underline, then, how constructions of human and nonhuman categories appear very
important, perhaps surprisingly, even with regard to the human treatment of other human beings. Just as the various meanings attached to
‘animal’ (etc.) may have important ideological relationships to what the
category ‘human being’ means, Lynda Birke (1994) argues that how human beings
understand themselves in relation to other animals matters greatly with regard
to the well-being and treatment of all. Most obviously, what human beings are
socialised to think about other animals - what ‘we’ as human society say
‘we’/‘they’ categories mean in human-nonhuman relations (Adams 1990) - bears a
direct experiential impact on very many hundreds of millions of nonhuman
lives. In terms of harm and harm
causation toward animals, what is said about human and nonhuman classifications
on all levels of social discourse is regarded as extremely important (Dunayer
2001) as, ethnomethodologically, social-construction-through-talk directly, if
often subconsciously, informs generations of humans ‘the facts’ about the
nonhuman world.
Historically, linguistically and ideologically,
constructed social knowledge about human beings and other animals, especially
‘knowledge’ regarding views about the ‘proper’, ‘justified’, ‘traditional’,
‘ethical’ relations between humans and nonhumans, has indeed led generation
after generation to regard many (selected) nonhuman animals as if they were ‘resource items’. These to instrumentally use as food, or as
laboratory tools; at the same time (selected) nonhuman others are also regarded
sentimentally as pets, while yet other nonhumans are often denounced as
menacing and dangerous ‘pests’, and labelled as ‘wild’ or ‘tame’ and so
on.
While this thesis will
clearly take seriously the recently suggested connections between the harmful
treatment of nonhumans and the harmful treatment of human beings, there will be
little suggestion here that such links are explicitly causal, or should (or
can) be located in individual pathology.
In other words, the present project is not similar to recent research
(for example, Ascione 1993; 1998; 1999; Arluke et al 1999; Boat 1999) that
explicitly suggests that many of those who are directly ‘cruel’ to nonhuman animals
may be the most likely to subsequently act harmfully toward other humans
too. Therefore, while the link between
human and nonhuman harm is explored - and suggested as ‘real’ in the current
work, such a linkage will be seen abstractly, tenuously, and above all else,
sociologically. Connections are therefore
to be located in institutionalised cultural forces, common societal rituals,
routine social practices, and in orthodox perceptions which are widespread
within animal ‘using’, animal harming, or as Ryder would have it, ‘speciesist’
societies.
The position adopted is
based on the idea that widespread, often daily, social practices, along with foundational philosophical and ideological
constructions, can ultimately engender a suggestive
societal ambience which, for the vast majority of people, on some level, serves
as a functional normative framework for both social attitudes and day-to-day
action related to the treatment of nonhuman beings. In general, the approach here bears a number
of similarities to recent strands of feminist scholarship which has been increasingly
receptive to the suggestion that multiple and ‘interlocking’ oppressions have a
great deal to do with each other (see, e.g., Vance 1994). In seeking to emphasise such linkages between
different yet interwoven ‘modes of oppression’, the approach is also somewhat
similar to the position of some ‘ecofeminists’ (Warren & Cheney 1991;
Pincus 2001), and limited elements of the ‘feminist vegetarian critical theory’
of Carol Adams (1990; 1994).
Collectively, such writers have tended to question why theorists have
been slow to recognise and acknowledge that the interwoven oppression of human
beings, nonhuman animals and ‘nature’ in general could be a central and
integral part of the analysis of incidence of harm.
Therefore, although such a
perspective will likely not be generally accepted within the social sciences,
or within orthodox social views about human-nonhuman and human-human relations,
this work reflects recently articulated views that it is an error to regard the
investigation of, and opposition to, animal abuse - Ryder’s ‘struggle against
speciesism’ (2000: 1) - as something of an inconsequential side-show to ‘more
important’ (meaning, of course, human)
concerns. Rather, the position adopted
seeks to explore and understand a great many
institutionalised and widely internalised forms of oppression, modes of
violence, and incidences of abuse and harm (human, nonhuman, sexual,
ethnic).
