Academic Papers by Sue Donaldson
Animals, 2023
For many years the lives of animals used for research in Canadian universities have been hidden f... more For many years the lives of animals used for research in Canadian universities have been hidden from public view, due both to physical concealment (e.g., security procedures and impenetrable labs), and administrative concealment (non-disclosure of information). Their lives unfold out of sight both physically and discursively, unavailable to the Canadian public for ethical consideration and democratic oversight. Recently, in response to calls by the public to end this secrecy, Canadian universities and the Canadian Council on Animal Care have embraced the language of 'transparency' and have begun releasing documentation about animal research practices and procedures. This paper argues that this new 'transparency' acts as its own kind of concealment practice, obscuring and displacing meaningful information while constructing highly selective ways of seeing animals in science, and manufacturing acquiescence/consent on the part of the public.
Social Research, 2023
the western tradition of social and political thought is built on human "exceptionalism"-and a hu... more the western tradition of social and political thought is built on human "exceptionalism"-and a human/nature divide. Whereas nature is ruled by biological imperatives, humans are assumed to have the capacity to rise above nature and animality through reason, language, and culture. Humans make choices about how we want to live, and politics is the vehicle by which we exercise this supposedly unique human capacity for jointly and deliberately shaping the life of the community. As Aristotle put it, only humans are zoon politikon-animals capable of formulating and debating different visions of the good life and the good society. Human freedom and dignity, according to this tradition, are measured by how far humans have distanced themselves from, and risen above, animality. This human exceptionalist view of politics is increasingly challenged on both empirical and normative grounds. Many commentators argue that it has played an important role in perpetuating the ongoing moral catastrophe of human-animal relations and that living justly with animals requires bringing them into the political realm. But what does it mean to do politics with animals? We consider three recent developments that shed some light. These are (1) proposals for the institutional representation of animals' interests in human political decision-making processes; (2) growing ethological evidence for animals' own capacities for language, culture, and collective decision-making; and (3) new theoretical accounts of political
published in Kristin Voigt, Valéry Giroux, and Angie Pepper (eds) The Ethics of Animal Shelters (... more published in Kristin Voigt, Valéry Giroux, and Angie Pepper (eds) The Ethics of Animal Shelters (Oxford University Press, 2023), 284-308.
Les Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg
published in Solidarity with Animals, ed. Alasdair Cochrane & Mara-Daria Cojocaru, (Oxford Univer... more published in Solidarity with Animals, ed. Alasdair Cochrane & Mara-Daria Cojocaru, (Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. 17-42.
Social Theory and Practice, 2020
Many theorists of the 'political turn' in animal rights theory emphasize the need for animals' in... more Many theorists of the 'political turn' in animal rights theory emphasize the need for animals' interests to be considered in political decision-making processes, but deny that this requires self-representation and participation by animals themselves. I argue that participation by domesticated animals in co-authoring our shared world is indeed required, and explore two ways to proceed: 1) by enabling animal voice within the existing geography of human-animal relationships; and 2) by freeing animals into a renewed public commons ('animal agora') where citizens encounter one another in spontaneous, unpredictable encounters in spaces that they can reshape together.
Anthropocentric bias and ignorance limit our ability to conceive just ways of living with nonhuma... more Anthropocentric bias and ignorance limit our ability to conceive just ways of living with nonhuman animals, especially farmed animals. We need to learn from animals themselves, in environments where animals retain sufficient agency in their relations with us to allow for a rich and meaningful study of inter- species ethics and the possibilities of just multispecies societies. Using multispecies ethnography and feminist accounts of the self as a springboard, we investigate animal agency in a sanctuary for formerly farmed animals, considering how a careful exploration of dimensions of agency in this setting might inform ideas of interspecies ethics and politics. This innovative extension of multispecies ethnography explores individual and collective dimensions of animals’ agency through space and place, through practice and routine, and through social roles and norms, to learn about whether/how animals might want to live with us, and how we can recognize and support their agency through our relationships.
