Buddhism and Animal Rights

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Waldau
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Food Animals

The Buddhist tradition is justifiably known for its commitment to the primacy of ethical reflection. On the issue of nonhuman animals, the tradition-wide commitment to an undertaking to refrain from killing, known as the First Precept, offers a moving example of humans’ abilities to apply ethics to nonhuman animals on questions about animal protection for companion animals, food animals, entertainment animals, wildlife, and captive animals. Buddhist reflections on humans’ relationship to nonhuman animals, including questions of non-lethal harms, also have features that are illuminated, as is the First Precept, by a comparison with contemporary animal rights and animal protection debates.

scholarly journals Attitudes Toward Animal Rights in Palestine: A Quantitative Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Erni Gustafsson ◽  
Nabil Alawi ◽  
Per Normann Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
University Students ◽  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Attitude Scale ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Abstract This study investigates and compares attitudes of 205 Palestinian and Norwegian university students toward companion animals (pets) using the Pet Attitude Scale. In order to provide some background for the Palestinian attitudes toward nonhuman animals, we discuss canonical Islamic texts on their treatment, as well as the present situation for animal protection in the Middle East. The findings from the survey suggest differences between Palestinian and Norwegian students; however, both groups showed predominately positive attitudes.

Caring about Blood, Flesh, and Pain:Women's Standing in the Animal Protection Movement

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyle Munro
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Drunk Driving ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Animal Abuse ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Mothers Against Drunk Driving ◽  
History Of

AbstractUsing the results of a survey of animal rights activists, advocates, and supporters, the paper reveals much more convergence (80%) than divergence (20%) of attitudes and actions by male and female animal protectionists. Analysis of the divergence suggests that the differences between men and women in the movement are contingent upon such things as early socialization, gendered work and leisure patterns, affinity with companion animals, ambivalence about science, and a history of opposition to nonhuman animal abuse by generations of female activists and animal advocates. Aside from the feminist and women's movements and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it is rare to find a social movement in which the standing of women eclipses those of their male colleagues. The paper suggests that animal protection remains a bastion of female activism and advocacy because women care about blood, flesh, and pain and, unlike earlier generations of animal activists, no longer are seen as a liability to the success of the movement.

Animal Rights

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Waldau
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Animal Rights Movement ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In this compelling volume in the What Everyone Needs to Know series, Paul Waldau expertly navigates the many heated debates surrounding the complex and controversial animal rights movement. Organized around a series of probing questions, this timely resource offers the most complete, even-handed survey of the animal rights movement available. The book covers the full spectrum of issues, beginning with a clear, highly instructive definition of animal rights. Waldau looks at the different concerns surrounding companion animals, wild animals, research animals, work animals, and animals used for food, provides a no-nonsense assessment of the treatment of animals, and addresses the philosophical and legal arguments that form the basis of animal rights. Along the way, readers will gain insight into the history of animal protection-as well as the political and social realities facing animals today-and become familiar with a range of hot-button topics, from animal cognition and autonomy, to attempts to balance animal cruelty versus utility. Chronicled here are many key figures and organizations responsible for moving the animal rights movement forward, as well as legislation and public policy that have been carried out around the world in the name of animal rights and animal protection. The final chapter of this indispensable volume looks ahead to the future of animal rights, and delivers an animal protection mandate for citizens, scientists, governments, and other stakeholders. With its multidisciplinary, non-ideological focus and all-inclusive coverage, Animal Rights represents the definitive survey of the animal rights movement-one that will engage every reader and student of animal rights, animal law, and environmental ethics.

Animals as Legal Subjects

2015 ◽  
pp. 166-188
Author(s):  
Paul Waldau
Keyword(s):  
Companion Animals ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Legal Person ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Legal Personhood ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
The Status ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
Legal Subjects ◽  
Education And Society

This chapter contrasts the dominant sense of the phrase “animals as legal subjects,” which minimizes fundamental protections for nonhuman animals, with alternative senses of the same phrase that focus on nonhuman animals’ realities, such as consciousness and intelligence. Support for the alternatives comes from developments within different domains, including legal education and society more broadly, where the meaning of such phrases as “legal person,” “legal personhood,” and “legal rights” is being debated regarding companion animals, wildlife, and many other forms of life. The upshot of the debate taking place over the status of nonhuman animals in law and broader phenomenon of human exceptionalism is a wide-ranging discussion of additional forms of animal protection.

scholarly journals Explaining Support for Animal Rights: A Comparison of Two Recent Approaches to Humans, Nonhuman Animals, and Postmodernity

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Franklin ◽  
Bruce Tranter ◽  
Robert White
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Friendship Relations ◽  
Lifestyle Choices ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Changing Times ◽  
Cross National

AbstractQuestions on "animal rights" in a cross-national survey conducted in 1993 provide an opportunity to compare the applicability to this issue of two theories of the socio-political changes summed up in "postmodernity": Inglehart's (1997) thesis of "postmaterialist values" and Franklin's (1999) synthesis of theories of late modernity. Although Inglehart seems not to have addressed human-nonhuman animal relations, it is reasonable to apply his theory of changing values under conditions of "existential security" to "animal rights." Inglehart's postmaterialism thesis argues that new values emerged within specific groups because of the achievement of material security. Although emphasizing human needs, they shift the agenda toward a series of lifestyle choices that favor extending lifestyle choices, rights, and environmental considerations. Franklin's account of nonhuman animals and modern cultures stresses a generalized "ontological insecurity." Under postmodern conditions, changes to core aspects of social and cultural life are both fragile and fugitive. As neighborhood, community,family,and friendship relations lose their normative and enduring qualities, companion animals increasingly are drawn in to those formerly exclusive human emotional spaces.With a method used by Inglehart and a focus in countries where his postmaterialist effects should be most evident, this study derives and tests different expectations from the theories, then tests them against data from a survey supporting Inglehart's theory. His theory is not well supported. We conclude that its own anthropocentrism limits it and that the allowance for hybrids of nature-culture in Franklin's account offers more promise for a social theory of animal rights in changing times.

