On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings
  • Home
  • The Blog

The Strength & Resilience of the Orthodox

5/8/2015

0 Comments

 
In a discussion about forms of social knowledge, sociologists David Lee and Howard Newby claim that both common sense knowledge and ideological beliefs suffer from certain limitations (which, they say, sociological knowledge can go some way to overcome). Lee and Newby elaborate on the point, suggesting that these forms of knowledge are self-centred, incomplete and likely intolerant.

This latter suggestion is interesting, especially since they add that ideological belief can, "foster a dogmatic style of thought that insists on being right regardless." Of course, all ideologies may have these characteristics, including those based on ideas and beliefs we all favour and hold, as much as those based on beliefs we oppose or are generally "neutral" about. Constant vigilance and a commitment to critical thinking are required to ameliorate these tendencies to dogmatism.

Traditional animal welfare ideology displays these dogmatic characteristics, built on society-wide opinion that animal welfarism is undoubtedly, self-evidently, almost "naturally," the right and proper way to assess the morality of what humanity does every day to other animals. Animal welfarism remains largely accepted, generally without question, as the reasonable and realistic paradigm for evaluating human-nonhuman relations. Throughout the Western world, the ideology of animal welfarism is firmly institutionalised and its central ideological tenets are widely adopted and culturally internalised.

Claims are made on a regular basis, often by British farming interests and politicians of all stripes, that the "United Kingdom" has the strictest animal welfare standards in the world. Thus, it is suggested, "welfare costs" are substantial to the commercial industries which use nonhuman animals and animal welfare legislation should not readily be further strengthened without very good reason. However, there appears to be a general acceptance - or at least the articulation of a formal recognition - of the welfarist stance that says the "price" paid for maintaining "high welfare standards" is harsh and yet justifiable because, the ideology suggests, the users of nonhuman animals are concerned more than most about animal welfare. That said, the notion of going beyond what is evidently necessary to achieve "humane treatment" is clearly regarded as largely uncalled for, especially since it may dramatically endanger commercial competitiveness. In this sense, and rather like formal supportive claims towards health and safety provisions, animal welfare practices and legislation are presented as "essential," "adequate," and "strong but fair," notwithstanding that its provisions come at a cost. This is essentially the presentation of a pluralist political model allegedly based on seeking some satisfactory balance of various and often contradictory interests, even including some of the interests of the "lower animals" that humans routinely use as resources. This explains why animal rights claims are met by animal welfare statements from animal users.

In practice, organisationally and politically, animal welfarism is a constituent part of the various battle grounds and compromises between and among mobilisations such as the National Farmers Union (NFU), Friends of the Earth (FOE), the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), the British government’s Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) and the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA – formally the Ministry of Agriculture). This means that the "reasonable, reasoned and proper debate" over the human use of other animals is seen as rightly the province of legitimate mainstream organisations committed - on some level or other - to conventional animal welfare tenets. 

This means that they are committed to the "non-cruel" exploitation of other animals for human ends. Thus, "on the animals’ side" (although all participants would loudly claim this particular image-friendly status), groups such as CIWF stand for a move toward ~or a return to~ extensive systems of "animal husbandry," while the more politically powerful NFU would more likely support the status quo of substantial intensive production. The most dogmatic elements of traditional animal welfarism are readily evident when they are challenged by animal rights claims, on the one hand, and (now rare) Cartesian-inspired claims that there are no ethical issues involved in the human utilisation of other animals.

Clearly, animal welfarism’s institutionalised status as the firmly-fixed orthodoxy is its greatest strength: from this assured position other perspectives can be authoritatively characterised as "extreme" and "unnecessary." The widespread social orientation to animal welfarism means that any thinking about human relations with other sentient beings is almost mechanically assessed within this long-established and entrenched paradigm. Animal welfarism, unsurprisingly, is all-pervasive, even in campaigns "for" nonhuman animals. Most animal advocacy organisations, even those describing themselves as "animal rights" mobilisations, base their claims on central welfarist concepts such as cruelty rather than on rights violations.

By its own standards animal welfarism can claim to "work," or function, in the sense of reducing "unnecessary suffering" caused by the human use of nonhuman animals. This apparent functionality leads to suggestions that alternative views represent unnecessarily radical or "utopian" views. Just as common sense knowledge is regarded as enough to understand social phenomena, animal welfarism is considered as sufficient to understand the needs and requirements of nonhuman animals. In the early 1990s, political scientist Robert Garner reviewed several philosophical positions on human relations with other sentient beings and situated traditional animal welfarism in a broad centre ground position by characterising it as the "moral orthodoxy" in terms of ethical views about other animals. Garner also identified two comparative extremes to the welfarist "centre": the presently rare "no moral status" position, and the growing "challenge to the moral orthodoxy," which Garner (often mistakenly) claims is represented by philosophers such as Andrew Linzey, Mary Midgley, Stephen Clark, James Rachels, Bernard Rollins, Steven Sapontzis, Rosemary Rodd and especially Singer and Regan.

