LUCIUS - The Oppression of Non-Human Animals As A Crisis of Social and Ecological Justice

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals
The Oppression of Non-Human Animals

as a Crisis of Social and Ecological Justice
By Robert Lucius
April 13, 2015

Introduction
Several years ago I underwent an experience that Ill never forget. It was a
catalytic event that shook me to my core and transformed my ontological and
epistemological perspectives in ways that set me on my present course as a doctoral
student. It was moment not unlike what James (2012) has described as a conversion
experience - a moment when clarity at last overcame a lingering sense that something
was deeply troubling about the world, something that had for far too long remained
unacknowledged and unspoken. The realization of a previously unrecognized thread of
suffering woven warp and woof into the very fabric of the world awoke my budding
critical consciousness to the social, cultural, political, and economic contradictions that
lie at the root of oppression and social injustice in a broken world. This emerging
conscientizao (Freire, 1970, p. 35) altered the trajectory of my life course in
unexpected ways and transformed me into a social justice and animal rights activist. In
the years since that awakening my search for a deepened and enriched critical
consciousness has been the guiding light of my work both as a scholar and as a
practitioner, especially as I work to name, reject and overturn speciesism as a prime
driver of both human and non-human injustice.
In this paper, I argue that an ecologically and socially just world will not, indeed
cannot be achieved until humanity at lasts acknowledges and breaks free from its own
self-inflicted economic, moral and ideological enslavement to the materialist exploitation
of other non-human animal species. Borrowing heavily from Donald Noels theory of
ethnic stratification (1968) and David Niberts theory of oppression (2013, 2002), I argue

the case that many of the most pernicious forms of injustice and inequity are deeply
rooted in the ever-increasing scope and intensity of humanitys oppression and
domination of non-human animals, a path upon which we embarked some fifteen
millennia ago. According to Niberts theory, the overturning of oppressive, exploitative,
unjust and inequitable systems cannot be achieved if the common materialist assumptions
and practices that lay at the roots of speciesism, racism, classism, and sexism (among
many other ideological manifestations of social and economic stratification) remain
unnamed and unaddressed.
I will first address the seminal works by Marilyn Frye (2008), Iris Young (2004),
Peggy McIntosh (2008), and Alice Bailey (2009) to explore the fundamental concepts of
oppression and privilege. An extension of Charles Mills theory of a racial contract
(1997) will then be proposed to addresses the phenomenon of species oppression. Finally,
Noel and Niberts theories will be considered in turn, and then employed as a lens to cast
light on many of the ecological and social justice implications of humanitys continued
oppression and exploitation of non-human animals. Concrete examples will be provided
to illustrate the intersectional entanglement of different forms of oppression and the
importance of speciesism for a fuller intersectional analysis. Finally, I will reflect on the
need for closer alignment between scholarship and praxis within a broader, more holistic,
and more inclusive framework of social and ecological justice that includes an antispeciesist dimension.

Background
Humanity has long had a paradoxical relationship with other members of the
animal kingdom with whom we share this finite world. Some we hold in high esteem,
while others cause us to recoil with disgust or fear. Some we maintain in relative luxury
by our side, bestowing upon them the status of irreplaceable adopted members of our
human families, while others we treat as commodities, refusing even to acknowledge
them as individuals, much less as intrinsically worthy sentient beings. We uncritically
accept that billions must die to satiate our gustatory pleasures and our vanity, and to
satisfy our desire for convenience; yet, we become caught up in the life or death struggles
of a single being struggling against a desperate fate (Associated Press, 2010, 2002;
Cotroneo, 2013; Leitsinger, 2012; Levenson, 2015; Smiley, 2012)1. Non-human animals
have for millennia informed our language, art, poetry, and literature (Burt, 2011;
Dickenson, 2011; Morris, 2011; Resl, 2011). They have been our most constant
companions in childhood and an remained by our sides as we became adults (Melson,
2001; Serpell, 1996). They have labored for us, comforted us, protected us, nourished us,
entertained us, and been our scapegoats for lifes frustrations and injustices.
Human and non-human animals lived alongside one another even before the
arboreal ancestors of modern humanity first cautiously climbed down from the trees to
walk upon two feet. At first we scavenged their carcasses to supplement our diet of
vegetation, berries, roots, insects, and tubers (Eaton, 2006; Ungar & Teaford, 2002).
1
Slovic (2007) attributes this phenomenon to psychophysical numbing, a deadening of

peoples affective response to mass killing due to the cognitive difficulty people have
appreciating the significance of losses of life as the numbers of victims become larger
and as personal connection with those victim becomes more remote.
3

