The Nature of Fear Among Farmers Working with Animal Production

In this article, we investigate the nature of fear among farmers working with animal production with particular focus on the impact of harassment and crimes linked to animal rights activism. The study is based on responses from 3815 animal farmers to a national survey in 2020 in Sweden. Cross-table analysis and logistic regression models underlie the methodology of the study. Findings show that three out of ten of those farmers feel afraid of being victimized by the actions of animal rights activists; the proportion is two-thirds among farmers with previous experience of victimization, and fear of victimization varies across Sweden and by type of activity. Perceived lack of support from the police, exacerbated by geographical isolation, are common determinants of farmers’ declared fear, particularly those whose families live on the farms and who have employees. While understanding the factors that affect farmers’ safety perceptions is important, the article ends by calling for further research on the ways by which fear of animal activism impacts farmers’ personal lives, those of their family and employees, and not least their livelihood.

Consciousness reduced: The role of the ‘idiot’ in early evolutionary psychology

A conception of the idiotic mind was used to substantiate late 19th-century theories of mental evolution. A new school of animal/comparative psychologists attempted from the 1870s to demonstrate that evolution was a mental as well as a physical process. This intellectual enterprise necessitated the closure, or narrowing, of the ‘consciousness gap’ between human and animal species. A concept of a quasi-non-conscious human mind, set against conscious intention and ability in higher animals, provided an explanatory framework for the human–animal continuum and the evolution of consciousness. The article addresses a significant lacuna in the historiographies of intellectual disability, animal science, and evolutionary psychology, where the application of a conception of human idiocy to advance theories of consciousness evolution has not hitherto been explored. These ideas retain contemporary resonance in ethology and cognitive psychology, and in the theory of ‘speciesism’, outlined by Peter Singer in Animal Liberation (1975), which claims that equal consideration of interests is not arbitrarily restricted to members of the human species, and advocates euthanasia of intellectually disabled human infants. Speciesism remains at the core of animal rights activism today. The article also explores the influence of the idea of the semi-evolved idiot mind in late-Victorian anthropology and neuroscience. These ideas operated in a separate intellectual sphere to eugenic thought. They were (and remain) deeply influential, and were at the heart of the idea of the moral idiot or imbecile, targeted in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, as well as in 20th-century animal and human consciousness theory.

Raining on SeaWorld’s Parade: PETA’s Direct Action and Public Interest Communication

PETA is well known for creative animal rights activism, with studies exploring how its text-based advocacy creates change regarding societal treatment of animals. What is less explored is how PETA uses on the ground direct action strategies as public interest communications (PIC). For PIC scholars, these strategies are relevant, as direct action provides communicators with experiential ways to persuade stakeholders of new perspectives to push for social change. Building on previous studies in public relations activism and PIC, this essay argues that PETA’s direct-action strategies complement its text-based advocacy by shaping stakeholder perception through encounters with material realities, specifically by using embodied forms of persuasion. Answering how public interest communicators create effective persuasive messages on the ground is crucial in understanding contemporary social change.

Aristotelian Ethics and Veganism

I argue that ethical veganism and animal rights activism is preferable to a moral relativist approach to vegetarianism and animal use, even in cases of activism labeled “extreme.” The moral relativist says that being a vegetarian or a meat eater is a matter of personal choice. I argue that the strong commitments of ethical vegans and animal rights activists are admirable from a virtue ethics perspective; they are not extreme. On the contrary, they accord with the ideal that Aristotle called the "Golden Mean." Aristotle himself was not vegan. He viewed the universe in a fundamentally hierarchical way and would have had no objections to the human use of animals. However, he believed in the idea of a Natural Law, and this can be used to support contemporary ethical veganism and animal rights activism. If animals possess rights, then it is the moral duty (rather than personal choice) of every human to stop his or her consumption of animal products. From this perspective, the harms that may be caused by veganism (particularly economic harms) are of lesser significance than the value of veganism and animal rights activism. The moral relativist argument against the alleged extremism of ethical vegans is improper. The highly controversial tactics employed by some vegan and animal rights activists including the use of violence, harassment and property damage can be understood as reasonable and morally necessary from a virtue ethics perspective if we extend our concept of moral community to include all sentient beings.

Circles of Community, Strategies of Inclusion

Chapter Six analyzes the efforts of activists to create community by bringing together people with different agendas and backgrounds and the resultant tensions and conflicts that come about in the process. I look closely at activists’ work to connect environmental and animal rights activism with concerns about social justice, especially with regard to people of color. Activist gatherings are imagined as free and open spaces of inclusivity and equality and yet they set up their own patterns of conformity and expectation. This chapter looks closely at how putting the “Earth first” comes in conflict with “anti-oppression” work and vice-versa, as activists try hard, drawing on empathy and compassion, to decolonize their communities and dismantle patriarchy and transphobia within their movements.