Event overview
This is the fifth of a series of six seminars, thinking animals in and through scale. Co-hosted by UCL Anthropocene and the Goldsmiths Centre for Critical Global Change.
SCALE: POLITICAL
Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson
Department of Philosophy, Queen’s University, Canada
ABSTRACT
The animal ethics literature tends to focus on animals either as individuals (with rights, or moral standing) or as part of biological populations or species (vulnerable to extinction/extirpation, loss of genetic diversity, resilience, abundance, etc.) But politics takes place at the level of social and cultural groups, not individuals or biological populations, and it concerns how members of groups navigate and shape the terms of collective life together. In this paper, we explore the importance of seeing animals as members of groups or associations (e.g. herds, pods, neighbours, clans, commoners), and how such groups fit into larger visions of interspecies politics and justice.
Traditional political theory has long faced the challenge of how to relate different scales of political community (local, national, transnational), each with its own rules of membership, authority and legitimacy. Adding animal groups to the mix ramps up this complexity considerably, but we argue that this complexity is generative. It helps clarify the need to think about political communities as interdependent (not isolated or self-sufficient), grounded (in physical space and/or social connection), and overlapping (with different communities having divided authority/jurisdiction in shared places, not exclusive or unitary power). We explore how political community of this scale and scope could enable justice in more-than-human politics.
BIOS
Sue Donaldson is a research associate and co-convenor of the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics research group at Queen’s University, Canada. She is the o-author, with Will Kymlicka, of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (OUP 2011)
Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, where he has taught since 1998. He is the o-author, with Sue Donaldson, of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (OUP 2011).
ANIMAL SCALES SEMINAR SERIES
From Aristotle's scala naturae, to the vast scales of animal agriculture, to moral scales, determined by cognitive scales: animal lives have and continue to be shaped by different kinds of scales and their positions on them. This seminar series asks after the disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, empirical, political, ethical, and legal implications of thinking animals in and through scale. Are animals themselves 'scale-makers' and, if so, can they disrupt the pre-scaled objects of knowledge that support the division of academic labour? If animals operate at scale (collective migration, collective thinking), how do they also resist it?
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Jun 2024 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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