In terms of ‘animal rights thought’, the interwoven
nature of various forms of oppression was first articulated by the social
reformer and ‘humanitarian’, Henry Salt (1851-1939) (Salt 1980, and see
Hendrick & Hendrick 1989). Salt
argued in his ironically-titled autobiography of 1921, Seventy Years Among Savages, that violence was not a product of
‘this bloodshed’ or ‘that bloodshed’.
For Henry Salt, ‘all needless bloodshed’ must cease in the spirit of
universal kinship (cited in Wynne-Tyson 1985: 301). As shown in the latter part of this thesis,
contemporary scholars are increasingly incorporating some notion of interlinked
and interwoven perspective in their work on harm, abuse and suffering, for
example, within the recent development of ‘zemiology’ (or ‘harmology’) and in the emergence of
‘nonspeciesist approaches’ in criminology (Piers Beirne
1995, 1997, 1999; Cazaux 1999). Indeed, given that the remit of zemiological
investigation explores the idea and definition of the constituency of ‘social
harm’, this thesis could
reasonably be described as a work of - or allied to the interests of –
nonspeciesist/less-speciesist zemiology.
Interpretative
sociological traditions most obviously associated with Max Weber recognise
human beings as meaning-giving mammals (although putting an emphasis on
humans-as-animals – and especially as mammals - is far from usual). Berger and Luckmann (1966) would contend that
human beings routinely cognitively construct the
world. Thus, rather than merely ‘being
around’ the other animals in the world, there is a sense in which human
societies create them within a complicated
social framework of meaning construction.
The present work therefore examines the incidence of animal harm in, for
example, the social construction of nonhumans within the category of ‘food
items’.
Of course, most if not all sociologists would agree
that understanding social life means understanding its socially created
character: thus it can be argued that in some senses the term ‘social
construction’ may be rendered rather devoid of substantial meaning (Marshall
1994: 484), or may be viewed as a relatively trivial sociological matter (Jary
and Jary 1995: 605). However, it is important to maintain an emphasis on two important factors in relation to such
claims. First, the absolute certainty
that human society is creatively and actively produced by human action (given
that social actors are for many socio-economic and cultural factors differently
endowed with respect to notions of societal influence): however, it may be
understood that society is an increasingly complex on-going human product. Secondly, it is as equally important to
constantly underscore the fact that this ‘production’ takes place
minute-by-minute, often within long-sedimented and structured frameworks of
power relations and social forces, regularly mediated by the erection, maintenance
and utilisation of self-serving ideologies.
Given such factors, the
relatively recent emergence of ‘animal rights’, ‘animal liberation’ and some
strands of ecofeminist thought have provided a new, and fairly radical, set of
claims relating to nonhuman animals (for example, nonhumans
as
right holding sentients with interests and preferences, moral patients,
justified members of ‘the circle of compassion’ or the ‘moral in-group’, and as morally valuable
beings, valued independently of their utility to humanity). Such claims critically challenge conventional
and orthodox views about animals other than human. The extent that this modern re-evaluation of
human-nonhuman relations has caused a discernible degree of societal reaction -
some amount of ‘social disturbance’ to conventional attitudes - is implied at least by the
huge amount of press coverage of social movement activity associated with ideas
such as ‘animal rights’ and ‘animal liberation’.
Recent years have also
witnessed the emergence of several ‘pro-use countermovements’ (organised
alliances in favour and defence of the human
exploitation of other animals), and a growing academic interest in the
emergence of animal rights thinking (Sperling 1988; Garner 1993; Guither 1988;
Kean 1988 are examples of this interest).
While recognising that rights in ‘animal rights’ is commonly used
rhetorically, a part of this thesis acknowledges many elements of the
contemporary emergence of distinctly animal rights thinking, while also
attempting to provide a sociological analysis of reaction and opposition
to - and indeed the evasion of -
emergent animal rights views. This
endeavour is admittedly made much more difficult by the
general lack of differentiation of various ‘pro-animal’ positions and perspectives, such as ‘animal rights’, ‘animal liberation’, ‘animal
welfarism’, ‘scientific anti-vivisectionism’, ‘anti-bloodsports’, ‘animal
lover’ and so on. This ‘complicating
factor’ deserves careful and indeed patient analysis, and will feature in
greater detail in part two of the present thesis.
