Animal Representation in the Dutch Media through Environmental Ethics (original) (raw)
Related papers
2011
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 10.1057/9780230306240 -Popular Media and Animals, Claire Molloy Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com -licensed to McGill University -PalgraveConnect -2013-01-05 10.1057/9780230306240 -Popular Media and Animals, Claire Molloy Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com -licensed to McGill University -PalgraveConnect -2013-01-05 xi Series Preface This is a new book series for a new field of inquiry: Animal Ethics. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of other scholars have followed, from historians to social scientists. From being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics and in multidisciplinary inquiry. In addition, a rethink of the status of animals has been fuelled by a range of scientific investigations which have revealed the complexity of animal sentiency, cognition, and awareness. The ethical implications of this new knowledge have yet to be properly evaluated, but it is becoming clear that the old view that animals are mere things, tools, machines, or commodities cannot be sustained ethically. But it is not only philosophy and science that are putting animals on the agenda. Increasingly, in Europe and the United States, animals are becoming a political issue as political parties vie for the 'green' and 'animal' vote. In turn, political scientists are beginning to look again at the history of political thought in relation to animals, and historians are beginning to revisit the political history of animal protection. As animals have grown as an issue of importance, so have there been more collaborative academic ventures leading to conference volumes, special journal issues, indeed new academic animal journals as well. Moreover, we have witnessed the growth of academic courses, as well as university posts, in Animal Ethics, Animal Welfare, Animal Rights, Animal Law, Animals and Philosophy, Human-Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Animals and Society, Animals in Literature, Animals and Religion -tangible signs that a new academic discipline is emerging. 'Animal Ethics' is the new term for the academic exploration of the moral status of the non-human -an exploration that explicitly involves a focus on what we owe animals morally, and which also helps us to understand the influences -social, legal, cultural, religious, and political -that legitimate animal abuse. This series explores the challenges that Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional understandings of human-animal relations. The series is needed for three reasons: (i) to provide the texts that will service the new university courses on animals; (ii) to support the 10.1057/9780230306240 -Popular Media and Animals, Claire Molloy Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com -licensed to McGill University -PalgraveConnect -2013-01-05 xii Series Preface increasing number of students studying and academics researching in animal-related fields; and (iii) because there is currently no book series that is a focus for multidisciplinary research in the field. Specifically, the series will provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out • ethical positions on animals; publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished, • scholars; and produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary • in character or have multidisciplinary relevance. The new Palgrave Macmillan Series on Animal Ethics is the result of a unique partnership between Palgrave Macmillan and the Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The series is an integral part of the mission of the Centre to put animals on the intellectual agenda by facilitating academic research and publication. The series is also a natural complement to one of the Centre's other major projects, the Journal of Animal Ethics. The Centre is an independent think-tank for the advancement of progressive thought about animals, and is the first centre of its kind in the world. It aims to demonstrate rigorous intellectual enquiry and the highest standards of scholarship. It strives to be a world-class centre of academic excellence in its field. We invite academics to visit www.oxfordanimalethics.com, the Centre's website, and to contact us with new book proposals for the series.
Capturing the change in attitudes to animals: media representations and public policy
Seventh Oxford Summer School on Animal Ethics "Animals and Public Policy: Embodying, Implementing, and Institutionalising Animal Ethics", Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Oxford, United Kingdom., 2022
From commodification to empathy, media representations provide insights into changes in attitude to free living animals. This article explores the interplay between animals’ welfare in the public debate and public policy. Using discourse analysis, it qualifies media representations of marine beings and attitudes towards them, while focusing on coverage in French daily newspapers (Le Figaro, Le Monde and Libération) , from January 2016 to December 2019. It then goes on to analyze the extent to which these representations capture, inform and alter public debate and public policy, namely while considering the effect of human activities on the wellbeing of marine animals.
Some Animals Are More Equal than Others: Wild Animal Welfare in the Media
BioScience, 2016
The media can reflect social opinion and influence debate and policy. Wild vertebrate welfare issues are regularly reported in the media, but there has been no study of the type and frequency of their coverage. We compiled a list of potential wild vertebrate welfare issues in the United Kingdom, recording how often each issue was mentioned in the media during 2014. Lethal wildlife management issues were most frequently reported, whereas issues that received little coverage included marine debris, commercial fishing, and pollution. Overall, the media tended more frequently to report welfare issues that involved intent to harm an animal, were illegal, or occurred in the terrestrial environment. Insofar as media reporting may lead to improvements in the welfare of wild animals, greater effort may be required to provoke media interest in welfare issues that do not involve intent to harm, are legal, or occur in marine environments.
