The Rights of Beasts in the Early Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-248
Author(s):  
Jane Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Novel ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Cruelty To Animals

This chapter argues that the parliamentary animal welfare campaign of the early nineteenth century, culminating in Martin’s Act (1822), was the heir to the radical movements of the 1790s. The literary representation of animals as feeling subjects, and the complex relationship between human and animal rights, both had profound effects on the anti-cruelty debate. Focusing on contributions by John Lawrence, an early exponent of legal rights for animals, Thomas Erskine, who introduced an unsuccessful Cruelty to Animals bill in 1809, and Margaret Cullen, who brought the debate about animals into the domestic novel, I show how they used and adapted radical political ideas in the service of animal welfare. The literature of animal subjectivity underpinned the anti-cruelty campaign and helped achieve legislation; but success depended on melding new attitudes with old hierarchies and turning away from the more radical implications of the reassessment of animal life.

scholarly journals A capital Scot: microscopes and museums in Robert E. Grant's zoology (1815–1840)

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOM QUICK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Persuasive Power ◽  
Natural Philosophers

AbstractEarly nineteenth-century zoology in Britain has been characterized as determined by the ideological concerns of its proponents. Taking the zoologist Robert E. Grant as an exemplary figure in this regard, this article offers a differently nuanced account of the conditions under which natural-philosophical knowledge concerning animal life was established in post-Napoleonic Britain. Whilst acknowledging the ideological import of concepts such as force and law, it points to an additional set of concerns amongst natural philosophers – that of appropriate tool use in investigation. Grant's studies in his native Edinburgh relied heavily on the use of microscopes. On his arrival in London, however, he entered a culture in which a different set of objects – museum specimens – held greater persuasive power. This article relates changes in Grant's ideas and practices to the uneven emphases on microscopic and museological evidence amongst European, Scottish and English natural philosophers at this time. In so doing, it identifies the reliance of London-based natural philosophers on museology as constituting a limiting effect on the kinds of claim that Grant sought to make regarding the nature of life.

scholarly journals Book Review: Animal Rights and Welfare: A Documentary and Reference Guide

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Michael L. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Reference Guide ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
American Society ◽  
Cruelty To Animals

Animal Rights and Welfare: A Documentary and Reference Guide is a collection of fifty-one primary source documents relating to the topics of animal rights and animal welfare. The preface states that these are separate and distinct philosophies: animal rights advocates such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Animal Liberation Front hold that humans and animals have the same rights (thereby precluding their use even as pets or assistive animals), whereas animal welfare adherents like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the American Humane Society endorse the use of animals for agriculture, work, biomedical research, etc., but in a manner that minimizes pain and suffering.

‘Anyone who Abuses Animals is no Italian’: Animal Protection in Fascist Italy

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-688
Author(s):  
Giulia Guazzaloca
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Animal Experimentation ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cruelty To Animals ◽  
Animal Welfare Legislation

This article examines the animal protection policies in fascist Italy, placing them in the more general framework of Mussolini’s political and economic strategies and the history of Italian animal advocacy, which began in the second half of the nineteenth century. Focusing on fascist propaganda campaigns on animal welfare, legislation on animal experimentation and slaughter, state reorganization of animal protection societies, which were incorporated in 1938 into the Ente nazionale fascista per la protezione animale, the article aims to show the conceptual and political basis of fascist activism in the prevention of cruelty to animals. Far from being based on the recognition of animals as sentient individuals, it was determined by specifically human interests: autarky and economic efficiency, public morality, the primacy of ‘fascist civilization’, and the regime’s totalitarian design.

