What is the future of animal rights?

Answer 1

That's an excellent question. I can't answer it definitively, but I can tell you where "the movement" seems to be heading based on present trends and conditions. (I use the quotes because I don't think what we have right now can necessarily be called a movement.)

Animal Rights activists and intellectuals have never been a homogenous group, but party lines are becoming more powerful and more divisive. There are two major schools right now: the abolitionists and the new welfarists. Abolitionists maintain that the animals as property paradigm must be, well, abolished. They argue for the personhood of all sentient beings and adopt the practice of veganism.

New welfarists on the other hand generally seek to improve the conditions of animals within the status quo, rather than transforming the status quo itself. You can find a mix of vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters in this group. The ASPCA and the Humane Society would fall into this category. You can find them here:

http://www.aspca.org/about-us/policy-positions/

and here:

http://www.hsus.org/about_us/statements/

"Happy Meat"--which seems to be an egregious oxymoron to me--evolved out of the NW platform. Happy Meat, in case you don't know, a market-driven half-justice in which animals are treated as humanely as possible before they're slaughtered. (Full disclosure: I'd fall into the Abolitionist category).

These two groups do not get along and there is little to no cooperation between them. So "Animal Rights" might be falling into a two-party system, which is inauspicious given the lack of success in ... other areas dominated by two parties.

Be that as it may, veganism, vegetarianism, and people generally concerned with what they implicitly support with their grocery store purchases are becoming a more mainstream phenomenon. This has both positive and negative implications. On the upside, more people are beginning to recognize the current conditions of animal life are horrible, and that these conditions are entirely produced by humans. On the downside, our consumer economy has found a way to make us feel better about exploiting animals by exploiting them a little less and calling it Happy Meat and other such minimal-sacrifice products available to us. In my opinion, and the opinion of those with many more credentials (see below), is an insidious palliative. It makes people who are genuinely concerned believe they are being progressive when they are actually still supporting an inherently and violently exploitative paradigm.

Okay, so obviously I have strong opinions here, and thank you for reading through them. I found some sources that you might be interested in looking into. On the abolitionist front, Gary Francione, a law professor at Rutgers, is the most prolific and probably the most influential. You can find his blog here:

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/

It will give you a very clear idea of Abolitionism and where this school wants to see AR move. Bob Torres is another such writer. He's not as prolific as Francione, but he's earlier in his career. His blog is here:

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/

Torres also hosts a radio show that can be found here:

http://veganfreakradio.com/

Both Torres and Francione are PhDs. AR is finding a niche in academic disciplines, although it isn't necessarily called "Animal Rights." There is now an academic journal dedicated entirely what is emerging as "Critical Animal Studies." It's called, not surprisingly, The Journal of Critical Animal Studies, and it's available to the public in fulltext here:

http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/JCAS/index.htm

In addition to "Critical Animal Studies," "Post-Humanism" is a new academic focus that has evolved out of animal rights discourse. Both of these discourses tend to situate the idea of "species" as a cultural convention rather than a biological absolute. Which sounds odd, I know. Perhaps this can be more clearly articulated by saying that the classification of sentient beings for the purpose of attaching meanings and values to them is a cultural practice, not the result of Biology.

Finally, a lot of AR intellectuals and activists are situating animal exploitation a component of an a larger exploitative system. (This is part of an academic trend in "intersectionalism," which in turn is being superseded by the suspiciously similar "assemblage" model of identity) Carol J. Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat, for example, looks at the mutually reinforcing objectification of animals and women. You can find her book on Amazon here:

http://www.Amazon.com/Sexual-Politics-SEXUAL-POLITICS-ANNIV/dp/B001TVHYP8/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255524739&sr=8-6

Finally, if you'd like a general primer on Animal Rights theory, the Animal Rights LIbrary has several lengthy excerpts from important writers from Montaigne to Tom Regan:

http://www.animal-rights-library.com/

So, in sum, as a movement, animal rights is evolving into two discrete schools of thought, while simultaneously branching out to include the exploitation of the human groups as part of the analysis of animal exploitation.

I'll be checking in periodically, so if you have any more questions, I'd be happy to help.

c