Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions | refreshingly new perspectives

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Animal Rights: Cur...

	Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions Oxford University Press, USA, 2005 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum bring together an all-star cast of contributors to explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, the authors offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. This book offers a state-of-the-art treatment of that rethinking.

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The New Standard

Nussbaum and Sunstein have put together something very special. This book mixes the standard animal rights fare of Singer, Wise, and Francione with exciting new contributions by thinkers like Catharine MacKinnon, Richard Posner, as well as Sunstein and Nussbaum themselves. The book is well edited, with the various chapters flowing from issue to issue, and responding to each others arguments. The work explores not only what we own to animals, but also what practical approaches might deliver. The animal rights issue show not merely to be a "for or against" issue. Instead, we see a nuanced debate about the place of animals in theory and practice.

This book is essential to academic audiences, but should also prove accessible to general audiences. I suspect this will become a standard text for future animal rights courses.

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refreshingly new perspectives

Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions explores the human - animal relationship from a range of perspectives. It aims to assist in the fundamental rethinking of the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals. The book consists of fourteen chapters, each written by a different author. It is this format of the text, drawing on an impressive list of contributors, which makes it so distinctive and significant. The chapters flow surprisingly well, in some cases engaging with each other's arguments. While the great proportion of the book is concerned with positive reforms towards the increased recognition of the interests of nonhuman animals it does, rather uniquely, contain contributions from both sides of the animal rights debate.

Those acquainted with recent animal rights literature will be familiar with some of the contributors' work. Steven Wise contributes an excellent chapter which is adapted from his book "Drawing the Line", while Gary Francione's chapter draws on ideas mapped out in his groundbreaking work "Animals, Property and the Law". In addition to the contributions of the more prominent authors, the book contains a number of stimulating and fresh ideas from thinkers who haven't published extensively in this field.

The book represents a comprehensive exploration of the major contemporary animal rights debates. The chapters on law and policy reform are particularly engaging and insightful, with a number of the contributors putting forward substantial and compelling suggestions for reform.

It is certainly not an introductory type of text. The book is distinctly academic in tone, as one would expect given the overwhelming majority of the contributors are professors from prestigious universities.

A highly recommended read and a valuable reference for those interested in theoretical debates on animal rights. It's a timely book for the animal rights movement representing a compendium of fresh ideas and a roadmap for legal reform.

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A balanced and insightful book

MY RATING SYSTEM:

* - if you have to chose between torture and reading this book, then you might want to consider reading the book - although it depends on just how severe the torture would be.

** - if you've lost your job and have quite a bit of free time on your hands, and don't have anything else better to do, then you might want to consider reading this book; don't expect to learn much or really be entertained. It will however, help you pass the time until your death.

*** - meh...I'm indifferent. Reading this book will not alter your life in any significant way, yet it is not so horrendously dreadful that your taking the time to read it will be a complete waste of time.

**** - Good book to great book zone here. You should probably read this book if you have some spare time. This book could be interesting, entertaining, or informative.

***** - Outstanding book! Make time to read this book - you'll learn or be entertained or intrigued. The book might even be good enough to provide original or helpful insights into the world that we live in.

REVIEW:

Sunstein and Naussbaum have put together a fantastic collection of essays on the controversial and often incompletely understood topic of animal rights. This book is a must for any self-proclaimed animal rights proponents and, I think, a very informative read for anyone interested in the subject of the interaction between humans and animals. While the essays can, at times, be dense and academic (after all, there are some real intellectual heavyweights who have contributed to this book), I found most of the essays to be well worth the time and energy required to go through them.

The book starts out with several essays on issues that form a theoretical or principled debate on the issue of the role and appropriateness of animal rights, often drawing on and developing philosophical arguments to support a variety of competing positions. Generally, the essays search for the existence of a foundation for 'animal rights', or, as some of the authors might argue, if one exists at all. The middle section of the book tended to focus the more practical foundations and implications of a system of animal rights, including an informative essay by David J. Wolfson and Mariann Sullivan on the restricted application of animal cruelty laws in the North American agribusiness sector. The final essays of the book tend to be theoretical prescriptive explorations, examining where animal rights developments might progress in the future.

In summary, I think that this was an extremely valuable book, and definitely one that I will find myself returning to several times in the future.

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Good survey of hot topics

Great debates on the most recent issues in animal law. A great resource for Animal Law instructors.

Contains an important "fragment" from Catharine MacKinnon

From an animal rights persective, this book is inconsistent.

The reader will be treated, however, to a new voice -- that of Catharine MacKinnon, in a fascinating piece named "Of Mice and Men: A Feminist Fragment on Animal Rights." In it, Professor MacKinnon asks if "missing the misogyny in animal use and abuse" hinders animal rights successes.

We live in a culture that's largely comfortable thinking that what humans do to nonhuman bodies does not matter - at least what's done in regular, institutionalized ways.

As female people have often been defined and valued in terms of the use of their bodies and their reproductive functions, it is logical that nonhuman-rights advocates could find a message of value in the social movement for women's equality.

Regarding the treatment of nonhumans and the treatment of women, MacKinnon notes that the "denial of social hierarchy in both relations is further supported by verbiage about love and protection" as though it mitigates the domination. Often, rights for women have been denied because love and protection have been considered good enough. Could we not say the same about the animals we have domesticated?

If so, then the animal advocacy movement richly needs the contribution that MacKinnon's feminist fragment provides.

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