Animals: Hierarchies of Life and Death

In the context of global environmental politics (GEP), human–nonhuman animal relationships are filled with a myriad of tensions. There is widespread species loss, from charismatic animals such as right whales and northern white rhinos to less attractive animals such as dung beetles. At the same time, billions of animals are purposefully raised to be killed and consumed as part of the industrial food system, and we are left with a legacy of “ghosts and things,” with staggering implications for the environment (Weis 2018). Human–animal interactions are further complicated by COVID-19 and the deadly pandemic that is an outcome of zoonotic transmission (World Health Organization 2020). Animals are threatened by humans, and at the same time, human–animal interactions are seemingly becoming risky to humans. Animals intersect with a number of challenges in global environmental politics, from declining biodiversity and habitat loss to the climate emergency and industrial agriculture. The question for GEP scholars is, What can and should be done in the face of ongoing loss? Can human–animal relations be reimagined and remade in the context of the environmental politics?

While humans’ day-to-day relationships with animals are varied, in the Global North most of our closest relations with animals are through companion animals and consuming animal-based food. These close relationships influence how we think about animals in the context of GEP. There is a tension between the challenges of the broad categorizations of climate change, environmental degradation, and mass extinctions that are stand-ins for the complex interactions and unknowable relations that are beyond the apprehension of humans. These intimate actions of consuming or not consuming meat, or adopting a kitten, can become stand-ins for violent and destructive concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) or animal shelters that practice killing companion animals. Amy Fitzgerald argues that the primary reasons people become animal advocates are concern about diet, companion animals, and experiments on animals. As a result, social movements come together to advocate for animals around veganism, no-kill shelters, and the unnecessary suffering and killing of animals.

The three books under review all center animals and help us reflect on human–nonhuman animal relationships. Two of the books focus on the animal advocacy social movement. Corey Lee Wrenn examines factionalism within animal advocacy in Piecemeal Protest, and Fitzgerald examines the fractures between animal advocacy and environmental movements in Animal Advocacy and Environmentalism. Rafi Youatt, in a different approach, asks readers to rethink key international relations concepts and practices through the lens of animals and the environment in Interspecies Politics. Collectively, these books ask whether human– animal relations can be reimagined and remade through animal advocacy social movements and/or through interspecies politics.

Human–nonhuman animal relationships can be categorized into species, or what Youatt calls “hierarchies of life” built from a “generation of meanings that form and constrain political life” (2). Biologists and others categorize animals (and humans) into groupings that can be invasive, exotic, endangered, wild, gendered, and so on. These categorizations can shape interactions, and an anthropocentric lens can lead to speciesism, an unjust and inequitable practice similar to sexism and racism. Through the lens of speciesism, Fitzgerald builds a robust feminist theoretical framework highlighting an ethical obligation that seeks to build emotional connections between humans and animals to overcome the oppressive hierarchical nature–culture split. The nature–culture divide is a constructed hierarchy that results in a logic of domination structured through patriarchy. Fitzgerald’s aim is to overcome the nature–culture divide, including a split between animal advocacy movements and the environmental movement. All three books engage with some form of the term species, but as Youatt points out, the term, though related to specific, is remarkably unspecific in practice. In particular, he rightly points out that the term human species in relation to environmental...