Category: Robert Garner

The Sociology of Animal Harming

8/6/2015

Many animal advocates declare that this vivisector is “evil” or that farmer was “sick.” An understanding of social processes, structures, and institutions can correct such mistakes. Vivisectors and other animal enslavers are not necessarily evil or sick – rather, they are fully socialised members of thoroughly speciesist societies. As such, cultural speciesism is what animal rightists seek to address, not the pathology of individual animal users.

Sociologists note that processes of socialisation never end: they start virtually the moment human beings are born (arguably in the womb) and they go on until the day they die. The assumed social influence of these processes can be gleaned from other terms which have been used interchangeably with socialisation, such as “acculturation,” meaning the process “by which persons acquire knowledge of the culture in which they live,” and the anthropological concept of cultural transmission, “enculturation.”

Students in sociology learn that primary socialisation is extremely important as it represents basic but foundational social knowledge which human beings draw upon to navigate their way in the social world. Individuals’ long and intense experiences of processes of socialisation are tremendously important in understanding how human beings relate to other animals in the ways that they do. These processes shape social attitudes and practices.

Many social scientists suggest that early (primary) socialisation is extremely important in terms of a person’s “life career” in society. Social philosopher Zygmunt Bauman shows how “the group” helps to make the person. Concentrating on language and social interaction, critical theorist Jürgen Habermas states that “the process of socialisation takes place within structures of linguistic intersubjectivity.” While regularly giving recognition to views that some accounts may suggest the “oversocialised” view of “passive humanity,” the claim that socialisation processes have a powerful impact on individuals nevertheless appears entirely justified.

Moreover, Bauman argues that the “utmost exertion” is required of those wanting to change what they have been “made” into. Therefore, a wish to change and resist involves effort, self-sacrifice, determination and endurance: quite clearly, it is far easier to go with the flow and live “placidly and obediently in conformity.”

A social psychological approach to the issue also helps us appreciate both its institutionalised and internalised dimensions. For example, while Piaget notes the important part socialisation plays in cognitive development, andFreud claims that a family setting leads to the acquisition of a solid moral and personal identity, sociologist George Herbert Mead suggests the simultaneous acquisition of the concept of self and social identity.

Maureen Duffy.

In 1984, poet, playwright and author Maureen Duffy wrote a book about human-nonhuman relations which is hardly ever mentioned any more. However, her Men and Beasts: an Animal Rights Handbook perfectly illustrates some of these sociological points about upbringing. For example, expressing the experiential reality of most modern British people, she writes, “I grew up in a meat-eating world.” Social anthropologist Nick Fiddes has shown that there have been several “meatologies” about the assumed goodness and even the biological “necessity” of meat-eating, and Duffy says she was brought up to believe that meat was “goodness itself” and consequently a meal without meat did not have “a bit of goodness in it.” For the young Maureen Duffy, meat was something everyone she knew wanted to eat, although some could not afford to do so.

If people sometimes did not to eat meat, she could only imagine that they belonged to a different social class. Their “elegant restraint” from meat was to give them, apparently through a form of inverted logic, some additional social standing - or, more practically, they were enjoying a variation from the large amount of roast game they usually consumed. Whereas some staples such as white bread were understood as bulky stomach-filling foods, it was known that “flesh foods” were absolutely necessary for growth and health “as if by eating a dead animal its strength and powers were transferred to you.” This latter point is something of a remarkable throwback to accounts of cannibalistic thought.[see Here.]

Once Duffy experienced overseas travel and observed the gradual availability in England of what she had been brought up to regard as “messed-up foreign food,” she increasingly found that she needed “some explanation of the world which included meat eating.” Of course, she quite readily found several conventional animal-harming explanations open to her, including most of the religious, philosophical and animal welfare views I have explored elsewhere and, she notes, she probably adopted all of them one after the other.

