Animal Liberation: A View from Political Science

Abstract: Political science has tended not to problematize human domination over nonhuman animals. Political scientists have been engaged intellectually and politically with other struggles for justice and citizenship leading one to question the apparent indifference to the issue of ‘animal rights’. This paper accounts for the absence of animals in political science research and suggests that recent scholarship has begun to take animal liberation seriously. The paper then looks at the options for the broader animal liberation movement and suggests that incremental change is the best and only option for animal advocates in contemporary liberal democracies. Academic interest in “animal rights ” has grown in the last decade. Prominent philosophers like Martha Nussbaum have written on this subject and university websites now feature programs and institutes dedicated to the study of animals, not merely from a biological perspective, but from many academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.1 This interest is noteworthy because it often seeks to understand animals as subjects rather than objects, or means to an end. Animals are not bystanders, or “extras ” in this growing body of work, but constitute leading and central roles. Animals are “problematized; ” they are seen as indispensable actors in human culture and art. Their presence is no longer taken for granted