Then we mastered tools and began to pursue them as prey (Krebs, 2009; Pollan, 2006).
At some point more than ten thousand years ago, we began to domesticate them, and
thereafter we began to treat them as property (Mason, 2011; Nibert, 2013, 2002).
Religion taught us to deny them souls (De Leemans & Klemm, 2011), and the Age of
Enlightenment taught us to deny them mind as well (Senior, 2011). In the modern age we
have mastered the mechanization of their care (DeMello, 2011; Franklin, 1999), and we
have learned to radically modify their bodies and natures to serve our purposes (Hanson,
2010; Spector, 2010). In the process we have stripped from them the last vestiges of
whatever freedom and dignity nature had apportioned to them.
Non-human animals have been central to the rise of human civilization is more
ways that most realize (Fagan, 2015); yet human societies still by and large fail to
appreciate the full breadth and depth of the myriad contributions that non-humans have
made to the social, political, economic, and cultural evolution of modern homo sapiens
(Lutpon, 1994)2. They have always been with us, but always apart. It is doubtful we
would be who we are if not for whom they have been to us (Ritvo, 2010), and yet they
remain largely invisible to us.
Heldke and OConnor (2004a) have argued that racism remains one of the most
pervasive forms of oppression in the United States some theorists would say the most
pervasive (p. 1), and that it along with sexism and heterosexism forms the three main
axes of oppression of the modern world. I do not dispute the centrality of these forms of
2
For a sweeping analysis of human-animal relations over the millennia see Bloomsbury
Press six-volume cultural history of animals from antiquity through the modern age.
4

oppression as cornerstones of injustice; however, I propose that speciesism, or the
reflexive privileging of the interests of members of ones species above the interests of
members of other species, is in fact even more pervasive and pernicious. It provides an
additional hidden axis that informs all other forms of oppression.
Can We Say That Other Species Are Oppressed?
Frye (2008) suggests that oppression is a frequently misapplied, and
misunderstood term; one that is at times employed manipulatively to exaggerate its
occasion, almost as a form of preemptive defense to ward off demands for critical selfexamination. It is, I would agree, a word that conjures powerful physical and emotional
responses. It is also a word that is all too frequently wielded selectively to deny nonhuman animals their due recognition as an oppressed group. All too often those quick to
see oppression in their own ranks refuse to look past the surface dissimilarities that
distinguish human from non-human to perceive the conditions of domination and
exploitation that the oppressed of all species experience in common.
In the most basic sense, oppression involves the denial of resources on the basis
of an individuals affiliation with a particular social group (Samuels, 2009). This denial
may involve economic or resource inequities, but it often involves far more than mere
matters of distributive justice (Young, 2004). Oppression has been described as a multifaceted experience that consists of having an outside force limit, arrange or constrain
(sometimes physically and violently) an individuals or collectives life or aspects of their
life (McHugh, 2007, p. 89). The experience of oppression is differentiated from banal,
transitory experiences of harm or the agentic limitations that invariably punctuate lived

experience (Frye, 2008). Oppression, Frye (2008) argues, involves the systemic
corporeal, economic, political or social segregation, control, and exploitation of social
groups and categories.
Minority group is a sociological term used to describe any group in human

society whose members differ from the controlling group (Nibert, 2002, p. 6). It can also
be understood as any group of people who because of their physical or cultural
characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for
differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of
collective discrimination (Wirth, 1945, p. 347). According to Wagley and Harris (1958),
minority groups are characterized by five defining characteristics: 1) unequal treatment
and less self-determination than majority members of society, 2) distinguishing physical
or cultural traits (e.g., skin color, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), 3)
involuntary social assignment to the group, 4) awareness of a subordinate status, and 5)
high incidence of in-group marriage and association. Nibert (2002) argues, however, that
oppressed group is both a more accurate and straight-forward term to describe any
group that shares physical, cultural, or economic characteristics and is subjected, for
the economic, political, and social gain of a privileged group, to a social system that
institutionalizes its exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, deprivation, or
vulnerability to violence (p. 7).
Is species a morally relevant criterion for oppression?
Species is commonly employed as an essential criterion for othering and
devaluing other sentient beings, but it is a term that tells us far less than is commonly

assumed (Wilkins, 2009; Stamos, 2006, 2004; Zamir, 2007). In fact, Elstein (2003) notes,
there is no single universally accepted operational definition for species used in the
scientific or academic community. Species, like race, gender, sexual orientation, ability,
is nothing more than a social construction used to convey a particular idea in a particular
context. Just as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation are terms that emerged and
evolved in particular times and places to communicate ideas, species likewise has no
meaning independent of the context in which it is used to describe a phenomenon.
There may be well be empirical differences among various humans and nonhumans that we perceive as important; however, it is these biological, physiological,
psychological, and behavioral differences that we are referring to when we speak of
species as a morally relevant criterion. This means that we should not confuse the
species construct with the characteristics, attributes, or qualities it is meant to
operationalize in a particular contextualized usage. These differences may well be
morally relevant, but they are not equivalent to species as a general term of usage; thus,
one cannot argue that species is a morally relevant criterion as if the term has some
precise and obvious meaning apart from the characteristics, attributes, or qualities
towards which it points. In other words, when we speak of species as a criterion we
should be mindful of whether or not we are actually speaking of the moral relevancy of
empirical differences in agency, intelligence, self-awareness, forethought, affect,
empathy, language, or in a beings capacity to suffer (Elstein, 2003). Each of these
aspects of being, and perhaps many more as well, may very well be argued as a morally
relevant difference to differentiate one being from another, but none of them alone, nor in