Bauman (1990) states that
sociological analysis can appear to act like ‘a stranger’, effectively
‘defamiliarising’ the familiar in everyday life. Therefore, one of the first lessons one
learns when ‘doing sociology’ is that the majority of phenomena viewed
sociologically are rarely what they seem to be at face value. Such an insight also seems absolutely valid
with regard to human-nonhuman relations.
Thus, for example, investigating the historical meanings attached to the
term ‘animal(s)’ does undoubtedly
investigate social attitudes about what modern Western humans think (and are
steadfastly encouraged to think) about themselves as human beings. According to Agnew (1998: 177-78), it has
been psychologists and philosophers who have taken the most interest in animal
abuse issues until very recently. The
recent sociological exploration of the subject is greatly to be welcomed for
the increased interdisciplinary depth sociology brings to the
analysis of human-nonhuman relations.
However, since it is quite apparent that psychology and philosophy are
major influences in the construction of the various ‘meanings’ the present work
seeks to investigate, psychology, social psychology and philosophy will inform the thesis throughout. For, just as
virtually no individual person could exist in total isolation, devoid of social
influence, no body of knowledge with any validity can ever be free from the
social (meaning the socio-political, economic and ideological) context in which
it is, or has been, produced. Therefore,
there is a great deal that sociology can contribute to the study of the
relationships between human beings and other animals. As mentioned above, and will be detailed
below in Chapter 15, the sociological study of these relationships and
connected issues - evident in the work of zemiologists and sociologists of
crime - is growing, if still limited, at the present time.
As briefly noted also, the recent social
phenomenon that is ‘animal rights’ advocacy, a development which - although
this can be seriously contested - is commonly traced to its origins in the
1970’s in Britain (see Garner 1993; Gold 1998; Guither 1998), has resulted in a
perceivable ‘disturbance’, and even the ‘disruption’, of orthodox and somewhat
hitherto ‘settled’ aspects of social life.
To the extent that this may be true, present social attitudes about the
use of other animals for a variety of human ends are
increasingly being rendered a little unstable by various nonhuman protection perspectives.
It perhaps should be
immediately acknowledged at this point that, historically, many claims over
many years concerning human-nonhuman relations have resulted in considerable
amounts of public controversy, along with a good deal of organised social
movement activity; philosophical
reflection, and numerous acts of legislative action,
all
well before the so-called ‘re-birth’ of ‘animal rights thinking’ in the
mid-1970’s (see Kean 1998). However, as
shown throughout the present work, prior to the modern emergence of distinctly
animal rights thought in the 1980s, along with some animal
activism in the last few years, a firmly established,
seemingly widely accepted, and largely ‘functional’, normative mechanism has
existed in society to cater for most aspects of human relationships with other
animals. By and large, this
institutionalised mechanism has adequately ‘dealt with’ – or perhaps more accurately, smoothed
over - any emergent misgivings, qualms, and any practical or ethical ‘problems’ created by a range of traditional and routine ‘usage’ of other animals by humans for human ends.
Animal
Welfarism.
This mechanism is animal welfarism and, effectively, the recent
emergence of genuine and rhetorical animal rights
thinking and activism has exposed traditional animal welfarism as a fairly non-radical and conventional orientation with regard to
human-nonhuman relations. Essentially,
it may be claimed that orthodox animal
welfarism ultimately serves to regulate
and control the human use and
exploitation of other animals, and rarely attempts to
totally end or abolish such use and exploitation
(Regan 2001). In essence, emergent animal rights views, along with non-traditional welfarist ideas such as animal liberation have, with some degree of success, questioned the validity of the long-institutionalised conventional animal
welfare paradigm.