Animal Studies Journal 8/2, 2019
published in Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice?, edited by Charlotte Blattner, Kendra Coulter & Will Kymlicka (Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 207-228.
and to adopt the same human-supremacist tropes.³ Nonetheless, we will argue that the post-work pe... more and to adopt the same human-supremacist tropes.³ Nonetheless, we will argue that the post-work perspective offers important advantages for theorizing interspecies justice. While there are benefits in recognizing that animals engage in 'work' or 'labour', this promise can best be realized in a post-work society that has de-sanctified work. Indeed, we will argue that focusing on the case of animals helps to illuminate important benefits of the post-work society. We begin by exploring some of the defining features of the 'work society', in particular its naturalization and moralization of work (section 1). We then turn to some of the most serious drawbacks of the work society (section 2), how a postwork society would address these (section 3), and how these changes would benefit animal labourers and citizens (section 4). What is the Work Society? One of the defining features of modern Western societies is the normalization of work: that is, the idea that full-time, lifelong labour is normal or natural. And since this is seen as normal and natural, socializing, educating, and training people for such a life also becomes normal and natural. Education becomes first and foremost preparation for a life of full-time labour. Work dominates our life, not only in the workplace during work hours, but in all of the spaces and time devoted to making us 'employable' and 'work-ready'.⁴ This normalization of work is now so deeply embedded that we have trouble imagining alternatives. But it is far from inevitable. As both Marx and Weber noted, modernizing states and capitalist employers needed to pressure, even coerce, people to comply with the discipline of a full-time work day. And while the rise of the work society certainly helped increase the production of goods and services, the rise of technology and automation means that it is no longer economically necessary for everyone to work full-time in order to produce the material basis for a decent standard of living. Already in the 1920s economists were noting that the rise of technology allowed for a dramatic reduction in the number of working hours, and the most recent phase of automation has just amplified this point. Commentators have argued that it would be entirely feasible to shift to a twenty-one-hour work week, for example (Coote, Franklin, and Simms 2010), or to give everyone (not just academics!) a 'sabbatical account' which would allow them to take a year off work on a regular basis (Offe 1997), or to adopt an unconditional basic income (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017). ³ Just as defenders of the work ethic often say that work is what distinguishes humans from the animals; so too defenders of the post-work society often say that freeing people from work will allow us to mark our difference from and superiority to animals. ⁴ On how work, and the need to be employable, colonizes an increasing percentage of our lives, see
in Rainer Bauböck (ed) Democratic Inclusion: Rainer Bauböck in Dialogue (Manchester University Press, 2018), 160-82.
Rainer Bauböck's essay argues persuasively that our account of democratic inclusion needs to be m... more Rainer Bauböck's essay argues persuasively that our account of democratic inclusion needs to be more complex than is standardly recognized. Whereas most authors attempt to identify a single fundamental principle of democratic inclusion – whether it is the " all-affected interests " principle or the " all-subjected to coercion " principle or some social membership/stakeholder principle – Bauböck shows that there are different types of polities, with different principles of inclusion, and that the appropriate principles for inclusion at one level depend in part on the principles operative at other levels. Birthright citizenship at the national level, for example, makes possible both residency-based citizenship at the local level and derivative or nested citizenship at the federal level, just as the latter two modes of citizenship help to correct potential injustices or forms of domination generated by birthright citizenship at the national level. We are in broad agreement with Bauböck's general story about the need to complicate theories of democratic inclusion by recognizing multiple principles of democratic inclusion tied to multiple types of polity. The aim of this commentary is to push his project one step further, by adding another layer of complexity to our thinking about democratic inclusion. We will focus on a range of cases that fall outside our normal assumptions about who is eligible for, or capable of, citizenship, including children, people with cognitive disability and domesticated animals.
in Gideon Calder, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Anca Gheaus (eds) The Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (Routledge, 2018), 282-293.