The effects of social processes such as socialisation are not to be ignored if one wishes to get some valid understanding of sociological patterns of behaviour and the grounding of long-influential social views and widely-held attitudes and orientations. Bauman’s statement that individuals are greatly dependent on the group which “holds” them appears entirely plausible, while in Taking Animals Seriously, philosopher David DeGrazia argues that resisting dominant values and ideas takes a great effort and an extraordinary independence of mind.

However, people can and do break away from their socialisation; the existence of animal rightists among speciesist populations proves that.

Nevertheless, precisely because socialisation processes are powerful social influences, it would greatly assist the case for animal rights if people were socialised into a world in which animal rights claims were both frequent and widespread. Regretfully, the chances of anyone hearing genuine animal rights views in present society are slim. Such views are generally drowned out by the cacophonous rhetorical rights claims of new welfarists. Animal welfarism - and the legal provision inspired by it (see Animals, Politics, and Morality by Robert Garner) – amounts to “going with the flow.” Traditional animal welfarism seductively suggests that no root and branch changes are necessary or desirable in human-nonhuman relations. New welfarism claims to want radical change, but in the name of practicality it will proceed slowly and make small and “realistic” reformist demands. Society merely needs to observe a certain extra vigilance to ensure that regulatory and social control mechanisms are sufficiently robust to meet all the requirements embedded in the welfarist notion of “non-cruel” animal exploitation.

Given a sociological understanding of social processes, it is not difficult to imagine why this orientation can appear seductive to so many. However, many more in the animal protection community or elsewhere need to gather the wherewithal to make claims that challenge cultural speciesism rather than try to work within its welfarist-informed precepts.

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Thoughts on Whether Animal Welfare Campaigns - and Many Welfare Organisations - are Even Needed.

5/30/2015

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What if animal welfare campaigns were not necessary? By welfare campaigns, I mean those that attempt to make cages bigger, or “push” the animal user industries to kill nonhuman animals in a way other than the traditional way, not the day-to-day activities of welfare organisations such as the RSPCA whose officers assist the police in breaking up dog fights and who rescue emaciated animals from fields and houses.

What if it turns out that clearly advocating the case for animal rights, veganism, and the total abolition of animal use, brought in its wake various welfare reforms? What if this means that no substantial monies or effort is needed in this area from those who say they stand for the abolition of animal use - and then the funds and energy could be devoted to campaigns against the real structural problem facing animal advocates, cultural speciesism.

Sociologist Richard Gale has looked at the complex and ever-changing relations that exist between social movement organisations (SMO) and countermovement organisations (CMO), and the connections that each has with the state or with state agencies. In terms of animal use, CMOs typically represent the industries perceiving themselves to be under pressure from the animal advocacy movement. The countermovement, this “counterforce,” to use Harold Guither’sterminology, is well funded and very powerful. For example, in the USA, an umbrella organisation such as the Animal Industry Foundation, “works to educate consumers about how modern livestock and poultry producers operate and the importance of their service to the American public.” This group represents the interests of numerous “producer groups, agribusiness associations, and agribusiness companies” such as the National Cattleman’s Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Feed Industry Association, the National Milk Producers Federation and United Egg Producers.

Likewise, the Farm Animal Welfare Coalition (FAWC) was created to represent 45 industry groups and therefore was, “alarmed by the premises of animal activists, the criticisms of modern confinement livestock and poultry production, and the promotion of vegetarianism,” and worried (in public utterances at least) to the extent that it sees, “the animal rights movement as destructive to consumer choice and the farm economy.”

