Animalism Vs Environmentalism in Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon World

International audienceBased on past or ongoing work, this paper will provide some elements of sociological understanding of pro-animal movements. I will focus on two dimensions: (1) how the currently very visible movements (often called «animalists») have to be understood as an extension of the longer history of animal protection and animal rights, which emerged in the 19th Century in Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world (2) the difference between pro-animal mobilizations and environmental mobilizations, which is greatly underestimated by environmental sociology. Doing so, I want to underline the need not to narrow the analysis of how humans relate to non-humans to the ecological/environmental framework: there are various and changing ways people see and interact with non-human entities