“Nations Like Unto Yourselves”: An Inquiry into the Status of a General Principle of International Law on Animal Welfare

2012 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 3-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Sykes
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
International Law ◽  
General Principle ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
The Status ◽  
Universal Ethic ◽  
Cruelty To Animals

SummaryThis article proposes that there is a general principle of international law concerning the humane treatment of animals. Preoccupation with “animal rights” has been associated with Western cultural imperialism masquerading as a universal ethic. Animal welfare is thus an instructive case study of what Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope have identified as the key challenge for international law, that of “construct[ing] normative institutions while admitting and upholding the diversity of peoples in international society.” This article applies the framework of interactional international law set out in Brunnée and Toope’s recent bookLegitimacy and Legality in International Law, while raising questions about the weight that their analysis accords to practice and their willingness to conclude that widely recognized principles to which states fail to adhere in practice lack legal force. The article also examines how laws prohibiting cruelty to animals have emerged precisely from an interactive cultural exchange between East and West, in particular, between England and India. It concludes that Brunnée and Toope’s framework, although it does not deal at any length with general principles of law (a source of international law in which practice plays a relatively minor role), is nevertheless a useful tool for understanding how a culturally contested principle fits into international law and ultimately supports the view that there is a general principle of international law concerning animal welfare.

scholarly journals A Christian Case for Farmed Animal Welfare

Animals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1116
Author(s):  
Margaret B. Adam ◽  
David L. Clough ◽  
David Grumett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
Tom Regan

It is now common to blame Christianity for broader society’s general inattention to the needs and comfort of animals in general, and farmed animals in particular. This critique of Christianity claims that certain biblical themes and particular biblical passages form the foundation for an anti-animal position that Christianity has imposed on Christians and on wider Western society. This article concedes that Christianity has often been used to justify exploitation of animals, but argues that it is a mistake to consider Christianity inevitably opposed to concern for animals. After reviewing the views of critics such as Lynn White Jr., Peter Singer, and Tom Regan, the article demonstrates the complexity of interpreting biblical passages and the possibility of readings that affirm the importance of treating animals well. It shows that Christians have indeed been advocates for animals, notably in relation to the first legislation against animal cruelty in the early nineteenth century and the formation of the RSPCA. Finally, it proposes a constructive framework for a Christian ethics of farmed animal welfare that could provide the basis for Christian action to reduce consumption of animals and shift to higher welfare sources of animal products.

The Reluctant Revolutionist: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hipólito Da Costa (1774–1823)

1950 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Herrick
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Philosopher

Hipólito da Costa would probably be quite content (perhaps even a little surprised) at being feted as the father of the Brazilian press and probably he would not demand the additional title of political philosopher. But, in the fashion of his age, he discoursed at length on politics, and the pages of the Correio Braziliense which he edited show the ideas on governmental theory of a particular, early nineteenth-century liberal, a Portuguese influenced by the English liberalism which seems so far from radical today as to be almost blatantly conservative.

Animal Rights

2015 ◽  
pp. 24-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary L. Francione ◽  
Anna E. Charlton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
The Law ◽  
Oxford Group

The term “animal rights” is used broadly and often inconsistently in discussions of animal ethics. This chapter focuses on seven topics: (1) the pre-nineteenth-century view of animals as things and the emergence of the animal welfare position; (2) the work of Lewis Gompertz and of Henry Salt; (3) the Vegan Society, the Oxford Group, and Peter Singer’s animal liberation theory; (4) Tom Regan’s animal rights theory; (5) the abolitionist animal rights theory; (6) animal rights and the law; and (7) animal rights as a social movement. Herein, “rights” describes the protection of interests irrespective of consequences. The chapter’s position that veganism (not consuming any animal products), is a moral baseline follows from the widely-shared recognition that animals have moral value and are not merely things; veganism is the only rational response to that recognition.

scholarly journals Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and Fundamental Rights

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saskia Stucki
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
Key Questions

With legal animal rights on the horizon, there is a need for a more systematic theorisation of animal rights as legal rights. This article addresses conceptual, doctrinal and normative issues relating to the nature and foundations of legal animal rights by examining three key questions: can, do and should animals have legal rights? It will show that animals are conceptually possible candidates for rights ascriptions. Moreover, certain ‘animal welfare rights’ could arguably be extracted from existing animal welfare laws, even though these are currently imperfect and weak legal rights at best. Finally, this article introduces the new conceptual vocabulary of simple and fundamental animal rights, in order to distinguish the weak legal rights that animals may be said to have as a matter of positive law from the kind of strong legal rights that animals ought to have as a matter of future law.

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