scholarly journals Attitudes to Animals in the Animal Protection Community Compared to a Normative Community Sample

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Taylor ◽  
Tania Signal
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Attitude Scale ◽  
Primary Industry ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
General Community ◽  
Indirect Action

AbstractAttitudes toward the treatment of nonhuman animals in the animal protection community remain largely under researched. In an attempt to begin to rectify this, this study conducted a survey of 407 members of the animal protection community using the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS). The survey also asked participants to indicate whether they identified more with (a) animal rights or animal welfare perspectives and (b) a direct or indirect action approach to securing animal protection. Results of the current study indicate that, regardless of philosophical or practical beliefs, those in the animal protection community were significantly more pro-animal welfare (as measured by the AAS) than members of the general community. This disparity was even greater between the current participants and those of a previous study who identified as being employed in the Primary Industry (PI) sector. This paper discusses implications of this as well as respondents' philosophical and practical views.

Constitutional Inclusion of Animal Rights in Germany and Switzerland: How Did Animal Protection Become an Issue of National Importance?

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Evans
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
The Other ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
National Importance ◽  
Industrialized Democracies ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Institutional Selectivity

AbstractProvisions for animal rights have been included in the national constitutions of Switzerland (1992, 2000) and Germany (2002). Protective constitutional inclusion is a major social movement success, and in view of the other movements also seeking increased political visibility and responsiveness, it is worth asking how and why nonhuman animals were allowed into this realm of political importance. This research seeks to explain how animal activists achieved this significant goal in two industrialized democracies. Using an approach drawn from the mainstream canon on social movements, this comparative study attempts to show how cultural factors, institutional selectivity, and the influence of spontaneous events, along with the tactic of “frame-bridging,” determined the success of both movements.

Canine Rescue as a Social Movement: The Politics of Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 670-687
Author(s):  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Advocacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Animal Bond ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Politics Of Love

Abstract Canine rescue is a growing movement that affects the lives of tens of thousands of nonhuman animals and people every year. Rescue is noteworthy not only for its numbers, but also because it challenges common understandings of animal advocacy. Popular accounts often portray work on behalf of animals as sentimental, individualistic, and apolitical. In fact, work on behalf of animals has always been political, in multiple ways. It is characterized both by internal political tensions, especially between animal rights and welfare positions, and by complex relations to the broader public sphere. I analyze canine rescue, with a focus on pit bull rescue, to show that an important segment of canine rescue movements adopts an explicitly political approach which blurs the divide between rights and welfare, addresses the social context of the human-animal bond, and links animal advocacy to social justice.

Animal Sanctuaries

Anthropology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Small Body ◽  
Species Difference ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Ecological Relationships ◽  
Rehabilitation Centers ◽  
Specific Species

Animal sanctuaries are human-created spaces for the protection and care of animals rescued from conditions of violence, exploitation, neglect, or abuse by other humans. The contemporary institution of the animal sanctuary originated with the first sanctuaries established in the United States by animal protection activists in the early 1980s. Since then, activists have established hundreds more throughout the world. Individual sanctuaries typically focus their efforts on specific kinds of animals corresponding to the ways in which they are used or commodified by humans, such as farmed animals, companion animals, or wild animals used in entertainment and biomedical research, although others may focus on a specific species of animal, such as chimpanzees, horses, wolves, or elephants. Animal sanctuaries are a novel subject of ethnographic inquiry in anthropology and related social sciences, so “sanctuary studies” is currently a nascent but growing topical area of research. Despite the relatively small body of literature focused on animal sanctuaries, anthropologists and other social scientists investigating sanctuaries and related endeavors, such as wildlife rehabilitation centers, have already provided valuable insights into why and how humans have chosen to care for rescued or endangered animals and the new kinds of institutions and political ecological relationships that are generated by these practices, highlighting the varied and, at times, conflicting ideas about care, ethics, value, species difference, and animal subjectivity and agency that inform sanctuary work. This pioneering literature forms a rich foundation for future research.

scholarly journals Nonhuman Animal Rights, Alternative Food Systems, and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

PhaenEx ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Lee Wrenn
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Alternative Systems ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Alternative food systems (namely the humane product movement) have arisen to address societal concerns with the treatment of Nonhuman Animals in food production. This paper presents an abolitionist Nonhuman Animal rights approach (Francione, 1996) and critiques these alternative systems as problematic in regards to goals of considering the rights or welfare of Nonhuman Animals. It is proposed that the trend in social movement professionalization within the structure of a non-profit industrial complex will ultimately favor compromises like “humane” products over more radical abolitionist solutions to the detriment of Nonhuman Animals. This paper also discusses potential compromises for alternative food systems that acknowledge equal consideration for Nonhuman Animals, focusing on grassroots veganism as a necessary component for consistency and effectiveness.

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