For the month of May 2010 the SWIVL book selection is Beyond Animal Rights – A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals. This selection includes a practical set of essays that describes an important approach to ending violence towards non human animals which can be applied to child abuse and domestic violence.
The animal rights movement, which has generally been based on a natural rights doctrine and utilitarianism, advocates for more laws, rules and regulations to protect nonhuman animals. While this view is popular with most animal rights organizations, Editors, Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams believe that an exclusive rules-based approach to animal protection should be rejected and replaced with the belief that people and the human community should be responsible and caring first and that given the right conditions, humanity will and can respect the sanctity of all life – human and non human animals, alike.
In eight scholarly essays, a foundation for a new approach to animal rights and protection is presented by Editors. Themes presented include: (1) the connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature, (2) how justice-based arguments for animal liberation have failed, (3) why the treatment of companion and domestic animals should be driven by morality, humility, and care, and (4) sympathy as a basis for ethical treatment of animals.
This selection for May 2010 supports the view that more government control and domination will not keep human and nonhuman animals safe and that the bureaucratic approach represents an illusion allowing government at all levels to simply gain more power and influence over our lives.
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