Afterword: Realigning Multiculturalism and Animal Rights (Kymlicka paper)

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Afterword: Realigning Multiculturalism and Animal Rights (Kymlicka paper)

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___________________

Afterword: Realigning Multiculturalism and Animal Rights
Will Kymlicka

Forthcoming in Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Les Mitchell (eds) 'Multiculturalism, Race and Animals: Contemporary Moral and Political Debates' (Palgrave)


There is a lively and growing debate about the relationship between multiculturalism and animal ethics. Interest in this topic was initially triggered by some very high profile public controversies around specific cultural practices, such as bullfighting or ritual slaughter. But as the essays in this volume attest, the literature on this topic has broadened to consider wider issues about the place of animal rights within a broader social justice framework, both in theory and in practice.

I will not attempt, in this brief afterword, to summarize all of the different issues that are now being discussed, but it may be useful to give a very rough sense of the trajectory of the debate. As I noted earlier, the initial debate focused on the question of whether there should be a “cultural defense” or “cultural exemption” for traditional practices that contravene existing animal welfare regulations. Does the fact that a particular practice is a long-standing cultural tradition mean that it should automatically be exempted from animal welfare standards?

Put this way, there is a very broad consensus that the answer is “no”. As several authors in the volume argue, “tradition” is not self-justifying. After all, slavery and coerced marriages were long-standing traditions. To warrant protection, traditions must meet basic moral conditions, and so “tradition” cannot be invoked to evade moral accountability. All of us, majority or minority, are morally accountable for our treatment of animals, and merely saying that a practice is “traditional” does not show that it meets standards of moral acceptability.

So the idea of an inherent or automatic cultural exemption to animal welfare requirements is implausible. If this is all there was to the `multiculturalism and animals’ debate, then it could quickly be set aside. But in fact, the conclusion that no one has a moral waiver regarding their treatment of animals raises more questions than it settles. If it is indeed true that all practices and traditions are morally accountable for their treatment of animals, then it is seems possible, indeed likely, that very few of our practices are likely to pass a test of moral acceptability. Everyday majority practices of eating meat or visiting zoos stand in need of moral justification as much as minority practices of ritual slaughter. And virtually all philosophers who have attempted to evaluate these practices have concluded that they fail basic tests of moral acceptability, since they involve sacrificing the most basic interests of animals for trivial interests of humans. It is surely legitimate to ask proponents of ritual slaughter to give a moral accounting of their treatment of animals, but it is equally legitimate to ask proponents of “humane slaughter” to give an account of why they think it is morally acceptable to slaughter animals simply to satisfy the gustatory pleasures for eating animal flesh. The mere fact that eating animals is “traditional” is not self-justifying.

And this in turn raises concerns about the way the original multiculturalism question was phrased. If all of us are required to give a moral accounting of our relations with animals, and if majority practices are as likely to fail this accounting as minority practices, then why were minority practices singled out in the first place? In a society where literally billions of animals every year are being treated within mainstream practices in ways that are almost certainly unethical, why was the focus on the comparatively small number of animals who are unethically treated in minority practices?

If we reflect on that question, an entirely different, and perhaps more interesting, way of thinking about the relationship between multiculturalism and animal ethics emerges. On this second version, the question is not whether minorities have a moral waiver to maintain their cultural traditions, but rather whether majorities apply demands for moral accountability in culturally biased ways, holding minorities accountable while exempting themselves.

The problem here is not simply that there is some selectivity in applying demands for moral accountability. Reformers inevitably need to make choices about what reforms to prioritize, given limited time and resources, and it would be unreasonable to say that reformers can only target one practice if they target all practices simultaneously, or that they can only target one practice if they have first addressed and reformed all of the more serious or more widespread practices. Political mobilizations inevitably are shaped by the contingencies of particular times and places. There might be perfectly good reasons why, say, zoo captivity comes to the forefront of public debate in country A, while issues of animal experimentation dominate debate in country B, and issues of wildlife hunting or farming practices dominate in countries C and D, relating to particular events or histories or personalities. Real-world politics does not and cannot follow any rigid formula that attention to issues A, B, C and D must be strictly proportional to their severity or pervasiveness. Reformers are inevitably influenced by contingencies regarding political opportunities, alliances, media attention, public moods, and so on.

