It’s not new that the animal rights movement mostly focuses on what humans mustn’t do to animals but doesn’t really offer serious suggestions regarding what humans should do with animals, and that it basically ignores entire issues regarding animals. In recent years some political philosophers are trying to fill this vacuum. Traditionally, animals were totally disregarded in political philosophy but it is starting to change, especially in the last 15 years. Probably the most famous political thesis is the one presented in the book Zoopolis, which was published exactly a decade ago. Therefore Zoopolis will be in the center of the following discussion regarding political thesis about humans relations with animals.

Zoopolis offers a new model for human-animal relations, one which is based on a political theory rather than on an ethical one. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, the book’s authors, argue that humans have different obligations to different animals according to the relations they have with them. Based on that premise they suggest employing concepts from the Citizenship Theory. Therefore, the framework is that domesticated animals should be recognized as full citizens of humans’ communities, wild animals who live outside of humans’ communities should be recognized as members of their own sovereign communities, and non-domesticated animals who live within humans’ communities (whom they call “liminal” animals) as denizens which means they are recognized as residents of humans’ communities, but not as full citizens.

Before elaborating on the theory and on each category, it is important to address the origin and motive behind it. Intuitively it may seem as if it is aimed for a post-institutionalized exploitation world, and/or is a result of frustration that so far political philosophy had contributed very little to the status of nonhuman animals. Although both things are true in the sense that the authors are coming from the realm of political philosophy, and that they are also motivated by the need for a sustainable and just model for human-animal relations the day after factory farms are gone, these are not the main motives. The central claim of the book is that the animal rights movement is failing, and that it fails because the animal rights theory is lacking and has some structural problems:
“The animal advocacy movement is at an impasse. The familiar strategies and arguments for articulating issues and mobilizing public opinion around animal welfare, developed over the past 180 years, have had some success, on some issues. But the built-in limits of these strategies have increasingly become clear, leaving us unable to address, or even to identify, some of the most serious ethical challenges in our relations with animals. Our aim in this book is to offer a new framework, one that takes ‘the animal question’ as a central issue for how we theorize the nature of our political community, and its ideas of citizenship, justice, and human rights. This new framework, we believe, opens up new possibilities, conceptually and politically, for overcoming current roadblocks to progressive change.”

The following post, which is the first in a series of posts dedicated to a critical review of Zoopolis, would focus on the claim that the animal rights movement’s problem is the animal rights theory, as well as the general idea of humans’ different obligations to different animals according to the relations humans have with them. The next four parts would focus on each citizenship category according to the books’ order, so the next part, as well as the one following it would be dedicated to domesticated animals, the fourth part to wild animals, and the fifth and last part to “liminal” animals. Continue reading →