Gale points out that there may or may not be direct communication between social movement organisations and their countermovement mobilisations but both will tend to attempt to gain access to, and have influence over, state agencies. Therefore, since it is nearly impossible to conceive of any major social movement activity that does not involve the state to some degree, adequate social movement analysis must be alive to “the social movement-countermovement-state triad.” What this means is that developments and discourse in civil society created by social movement activity, in this case animal advocacy, will create dialogue between state agencies and industry representatives acting as a counterforce mobilisation. Apart from close links that exist between governments and user industries, the latter often enjoying what political scientist Robert Garner calls “insider status”, when governments consult on animal issues, they invite submissions from user industry representatives, academics, and the most respectable of the traditional animal welfare organizations. There is no need for any animal rights input in such proceedings since animal welfare is the only criteria ever applied, be it in investigations into the regulation of the use of animals in circuses, on farms, in laboratories, or any other use setting.

However, the impact of animal rights campaigning on public attitudes, and the amount of media attention given to animal rights advocacy, can and probably will become constituent parts of these deliberations. The efforts of the animal rights advocate, then, remains best expended at the civil society level, for example, in attempts to shift the way society thinks about nonhuman animals. Success in this sphere will inevitably result in welfare reforms along the way without the need for direct advocacy of it by animal advocates with aspirations beyond that of traditional animal welfarism.

Typically, of course, the animal user industries themselves respond to criticism from - or perceived to be from - an animal rights perspective with claims about animal welfare. The history of single-issue campaigning about animals enslaved in circuses is a classic example, although little of the claims-making is rights-based and is more in line with neo-welfarist orientations. While individual circus proprietors respond to demonstrations and claims-making about animal use with welfare statements, for example, here, here, and here, the circus industry, in consultation with government regulators, welcome - and advocate themselves - the regulation of circuses using animals. They do this because they know nothing beyond the notion of animal welfarism will enter into such deliberations. Therefore, while state-countermovement dialogue occurs on this level, both are likely to part-fund research about the pros and cons of different use systems. In other words, if they are to address animal use at all, they inevitably review it within the dominant paradigm of orthodox animal welfarism. This is what society does – it “understands” animal welfare because animal welfare suggests that “non-cruel use” is both feasible and desirable provided enough use regulation is set in place. Essentially, state regulators and countermovements are searching for welfare reforms that seems to satisfy prevailing public attitudes and also meet their primary objective of animal user industries not suffering economically.

This is where scientific disciplines such as animal welfare science play a vital role. Clive Phillips’ 2008 book, The Welfare of Animals: The Silent Majority, outlines the situation well. For example, Phillips recognises that a rapid intensification of animal agriculture occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the expense of “family businesses” a new corporate enterprise emerged in “a new industrial farming sector,” bringing with it a fresh emphasis on economic imperatives. Phillips points out that there is “no universal truism that intensive systems are associated with low welfare and extensive systems with high.” Therefore, research is required into animal use systems.

The adoption of welfare modifications are considered where appropriate and especially when they do not impact on profits. The result, according to Phillips, is that in most “developed countries,” industry funds research to meet two objectives. The first is to increase profits, “for example by control of diseases or an economically viable increase in productivity due to alleviation of stress,” and the second is in response to demands by the animal advocacy movement.

In the latter case, industry insists that “such changes cannot be made without scientific evaluations of welfare impacts” and this research usually takes about ten years to complete. While Phillips points out that industry is reluctant to fund welfare research or implement changes if profits are threatened, there is one important proviso to this: “Of course even if profit is reduced in the short terms, in the long term a better market may be accessible if welfare is improved, such as to consumers paying more to purchase products from animals kept in high welfare systems.”

Clearly those who profit from the use of animals are carefully and constantly monitoring their own business, as all successful businesses do. They are quite prepared to pay for research to keep them ahead of the game and profitable, and if that means employing experts such as Temple Grandin, they will. However, they also monitor the general discourse about the use of animals created by animal advocacy and, as ever, in league with their political allies, they will respond to rights-based claims-making to abolish animal use with suggestions and implementations of welfare reform. Since they always respond to animal rights with animal welfare, there is no need for specific welfare reforms to be advocated: industry experts and paid consultants will do that regardless. Such reforms will arise in the normal cut and thrust of social movement and countermovement exchanges, media reportage, and as a result of countermovement and state-level dialogue.