From a multiculturalist perspective, however, it is important to ask whether these contingencies operate in such a way as to reflect and reproduce prejudices and discrimination against minority groups. In particular, are demands for moral accountability shaped by racist/ethnocentric perceptions about the relative worth of different human groups, and do they operate to rationalize and uphold existing racial hierarchies? We have growing evidence that this is indeed the case. As Deckha notes, we have inherited a long tradition in which European colonizers argued:

• the treatment of animals is a test of civilization;
• non-European cultures are backward/uncivilized;
• therefore, non-European cultures mistreat animals.

It is important to emphasize that this conclusion about the mistreatment of animals was not the result of some impartial assessment of animal practices. After all, European colonizers were themselves engaged in (and exporting) horrific animal practices such as foxhunting and intensive animal farming. Rather, identifying “barbaric” practices (whether in relation to women, children or animals) was a political imperative. The justification of colonialism depended on identifying such practices, since this is what justified European assertions of political rule over natives.

This is the legacy we have inherited, and the evidence suggests that it continues to influence public debates around animal practices. Dominant groups in the West are primed to see their own animal practices as “normal” (and humane, civilized), and to see minority/non-Western animal practices as somehow “unnatural” (and backward/cruel). When citizens of Western societies eat millions of factory-farmed pigs, that is seen as normal and natural, and so is entirely ignored in the media and exempted from moral scrutiny, whereas when an immigrant eats a dog, that is seen as abnormal and cruel, and so generates a high-profile media controversy and intense moral scrutiny. The result is to deepen perceptions that the immigrant community is culturally “other”, doesn’t really belong here, and cannot be trusted to exercise power in a humane and civilized way, reinforcing patterns of social and political exclusion.

In many cases, this asymmetry in moral scrutiny is quite unconscious and unintentional: people may be genuinely and spontaneously distressed to hear about a dog being eaten, without reflecting on why they don’t have the same reaction to their own consumption of pigs, and without intending to exacerbate anti-immigrant sentiment. But we also know that in many cases it is quite deliberate. For example, far-right anti-Muslim political parties in Europe have taken up the issue of ritual slaughter, not because they care about animal welfare, but because they want precisely to send Muslims the message that they don’t belong. In this case, animal welfare concerns are invoked in a deliberately instrumental way, for the purpose of exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiments in society. The essays in this volume give several examples of this.

In short, we have strong evidence that dominant groups apply moral scrutiny to animal practices in asymmetric ways that both reflect and deepen racial hierarchies. If so, a multiculturalist might conclude that reformers should avoid focusing on minority practices, not because minorities have some sort of “cultural defense” that morally trumps animal welfare considerations, but rather for broader justice goals. Focusing on minority practices is both misplaced, since it is institutionalized majority practices that form the bulk of the unethical practices in any given society, and dangerous, since it risks deepening pre-existing hierarchies of worth and belonging.

This suggests that animal advocates should focus their critique on the everyday institutionalized practices of mainstream society - such as zoos, animal experimentation, and animal agriculture – so as to destabilize the majority’s sense of what is normal and natural. This is the context where moral scrutiny is most required, and least likely to have negative spillover effects on already marginalized groups.

However, even this strategy has been challenged by anti-racist advocates, on the grounds that it threatens one of the core planks of contemporary anti-racist strategy – namely, the sacralization of “the human” as a response to the dangers of “dehumanization”. This is a complicated issue, and not always clearly expressed, so it is worth exploring in more depth.