Traditional
animal
welfare orientations toward other animals do,
however, remain prevalent and hugely influential in terms of how the majority
of human societies view their relations with the sentient
nonhuman
world. This thesis will suggest that
this situation and state of affairs can hardly be
overstated. From a critical sociological
point of view, animal welfarism cannot be solely regarded as simply a set of legislative
interventions enacted in Britain and elsewhere from the beginning of the nineteenth
century to control, regulate and enforce the “humane use” of other animals (see
Radford 1999; Francione 2000). Orthodox animal welfarism undoubtedly
performs its regulatory function: yet sociologically it
appears to do far more than this. For
example, it seemingly operates as a firmly entrenched institutionalised
ideology that effectively helps to normatively promote ‘kindness to animals,’
and an ethos of ‘caring’ for nonhumans, while at the
same time justifying systematic and routine harmful practices – and time-honoured social attitudes - toward other animals.
Moreover, orthodox animal welfarism is the generally adopted societal lens through which
issues of the ‘humane treatment’ of other animals by human beings are viewed and made sense of. As seen in subsequent sections of this
document, animal welfare views are so common, and so
socially sedimented and fixed, that regarding
human-nonhuman relationships in any
other way is most unusual, and exceptionally difficult,
even for ‘pro-animal’ organisations and individual campaigners in the nonhuman
protection movement. Therefore,
the ideology of traditional animal welfare,
claimed in this thesis to have been successfully institutionalised and
overwhelmingly internalised, has not only served to regulate the human
exploitation of nonhuman animals but has also, for generation
after generation, been a central support system justifying and excusing
what humans have done, and still do, to nonhumans in the name of science,
agriculture and entertainment.
Conventional animal
welfarism - its very name implies as much - is generally seen in a positive
light. It is so firmly entrenched in the
modern cultural imagination that it is, argues Barbara Noske (1998: 284),
regarded as ‘an accepted good in Western society’. Furthermore, reasonable
animal
welfare legislation and ‘good welfare practice’ has always been claimed, increasingly so in recent years, as the most
serious concern - often the number one interest - of those who themselves wish to actively exploit nonhumans as a
commercial or ‘sporting’ resource in some way or other. In other words, it is fairly rare to find
even animal ‘users’ - or the exploiters of nonhuman resources
(‘animal
abusers’ in animal rights discourse) - who do not regularly articulate fervent
support for the concept of orthodox forms of animal
welfarism (Guither 1998). Since the
emergence of animal rights philosophy represents both a fairly radical rejection
of the human use of other animals (Regan 1985; 2001) and also a fundamental
challenge to its regulatory mechanisms (Francione 1996), conventional animal welfarism responds ideologically
to rights views with a generalised charge that the
latter are unwarranted interferences, extreme opinions and, most of all, unnecessary ideas. Orthodox animal welfarism reacts in a similar
way to animal liberation. Essentially, traditional animal welfarism suggests that any
desire to go beyond its own
established precepts makes no sense, and serves no positive function, even for nonhuman animals
themselves.
As a consequence of the
prevalence of orthodox animal welfarism, it is
suggested in this thesis that what may be regarded as genuine animal rights
thought, and even the radical ‘new
welfarism’ of animal liberation, has attempted to enter a rather ‘crowded’
social space already ‘filled’ with traditional animal
welfare. Not only does traditional animal welfarism stand like a monolith to inform the vast majority of discussions about human relations with other animals,
fundamental and historically sedimented social convention and routine practices
also give succour to mainstream societywide views that firmly state that
(1) human beings are
entirely justified by many religious and philosophical
canons in their use of other animals for their own purposes and
(2) this exploitative use,
precisely because it is thought to be strictly controlled
and regulated, can be properly regarded as ethically acceptable since the animals so used do not actually suffer in the course of their usage.
As will be indicated during the course of this thesis, fundamental social
truisms concerning human-nonhuman relationships are thought and repeatedly said to be so self-evident that
the norms and values which support established mainstream views about other
animals are virtually unconsciously, and certainly without controversy, transmitted on a daily
basis at every level of primary, secondary and adult socialisation. Since the ‘normal’, ‘justified’ and ‘proper’
use of other animals is a central feature of mainstream Western cultures, the
apparent self-evident character, and the unequivocal
‘correctness’, of these embedded cultural attitudes means that any challenge to
them can be almost automatically regarded as unneeded, beyond the pale,
unreasonable, invalid, irrational and even ‘dangerous’. Increasingly, indeed, ‘terroristic’.