In her "dismissals model" (absolute and relative), philosopher Mary Midgley underscores the centrality of animal welfarist understandings, while noting that a certain degree of "mental vertigo" results from confusion about these positions, and this was in the mid-1980s, before Gary Francione came up with the added complication of the notion of "new welfarism." While this may be true of professional philosophers, who tend to identify and appreciate the differences between welfarist and rights-based positions, it is probably more correct to state that, in general talk, animal welfarism holds centre stage to the exclusion of other views. It is also important to note in this respect that, despite regularly being labelled as concerning "animal rights," the vast majority of mass media coverage of issues concerning the treatment of nonhumans is unconditionally welfarist in content.

Writing in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Aubrey Townsend attempts to further define the conventional welfarist view of other animals. He argues that the ethical orthodoxy allows a distinction between two sorts of moral considerations. The first applies to human and nonhuman animals and is based on a welfarist commitment to do what promotes the "living of a pain-free happy life." The second consideration is reserved for humans only and is based on a respect for personal autonomy - "for what an individual wants or values." Therefore, since animals are regarded as "only sentient," they can only be accorded an inferior moral status compared to human beings:

Thus, we are entitled to sacrifice the interests of animals to further human interests, whereas we are not entitled to treat humans in the same way - as part of a cost-benefit analysis.
Robert Garner ultimately offers animal rights supporters little comfort, declaring that the position outlined here by Townsend, "amounts to what is the conventional view about animals at least in Britain." He also agrees that this position corresponds to the perspective of many traditional animal welfare organisations. In effect, then, welfarism accords to nonhuman animals "intermediate status" - while animals may be more than inanimate "things," they are nevertheless very much less than "persons."

Understanding the status of nonhuman animals in speceisist societies means appreciating the challenge that advocates of nonhuman rights face. That animal welfarism is the dominant paradigm in assessments of human-nonhuman relations is certain. This is the view a genuine animal rights movement must fundamentally oppose.
0 Comments