I noted earlier that modern racism has viewed non-European societies and cultures as backward and uncivilized. But in many contexts, this ethnocentrism is also tied to a form of dehumanization: that is, non-Europeans are seen not just as culturally backward, but also as somehow not fully human, more like animals or beasts. Of course, no one today would deny that Africans, Asians or indigenous peoples are members of the human species, but there is a more subtle form of dehumanization that is still very much in evidence. Social psychologists have shown that people distinguish what are allegedly “distinctly human” emotions and capacities (such as regret, hope, a sense of fairness, and self-control), from more basic emotions, such as instinctive fear or pleasure, which we share with other animals. Dehumanization can take the form, not of denying that someone is a member of the human species, but rather of viewing them as primarily driven by basic emotions rather than distinctly human emotions and capacities.
And this indeed is what the evidence on prejudice shows. A wide range of subordinated human groups – racial groups, women, children, lower classes, immigrants, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities – are perceived in ways that view them as governed more by basic emotions than by (what are assumed to be) distinctly human qualities. And the evidence also suggests that this perception has profound political consequences. If members of a particular group are seen as lacking the `distinctly human’ capacity to regulate their instincts through moral sentiments and self-restraint, then they cannot be treated as equals in cooperative and consensual relationships, but rather need to be contained and coerced, both for their own good and for the good of society, just as we feel justified in confining and coercing unruly animals. As one recent summary of the evidence on dehumanization puts it:

Viewing others as lacking core human capacities and likening them to animals or objects may reduce perceptions of their capacity for intentional action, but it may also make them appear less sensitive to pain, more dangerous and uncontrollable, and thus more needful of severe and coercive forms of punishment (Bastien et al 2014: 212)

We can see this dynamic at work in a daily basis in the way the police, for example, deal with members of these groups.

This sort of dehumanization is clearly a toxic problem, and so a central task of anyone who cares about justice is to challenge and overcome it. But how should we overcome dehumanization? Here is where things get complicated. Most anti-racist activists and theorists have assumed that the best way to combat dehumanization is to re-inscribe a sharp hierarchy between humans and animals, and to emphasize that the good of a human life is radically discontinuous with and superior to that of animals, and that therefore we must not treat any humans the way we treat animals. For subaltern groups, a steep moral hierarchy between humans and animals is seen as a crucial moral and political resource. They can best assert their right to a dignified existence by emphasizing the moral significance of their humanity, and their categorical discontinuity with, and superiority to, animality.

Claire Jean Kim calls this the “sanctification” of species boundaries, and she notes that the African-American civil rights movement has deeply invested in this approach (Kim 2015). Anne Phillips suggests a similar strategy underpins anti-racist struggles in South Africa (Phillips 2015). Sharing in human supremacy over animals is seen as an effective tool for historically stigmatized humans. This moral hierarchy may be difficult to defend philosophically, but if we weaken or dissolve the species hierarchy, disadvantaged humans will be more vulnerable to dehumanization. And if so, we seem caught in a bind, whereby fighting animal oppression requires dissolving species hierarchy, and fighting dehumanization requires affirming hierarchy.

This is wrong, however. The time has come to question whether this sanctification strategy is necessary, or indeed even useful, in addressing dehumanization. The assumption that species hierarchy operates to the benefit of disadvantaged humans may seem intuitively plausible, but it is almost certainly empirically false. The evidence suggests that those who draw the sharpest distinction between humans and other animals are more likely to discriminate against outgroups of humans, not less. The more people sharply distinguish between humans and other animals, the more likely they are to dehumanize human outgroups, such as immigrants. Belief in human superiority over animals is empirically correlated with, and indeed causally connected to, belief in the superiority of some human groups over others.

For instance, in recent psychological studies, participants are divided into two groups, each of which is given reading material comparing humans and animals. One group reads a newspaper article emphasizing evidence about recent discoveries regarding their similarities; the other group reads an article extolling human uniqueness and superiority. The second group then displays greater prejudice against human outgroups. By contrast, those who recognize that animals possess valued traits and emotions are more likely to accord equality to human outgroups. This basic finding has now been repeated in several studies: reducing the status divide between humans and animals helps to reduce prejudice and to strengthen belief in equality amongst human groups. (This is now called the “interspecies model of prejudice” in the field – see Costello and Hodson 2009; 2014; Hodson and Costello 2014).