Claims from animal rights and animal liberation positions state that society is so prejudiced on the basis
of species membership that, fuelled by notions of ‘human chauvinism’ (Hayward
1997), most people quite unproblematically
instil speciesist ideology into children day after day through routine
discourse and everyday social practices (for example, and
perhaps most obviously, at every mealtime).
Similarly, speciesist sentiments are culturally transmitted in common stories told to children, and can be seen
reflected beyond food choices, for example in clothing, social rituals, forms
of entertainment and social gatherings.
In terms of what children learn about human orientations toward other
animals, the vast majority of youngsters are effectively socialised as speciesists
well before they can be regarded as ethically aware individuals. In other words, most children are encouraged
to participate in organised animal-harming activities (again, for example, at
every mealtime) prior to developing the ability
to morally evaluate what they are brought up to do with nonhuman property and
animal produce. Furthermore, they are routinely exposed to, and enticed to believe and accept, the justifying ideology that accompanies the
human exploitation of nonhuman resources - this before they know
for themselves what their own and others’ conduct entails for the lives (and,
of course, the deaths) of other sentient beings. Indeed, in effect, adults may feel a pressure
to effectively mislead their own
children, to put it no stronger at this point, about the
starkest realities of many human-nonhuman relationships (Sapon 1998).
This suggests that many
parents may feel the need - at the very least -
to
obscure many of the details
(if they know them) of what happens to the animals their children consume,
especially those animals consumed as if they were
food. As seen in later sections of the
thesis, Robbins (1987) suggests that several commercial concerns, such as those
involved in ‘animal agriculture’, are likewise engaged in such ‘protection’ of children: protection from ‘hurtful knowledge’ that is. After all, as Adams
comments (1990), does anyone really want to know the ins and outs of what humans do to other
animals when they exploit them? A part
of this thesis asks a stark question; one of potential interest to every pro-nonhuman advocate: why should
anyone volunteer to know these details?
The generally ‘hidden’ nature of much animal harm
caused by human activity means that, if and when
individuals come to reject some of their long-internalised orientations about
human-nonhuman relations, they must perform the apparently difficult task of
seriously negating some of their fundamental, hitherto stable, apparently
steadfast, and solidly sedimented social norms
and values (Bauman 1990; DeGrazia 1996). Subsequently, this may perhaps require a
rather difficult - and undoubtedly uncomfortable - period of ‘resocialisation’; a serious re-think about what ‘we’ humans should or should not do to nonhuman
animals (Sapon 1998). These widespread
social processes are commonsensically and
culturally understood, constructed and structured; and it is these processes
which will particularly benefit from the scrutiny of a sociological lens.
Connections between human and nonhuman harm have been alluded to. A feature of this thesis will investigate the
degree of harmful utility provided by attitudes concerning the conception of
the ‘species barrier’. While making no
claim that such a barrier has not been intelligibly identified within the social construction of species
membership (Midgley 1983; Elstein 2003), the thesis
outlines how ‘absolute division’ and ‘vast gulf’ views, contra Darwin, means that to label a human being an ‘animal’ is to generally confer an
extremely negative classification upon any individual
(Clark 1984; Birke 1994). Sociologists
have long since appreciated the important consequential effects of labelling
and categorising from interactionist and phenomenological perspectives (Husserl
1931; Becker 1963). Thus, social attitudes concerning species barriers
– most obviously ‘the’ species barrier between human and nonhuman animals - have often been used to justify the most violent infliction of harm to human
as well as nonhuman beings. Pointing out
the practice, and virtual tradition,
of deliberately constructing their enemies as sub- or nonhuman individuals means recognising
that humans can successfully ‘re-cast’ or ‘re-conceptualised’ human as well as nonhuman others as ‘killable beings’
(Bauman 1989; Tester 1997; Bourke 1999).