Making Light of the Ethical? The Ethics and Politics of Animal Rights
This paper examines the claim that our moral commitments to non-human animals (henceforth, “animals”) are best captured in terms of a framework of political, rather than ethical, theory – or, at the very least, that the former provides an essential antidote to the failings of the latter. In particular, I shall focus on what I take to be a canonical statement of this view: Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s book, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. In this book, Donaldson and Kymlicka (henceforth, D&K) argue that standard ethical animal rights theory (henceforth, following them, ART) is importantly incomplete, and requires supplementation with a political theory of animal rights (henceforth, PTAR). I going to argue that while ART, as it has standardly perceived, has shortcomings, these are more perception than reality, and are certainly not intrinsic or essential features of ART. Consequently, the supplementation of ART with PTAR is not necessary. The distinction between ART and PTAR is a disguised, and somewhat misleading way, of talking about another distinction: the distinction between animals as objects of moral concern and animals as subjects of motivation and action.
Snared: Ethics and Nature in Animal Protection
Ethnos, 2017
This paper will examine how animal protection investigators, lobbyists and campaigners in Scotland consider the relationship between nature and ethics. Specifically, it will look at the complex ways in which activists deploy the categories ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ in order to interpret realms of animal suffering and judge the actions of human and non-human agents in those fields. The paper is also concerned to chart the ways in which animal protection activists develop strategies for persuading various audiences of the rightness of their position; these include charity supporters and prospective donors, but also politicians and civil servants involved in the legislative process in the Scottish Parliament. More broadly, the paper engages with debates in the emergent fields of the anthropology of ethics and human-animal relations. It is interested in the relationship between ethics and appearance and in the distribution of agency in claims or judgments of ethical or unethical behaviour.
Consuming Nature: Mass Media and The Cultural Politics of Animals and Environments
2013
's research interests include environmental rhetoric and the rhetoric of international anti-American movements. He holds an MA in Communication from Wake Forest University where his thesis examined the intersection of religion, communication and the environment. At the end of his non-fiction book Collapse, after outlining how the destructive practices of most human societies are steering them toward ecological collapse and causing extinction of species, Jared Diamond (2005, p. 522) pins his hope for change on the global awareness-raising potential of the media: "Our television documentaries and books show us in graphic detail why the Easter Islanders, Classic Maya, and other past societies collapsed. Thus we have the opportunity to learn from the past mistakes…an opportunity that no past society enjoyed to such a degree." Diamond indicates the two most important factors to prevent collapse are "long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values" (p. 522), both of which, we contend, can be instigated by the media, as the agenda-setter of public policy, as the cultivator of national identity and values, and as the primary cultural storyteller. The stories media choose to tell matter. Scientists can discover all kinds of problems and solutions to species issues, but if the media fail to convey and frame these discoveries productively, and if people's media-cultivated value systems don't allow them to care, then all the information in the world won't matter. The commercially-driven mass media package human identity and all our surrounding environment for daily consumption in the public sphere. It is of critical importance whether they choose to ignore humanity's responsibility toward the natural world and simply have us consume it as a product, or whether they actively cultivate ecological responsibility and newfound respect toward animals as fellow sentient beings. This chapter explores the necessity, potential, and challenges of relying on the media (journalism, television, advertising, film, radio, internet, etc.) to inspire the social change needed to reverse the destructive behaviors and beliefs that are contributing to our global ecological calamity. We address this both in specific terms related to how media raise awareness about habitat and wildlife
SOCIETY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Animal rights in sustainability discourse
Ambiente & Sociedade
The aim of this research is to verify the approach to the issue of animals and their rights adopted in events on sustainable development with global repercussions promoted by the United Nations Organization, in order to characterize the perspective and comprehensiveness of animal rights awareness. It expounds on lines of philosophical thinking regarding animals and their rights and how they are inserted in the discussion of sustainable development and sustainability. It is a qualitative research of an exploratory nature and its development is defined by a survey of United Nations documents. The results show a chronological sequence of initial concern with animal habitat, subsequently increased by the concern with animals in extinction and, more recently, the broadening of the perspective towards animals in general and in different contexts, ergo a more conscious approach to animal rights.