This may seem surprising, but in fact the sanctification of species hierarchy has a number of predictable negative consequences. For one thing, it reaffirms the worldview of those who see the world in terms of natural hierarchies, whether between humans and animals, men and women, or whites and blacks. And so it is well-documented that belief in human supremacy over animals is correlated with belief in male supremacy over women, both being expressions of what psychologists call “social dominance orientation” (Roylance 2016; Taylor 2015). Also, sanctifying the human naturally leads people to ask why humans deserve this sanctification, and people inevitably fill in the answer by reference to “distinctly human” traits such as intelligence, moral sensibilities, self-control, and then use these metrics of humanity to evaluate (and dehumanize) outgroups. Sanctifying the human virtually invites people to rank others on the basis of their possession of whatever traits are deemed distinctly human: that is, it invites people to engage in the sort of evaluation that triggers dehumanization.

This suggests that it was a strategic mistake to suppose that human rights and racial equality are best achieved on the backs of animals. Dehumanization is a profound social pathology, but sanctifying the human and reinscribing species hierarchy is the wrong response, both philosophically and politically. A better strategy would emphasize that we are owed respect and concern as embodied subjects. It is our subjectivity – our possessing a subjective experience of the world – and our embodiment – our vulnerability as embodied beings – that generates moral claims on others. A political ethic built on this foundation would allow us to simultaneously combat both species hierarchy and intra-human hierarchy, in a mutually reinforcing way.

Of course, this is vague and abstract, and as the chapters in this volume illustrate, much work remains to be done in spelling out how we can challenge species hierarchy in a way that acknowledges the risks of asymmetrical moral accountability, instrumentalization, and dehumanization. There are untapped resources for a robustly multicultural and anti-racist vision of animal rights, so long as we get beyond the idea that multiculturalism involves moral waivers, and that anti-racism requires sanctifying species boundaries.


References:

Bastian, Brick, Jolanda Jetten and Nick Haslam (2014) “An Interpersonal Perspective on Dehumanization”, in Paul Bain, Jeroen Vaues, Jacques-Philippe Leyens (eds) Humanness and Dehumanization (Routledge, 2014)

Costello, Kimberly and Gordon Hodson (2009) “Exploring the Roots of dehumanization: The role of human-animal similarity in promoting Immigrant humanization”, Group Processes and intergroup Relations 13/1: 3-22.

Costello, Kimberly and Gordon Hodson (2014) “Explaining dehumanization among children: The interspecies model of prejudice”, British Journal of Social Psychology 53: 175-97.

Hodson, Gordon, Cara MacInnis and Kimberly Costello (2014), “(Over)Valuing `Humanness’ as an Aggravator of Intergroup Prejudices and Discrimination” in Paul Bain, Jeroen Vaues and Jacques-Philippe Leyens (eds) Humanness and Dehumanization (Routledge).

Kim, Claire Jean (2015) Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Kymlicka, Will and Sue Donaldson (2014) “Animal Rights, Multiculturalism and the Left”, Journal of Social Philosophy 45/1: 116-35.

Phillips, Anne (2015) The Politics of the Human (Cambridge University Press).

Roylance, Christina, Andrew A. Abeyta, and Clay Routledge (2016). "I am not an animal but I am a sexist: Human distinctiveness, sexist attitudes towards women, and perceptions of meaning in life." Feminism & Psychology: 0959353516636906’

Taylor, Kathy and Susanne Singer (2015) “Diet, authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and predisposition to prejudice”, British Food Journal 117/7: 1949-1960.
Last edited by NonZeroSum on Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Afterword: Realigning Multiculturalism and Animal Rights (Kymlicka paper)

Post by NonZeroSum »

Just a short one, now I do have to run, more papers here:

http://post.queensu.ca/~kymlicka/articleschapters.php
https://queensu.academia.edu/WillKymlicka

This looks great:

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, "Rethinking membership and participation in an inclusive democracy: cognitive disability, children, animals" (2016)
https://www.academia.edu/12013350/Sue_Donaldson_and_Will_Kymlicka_Rethinking_membership_and_participation_in_an_inclusive_democracy_cognitive_disability_children_animals_2016_

More on aligning cultural preservation with animal rights:

Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, "Animal Rights and Aboriginal Rights" (2015)
https://www.academia.edu/6514868/Will_Kymlicka_and_Sue_Donaldson_Animal_Rights_and_Aboriginal_Rights_2015_
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
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