Not only may it be the case that animal advocates who seek abolition of animal use need never advocate for particular welfare reforms, and stick to challenging the power of cultural speciesism, it is also likely that some welfare reforms are delayed by animal advocates demanding them, especially, as PETA did recently in relation to KFC and CAK, when advocates always loudly announce that they are successfully “pushing” business into making changes against business wishes (whether that is factually true or not). As in all political negotiations, none of the parties want others to claim “victory!” at their expense, leaving them vulnerable to the recriminations from within their own community, some of whom are likely to have had their interests damaged, leaving them feeling betrayed and dissatisfied.

As suggested, the overarching sociological reality that must be acknowledged is that animal welfarism is the dominant paradigm when it comes to assessments of the human use of other animals. The ideology of animal welfare, at least in terms of the “western world,” is deeply embedded into the structure of society and the psychology of its citizens. Generation after generation socialize their children to care about the welfare of animals while they use them, and generation after generation internalize these social lessons that amounts to animal use is not the issue. This is why all animal users virtually without exception claim to have the welfare of their animal property at heart; that they “love” the animals they use and commodify; and they are also just as critical as anyone else of cases that violate the basic principles of animal welfare. For example, those in the animal user industries are undoubtedly equally outraged about what Michael Vick did to dogs, and just as opposed to teenagers shoving kittens in microwaves, or people slashing horses in fields and stables as any animal advocate. However, they need not think outside of the principles of animal welfare to hold such views and, therefore, they need not think contextually about Vick’s diet or lifestyle, or consider a kitten-killer’s leather clothing, or a “horse ripper’s” love of ice cream and milk shakes made from the stolen baby food of mammal mothers.

The fact that animal welfarism is so deeply entrenched in the value system of society is also reflected in the general public response to animal rights. Those who grew up learning the tenets of animal welfarism and, believing the generalised welfarist promise of “non-cruel use,” can have a hard time understanding the claim that a rights-based approach to the human use of animals is necessary or desirable. Therefore, taken out of their comfort zone within the welfarist view, the general public also will respond to rights-based claims with thoughts about animal welfare. Likewise, “celebrity chefs” will do exactly the same. Such TV personalities, for example, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, have taken steps to improve the welfare of battery chickens and other “food animals.”

However, since many animal advocates accept that only a paradigm shift in human consciousness about animals will bring about any meaningful benefits for them, and since many accept that the general societal reaction to animal rights is informed by the ideology and practice of animal welfarism, animal advocates who engage in animal welfare are merely working within the status quo - moving the pieces around the board - rather than encouraging the adoption of a brand new game. In the words of Donald Watson, vegan animal rights advocates must “ripen up” the population to the idea of animal rights, rather than expending time, money and energy on identifying “low-hanging fruit” which does little or nothing to challenge the property status of nonhuman animals. This conventional view of animals – that they are items of property – “its” to be owned - is, after all, a major problem that prevents their rights being respected. Engaging in welfarism inevitably strengthens the view that animals are items of property and does little to weaken prevailing attitudes.

Although many animal advocates claim to agree that no animal use can be justified, they claim that they must campaign for welfare reform as it is the only thing that it realistic at the present time. However, given the sociology and indeed the economics of welfare responses to rights-based claims-making, there are important reasons why making rights claims is the only rational response to animal exploitation. Let the users worry about the welfare of their captives, we have to win respect for the rights of nonhuman animals and convince people that use is a rights violation. The more successful we are in doing that, the more welfare reforms will flow from the ongoing relationships within the social movement-countermovement-state triad.

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The Strength & Resilience of the Orthodox

5/8/2015

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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.

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The Sociology of Animal Harming

Thoughts on Whether Animal Welfare Campaigns - and Many Welfare Organisations - are Even Needed.

The Strength & Resilience of the Orthodox

Roger Yates

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