Bundeszentrale fur politische Bildung, 2018
Since the advent of the contemporary animal rights movement in the 1960s, philosophers have advan... more Since the advent of the contemporary animal rights movement in the 1960s, philosophers have advanced various arguments about why it is wrong for humans to harm and kill animals for our benefit.
in Lori Gruen (ed) Critical Terms for Animal Studies (U. Chicago Press): 320-336, 2018
in Ayelet Shachar, Irene Bloemraad, Maarten Vink and Rainer Bauböck (eds) Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press), pp. 838-859 , 2017
in Linda Kalof (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 43-64.
in Paola Cavalieri (ed) Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation (Palgrave, 2016), 71-116 .
in Bernice Bovenkerk and Jozef Keulartz (eds) Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring boundaries of human-animal relationships (Springer, 2016), 225-39.
As the chapters is this section illustrate, we have to rethink our old categories of wild and dom... more As the chapters is this section illustrate, we have to rethink our old categories of wild and domesticated animals. New relationships of mutual impact and hybrid management have been made necessary by relentless human expansion, anthropogenic climate change, and other ecological impacts. The animals involved in these new relations do not fit into the old dichotomy of independent wild animals untouched by humans on the one hand, or dependent domesticated animals under control of humans on the other hand. We need new ideas to help us understand the distinctive ethical challenges of these new relationships, with their mix of freedom and restriction, of independence and dependence, of self-willed agency and external control. The chapter authors of this section draw upon key concepts of animal ethics-care, flourishing, interests, intrinsic and instrumental value, capabilities, welfare, friendship-to negotiate human-animal entanglements. While broadly agreeing with their insights, we argue that their ethical approaches need to be integrated into a broader theory of interspecies justice which explicitly addresses issues of authority, responsibility and self-determination. The fact that humans inevitably affect and interact with ever more animals does not alter the fact that animals' lives are still theirs to lead, and that human management and intervention is legitimate only insofar as it respects animals as intentional agents. Our theorizing should begin by asking what kinds of lives animals want to live, what kinds of relationships, if any, they want to have with us, and whether our interactions with them bolster or inhibit their ability to lead such lives. We illustrate what such animal agency may mean using the case of the feral horses of Assateague Island.
Philosophy Compass, Vol. 11/11: 692-701., 2016
While animal rights have been a central topic within moral philosophy since the 1970s, it has rem... more While animal rights have been a central topic within moral philosophy since the 1970s, it has remained virtually invisible within political philosophy. This article explores two key reasons for the difficulties in locating animals within political philosophy. First, even if animals are seen as having intrinsic moral status, they are often seen as ultimately distant others or strangers, beyond the bounds of human society. Insofar as political philosophy focuses on the governing of a shared social life, animals are seen as falling outside its remit. Second, even if animals are recognized as members of society, they are seen as lacking the capacities or competences said to be essential for politics, and for membership in the demos. We challenge both assumptions. Many animals live and work alongside us, within an interspecies society, and all members of society should have the right to shape decisions about how that society is governed. An interspecies society requires interspecies politics.
in Disability and Political Theory, edited by Barbara Arneil and Nancy Hirschmann (Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 168-97.
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Academic Papers by Sue Donaldson
While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanzees are persons on superficial and sometimes conflicting grounds. Consequently, Kiko and Tommy remain confined as legal "things" with no rights. The major moral and legal question remains unanswered: are chimpanzees mere "things", as the law currently sees them, or can they be "persons" possessing fundamental rights?
In Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief, a group of renowned philosophers considers these questions. Carefully and clearly, they examine the four lines of reasoning the courts have used to deny chimpanzee personhood: species, contract, community, and capacities. None of these, they argue, merits disqualifying chimpanzees from personhood. The authors conclude that when judges face the choice between seeing Kiko and Tommy as things and seeing them as persons—the only options under current law—they should conclude that Kiko and Tommy are persons who should therefore be protected from unlawful confinement "in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice."
Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief—an extended version of the amicus brief submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in Kiko’s and Tommy’s cases—goes to the heart of fundamental issues concerning animal rights, personhood, and the question of human and nonhuman nature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these issues.