    Roger Yates

    Dr. Roger Yates is a rights advocate and sociologist

    Archives

    March 2023
    October 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    September 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All
    1980s
    Aaron Yarmel
    Ableism
    Ableist Language
    Abolitionising Single Issues
    Abolitionising Single-issues
    Alliance Politics
    Always For Animal Rights
    Amnesty International
    Anarchy
    Andrew Linzey
    Angela Barnes
    Angus Taylor
    Animal Aid
    Animal Equality
    Animal Liberation
    Animal Liberation (book)
    Animal Liberation Front
    Animal Pity
    Animal Rights
    Animal Rights Conference (Luxembourg)
    Animal Rights Movement
    Animal Rights Philosophy
    Animal Rights Show
    Animal Rights Zone
    Animals Property & The Law (book)
    Animal Welfare
    Anna Charlton
    Anthony Giddens
    Aph Ko
    AR2012
    ARCNews
    Arthur Ling
    ARZone
    A Sociology Of Compromise
    Autobiography
    Avoiding Unpleasure
    Award
    Backlash
    Barbara DeGrande
    Barbara McDonald
    Barbara Noske
    BBC
    Being Dogmatic
    Bernard Rollins
    Bloom Festival
    Bob Linden
    Bob Torres
    Brian Kateman
    Bristol
    Bruce Friedrich
    Buddhism
    Calf Food
    Capitalism
    Carl Cohen
    Carnage (film)
    Carol Adams
    Case For Animal Rights (book)
    Chris Powell
    Christie Davies
    Christopher Lasch
    CIWF
    Claims Making
    Claims-making
    Commodore
    Consequentialism
    Counterforce
    CRC Radio
    Critical Theory
    Cruelty
    Cultural Speciesism
    C Wright Mills
    Dave Callender
    Dave Wetton
    David DeGrazia
    David Lee
    David Nibert
    Declan Bowens
    Defending Animal Rights (book)
    Dehumanisation
    Depersonalisation
    Direct Action Everywhere
    DIY Politics
    Donald Watson
    Dorothy Watson
    Dr. Koichi Tagami
    Dublin VegFest
    Earthlings Experience Dublin
    Eden Farmed Animal Sanctuary
    Elizabeth Collins
    Elsie Shrigley
    Emotional Lives Of Farm Animals (film)
    Encouraging Vegan Education (EVE)
    Erik Marcus
    Ethical Vegetarian Alternative
    Eva Batt
    Fairness (concept)
    Farm Kind
    Faye K Henderson
    Federation Of Local Animal Rights Groups
    Frankfurt School
    Freshfield Animal Rescue
    Freud
    Friedrich Engels
    Friends Of The Earth
    Funding
    Funding Appeal
    Fur
    G Allen Henderson
    Gandhi
    Gary Francione
    Gary Steiner
    Gary Yourofsky
    Geertrui Cazaux
    Geertui Cazaux
    Gender
    George Herbert Mead
    George Paton
    Gerry Kelly
    Ginny Messina
    Go Vegan Radio
    Go Vegan World
    Govinda's
    Grassroots
    Hannah Arendt
    Hans Ruesch
    Harold Brown
    Harold Guither
    Hazleton Action Group
    Hazleton Laboratories
    Henry Salt
    Herbert Marcuse
    Herbivores
    Horse Ripping
    House Of Fun
    Howard Newby
    HSUS
    Humanitarian League
    Human Liberation
    Human Rights
    Human Rights Watch
    Humour
    Internet Age
    Intersectionality
    Interviews
    Introduction To Animal Rights (book)
    Irish Times
    Jackson Katz
    Jake Conroy
    James Rachels
    Jeremy Hess
    Jill Phipps
    Jim Mason
    Joan Dunayer
    John Bussineau
    John Fagan
    John Robbins
    Jon Hochschartner
    Jordan Wyatt
    Josh Harper
    Julian Groves
    Jurgen Habermas
    Justice
    Karin Ridgers
    Karl Marx
    Kath Clements
    Kathleen Jannaway
    Kay Henderson
    Keith Akers
    Keith Mann
    Keith Tester
    Keith Thomas
    Kim Stallwood
    Knowing Animals
    Language
    Lauren Ornelas
    League Against Cruel Sports
    Leslie Cross
    Let's Rage Together Podcast
    Linda McCartney
    Lynne Yates
    Macka B
    Mainstream
    Mammals
    Marjorie Spiegel
    Mary Midgley
    Mass Media
    Matt Ball
    Matthew Cole
    Maureen Duffy
    Max Weber
    McDonaldisation
    McDonald's
    Meat Free Monday
    Meat-free Monday
    Meat Reducing
    Media
    Media Sociology
    Melanie Joy
    Mercy For Animals
    #MeToo
    Michael Dello-lacovo
    Milk
    Milton Mills
    Moral Baseline
    Moral Maze
    Movement Crisis
    Movement For Compassionate Living
    Movement History
    National Animal Rights Association
    National Anti-Vivisection Society
    Neil Lea
    Neil Robinson
    Neville The VIP Van
    Newsjack
    News Quiz
    Newstalk Radio
    "New Welfare"
    Nick Fiddes
    Nick Pendergrast
    Norman Fairclough
    Numbers
    NZ Vegan
    Palm Oil
    Patreon
    Patriarchy
    Patrice Jones
    Paul McCartney
    Paul Sauder
    Paul Watson
    Paul Willis
    People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals
    PeTA
    Peter/Brigitte Berger
    Peter Singer
    Philosophy
    Piaget
    Piers Beirne
    Pigeons
    Pippa Evans
    Plague Dogs
    Plamil
    Podcast
    Poetry
    Pornography
    Poverty Of Ambition
    Power
    "professionals"
    Progressive Podcast Aus
    Prostitution
    Purity
    Rachel Carson
    Racism
    Radicals & Revolutionaries
    Radio 5 Live
    Radio Debate
    Rain Without Thunder (book)
    Real Veganism
    Reducatarianism
    Reducetarianism
    Resilience Of Orthodox
    Richard Adams
    Richard Gale
    Richard Ryder
    Rights (legal)
    Rights (moral)
    Rights (natural)
    Robert Garner
    Ronnie Lee
    Rosemary Rodd
    RSPCA
    Ruhama
    Ruth Harrison
    Sandra Higgins
    Scandals
    Sea Shepherd
    Sebastian Joy
    Sexism
    Sex Roles
    Sexual Politics Of Meat (book)
    Sex Work
    SHAC
    Simon Amstell
    Simon Redfearn
    Siobhan O'Sullivan
    Slaughterhouse
    Slaughter Of The Innocent
    Social-change
    Social-constructionism
    Socialisation
    Social-justice
    Social-movements
    Social-movement-theory
    Sociology
    Speciesism
    Stacia-leyes
    Stanley-cohen
    Stanley-milgram
    States-of-denial-book
    Stephen-clark
    Stephen-clarke
    Stephen Nolan
    Steve Best
    Steve-christmas
    Steve-kangas
    Steven-sapontzis
    Subjectsofalife
    Sue-coe
    Tavs
    Teagan-kuruna
    Ted-benton
    Thanksgiving
    The-animals-film
    The Bloody Vegans
    The-case-for-animal-rights-book
    The-now-show
    The-species-barrier
    The-vegan-magazine
    The-vegan-news-1944
    The-vegan-society
    Thrive Vegan World
    Tik Tok
    Tim-barford
    Tina Cubberley
    Tobias Leenaert
    Tom Regan
    Tom Warby
    Total Liberation
    Trafficking
    Turkeys
    Unnecessary Fuss
    Utilitarianism
    Vegan
    Vegan Buddies
    Vegan Education
    Vegan Education On The Go
    Vegan Information Booths
    Vegan Information Day
    Vegan Information Days
    Vegan Information Project
    Veganism
    Vegan Outreach
    Vegan Pioneers
    Vegan Pioneers Rock!
    Vegan Radio International
    Vegans
    Vegan Social Movement
    Vegan Society
    Vegetarianism
    Vegfest Express
    VegFestUK
    Victoria Moran
    Victor Schonfeld
    Video Talk
    Violence
    Wayne Hsiung
    Wendy McGovern
    World Vegan Summit
    You Caring
    Zami
    Zoos
    Zygmunt Bauman

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.