Women, Animals, and the Future of Work

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"Animal Labor: Steps towards the Recognition of Animals Rights in Labor?", 2022

Politics and Animals, 2022

On April 15, 2021, a roundtable occurred at the annual conference of the Midwestern Political Science Association to discuss Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice?, edited by Charlotte Blattner, Kendra Coulter, and Will Kymlicka, and published by Oxford University Press in February 2020. The following symposium contains expanded versions of the papers presented at the MPSA conference. Jishnu Guha-Majumdar introduces the edited volume and the contributions of the respondents in the symposium. Diego Rossello then discusses the book's framing as "interspecies justice" and its definition of labor. Angie Pepper reflects on whether it is possible for animals to justly consent to labor occupations. Guha-Majumdar examines how the afterlives of transatlantic slavery shape the terms of debates over animal labour. Peter Niesen considers questions about the sequencing and types of labor rights for animals used in agriculture. Finally, Blattner and Kymlicka offer a reply.

Animal Studies Journal, 2020

Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, 1993

Despite a growing awareness of the destructiveness of the human species and the precarious position in which such destruction puts all inhabitants of the earth, there has been shockingly little discussion of the fundamental forces that have led us to the brink. While multinational corporations and grassroots activists alike have stressed the urgency of a change in behavior, few have stressed the need for a serious change in attitudes and values. Those who do critically examine the underlying motivation for and psychology of destructive action tend to focus their attention on single issues, mimicking, in some ways, the very system at which their critique is aimed. Until recently this has been the trend among those engaged in the struggle for both women's and animal liberation.! Feminist theory, in all of its variety, focuses on the primacy of women's oppression, often to the exclusion of parallel concerns. Similarly, animalliberationists, by focusing on the pain and suffering of one group while often ignoring the pain and suffering of others,2 have situated themselves firmly in the tradition of single-mindedness so common in Western institutions. Such exclusivity not only clouds the expansive nature of oppression, but also hinders the process of undermining such oppression and ultimately liberating all those oppressed.

This symposium explores the intersection between feminist studies and animal studies in research and activism. What can contemporary feminism offer to the animals whose lives are deemed to be outside of legal protections and ethical concerns? How might considering the perspective of nonhuman animals advance the aims and practices of feminism?

Organization, 2014

In Chapter 10 of Capital Vol. 1 – “The Working Day” – Karl Marx reveals at least one central concern within Marx’s project: namely the relationship between labour time and free time as a site of antagonism under capitalism. In this paper I offer a perspective on the politics of animal labour that takes the working day as a main site of problematisation and contestation. I argue that while a concept of a “working day” is applicable to some animal labourers, a defining characteristic of most animals labour under capitalism – particularly that of animals in intensive forms of agriculture – is the reality that that the working day never stops: all time is labour time for these animals. I further argue that a focus on labour time offers a different and productive base for pro animal politics, and for alliance building. At least one curious set of resonances here are the strong demands being made by other social movements – such as environmental justice movements – to “slow down capitalism” through reduced work, reduced production and reduced consumption. Working Draft: Please do not quote without Author Permission. For publication in forthcoming volume Blattner, Coulter and Kymlicka Eds. Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? Oxford University Press.

A Feminist Companion to the Posthumanities, 2018

This is the introduction to Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).