Effective and successful dehumanisation and depersonalisation processes
appear to rely on factors wholly central to the present work; such as a priori social understandings that many, in fact most, animals-other-than-human occupy this category of
beings who may be legitimately harmed and killed. This is to say that there are distinct
understandings which recognise that orientations toward the idea of the species
barrier explicitly acknowledge that there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ sides to
it. Moreover, it may be categorically understood and fully appreciated that the ‘wrong’ side of the species barrier is an extraordinarily
dangerous location in which to find oneself.
What is also apparently known
on a commonsensical level is that the ‘wrong’ side of the species barrier is -
can only be on the face of it - the
nonhuman side of it. Clearly, the ‘wrong’
side of the species barrier is a potentially lethal location for all animals -
including human ones – who are, or who find themselves ideologically placed and
presented as being, on that ‘far’ side of moral consideration and inclusion. To regard human individuals or human groups
as ‘killable’ (or ‘rapeable’, or ‘harmable’, or even ‘eatable’), one may
apparently and effectively be able to facilitate this state of affairs if one successfully casts a person or the
persons in question ‘over’ the species barrier; away from the ‘safe’ human side, and into that thoroughly
dangerous and essentially nonhuman territory.
Spector & Kitsuse (1987: 92-3) follow C. Wright Mills’ (1940)
position on the role of motives, assert that claims express demands made within
a moral universe: thus people do not simply say ‘stop that!’; instead, they may
say something like, ‘it is not right
that this is happening’. Thus,
claims-makers try to articulate their ideas on the basis of moral criteria to
explain why a particular situation is
wrong. Similarly, negative reactions and
responses to new ideas are often grounded in values - moral, religious, social,
philosophical - which can ‘surface’ quickly when some forms of conduct or
belief are questioned. Thus,
claims-making can likely create controversy, the disruption of established
patterns of thought, and a feeling of discomfort - or even a degree of quite
intense psychic pain – both in individuals and in collectives. It is in such circumstances that various
defence mechanisms may be required. Taking many and complex forms, defence mechanisms involve the utilisation of
complicated justifications and excuses (see Scott & Lyman 1968; Blum &
McHugh 1971; Robins 1994; Cohen 2001).
In relation to the case of nonhuman
animals, the present work will investigate many of these points by means of the
work of philosopher Stephen Clark (1984) and his conceptualisation of several
‘devices of the heathen’.
Audience.
In the preparation of particular sections of this doctorate, a specific
and largely non-academic audience is
being addressed. Thus, much of the
information provided in the following pages is, with no apology, intentionally
targeted in order to (hopefully) assist the cause of those involved in -
specifically – genuine animal rights
advocacy. In saying this, it is openly
stated that the present work is not about
such advocates and campaigners, it is very much more for them. Some theorists
have suggested (see, for example, Hester & Eglin 1992, following Spector
& Kitsuse 1987) that a strict distinction must be made between social and
sociological problems. The former are to
be seen, sociologically, as a product of successful claims-making - or
successful ‘defining’ activities.
Sociologists such as Stephen Hester and Peter Eglin argue that sociology
should investigate the processes that lie behind
‘something-should-be-done-about-this’ claims, rather than trying to actually do
something for those involved in
constructing ‘do something’ claims. From
their early 1990’s perspective, Hester & Eglin characterise radical
feminism as ‘arguably the most significant social-problem-defining movement in
recent history’ (ibid.: 40). Since then,
the world has witnessed the growth of grassroots environmentalism, ‘roads
protests’ and the very recent and visible emergence of anti- and
counter-globalisation movements (see Barker & Tydesley 1995). It seems reasonable to suggest that these
recent concerns, along with (often interwoven with) animal rights and animal liberation advocacy, can join radical feminism as important
claims-makers in contemporary history.
Thus, on one level, this thesis will
simply investigate a new claims-making social phenomenon; however it is also
openly designed as an overt political act (rather like much feminist theory,
especially of the 1970’s ‘radical’ varieties) to actively be of use to particular social movement
activists and thinkers.