the aggregate are equivalent to species as a concept at all times and places.
It is instructive to remember that not long ago, race, gender, and sexual
orientation were also widely interpreted as having some fixed meaning that referred to
essential characteristics perceived as morally relevant (Haslam & Levy, 2006; Heilmann,
2011; Jayaratne, 2011). What was usually meant by race was skin color or
geographical origin, neither of which today is accepted as valid moral criterion (Elstein,
2003), nor should we should accept socially constructed notions of two fundamental
gender identities or sexual orientations as morally relevant for discrimination. Although
many in modern society have little difficulty acknowledging that the constructs of race,
gender, sexual orientation, and ability have malleable and shifting social meanings and
relevancy, especially in the moral domain, few are as eager to acknowledge species as
an equivalently illusive social construction with no fixed meaning other than that towards
which it points at a particular time or place. This caution should remain in our minds as
we consider the nature of oppression and of species as a criterion for the moral
justification of the domination and exploitation of non-human animals. Let us now
explore the nature of oppression.
The nature of oppression.
Oppressive systems trap dominated groups in double-binds, keeping them in
horns-of-a-dilemma situations in which the oppressed find themselves facing no viable
alternatives other than to acquiesce to their own continued domination and exploitation
(Frye, 2008, p. 42). Explicit and implicit threats of economic, legal, social, or physical
retribution serve to stifle resistance and to discourage defiance of the status quo.

According to the critical law theorist Austin Turk (1976), there are five different kinds of
power that legal institutions and associated elites use to preserve and perpetuate
oppressive systems. These include 1) monopoly of physical force (military or police
power); 2) domination of production, allocation, distribution, and use of material
resources (economic power); 3) control of decision-making institutions and processes
(political power); 4) control over the creation of and distribution/access to knowledge,
beliefs; and 5) control over the extent to which legal considerations capture public
interest and divert attention and energy from other matters (diversionary power) (p. 280).
These interlocking forms of power and control immobilize, contain, and disarm the
oppressed, while constraining their ability to resist domination, much less escape from it.
Frye (2008) employs the birdcage metaphor to illustrate the experience of

oppression. Each wire bar that forms the birdcage represents a particular barrier designed
to benefit privileged elites by keeping the oppressed locked within a double-bind that
prevents them from escaping their subjugation.3 Each wire immobilizes, restricts,
marginalizes, and disadvantages the oppressed in some manner. The wires also
simultaneously safeguard particular advantages and opportunities afforded to those who
are in a position of dominance. Viewed individually, each of the birdcages wires might
appear amenable to circumvention; however, the prison-like reality of the birdcage at last
becomes discernible only when each wire is viewed in the context of its interlocking
relation with all the other enclosing wires.
The author finds some irony in Fryes use of the birdcage analogy without any apparent
questioning of the moral appropriateness of literally confining a bird to cage, an
inherently cruel practice.
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Members of those groups enclosed by the birdcage may not even be aware of the
constrained nature of their situation or perceive the myriad ways in which they have been
disadvantaged, constrained, or reduced by it. On the other hand, those who enjoy the
benefits and advantages that flow from the oppression of those they dominate are also
unlikely to see the barriers upon which much of their taken-for-granted status and
privileges depend (Frye, 2008). Non-human animals are literally kept in cages, as well as
figuratively in the manner described by Frye. The wires of law, politics, culture,
language, religion, and economics keep them securely locked in a position of domination
from which innumerable human privileges flow.
Five faces of oppression.
Young (2004) argues that oppression is often concerned with far more that
distributive inequities. At least in a general sense, it always seeks to prevent those who
have been assigned to a social group or category from fully developing and exercising
their innate or developmental capacities, or from expressing their needs, thoughts, and
feelings (p. 38). Oppression of non-humans prevents them from expressing and fulfilling
what Aristotle described as their telos.4 For the ethicist Bernard Rollins (2006),
respecting a sentient beings telos means allowing them to live the kind of life their
nature dictates, and to respect the dignity of their unique interests in our interactions with
them.
For a thorough discussion of the Aristotelian understanding of telos, see Hauskeller

(2005)
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According to Young (2004), the structural and institutional factors that sustain
oppressive systems may vary substantially; however, all oppressed groups to some degree
experience exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and
violence. She refers to these five dimensions as the five faces of oppression. Each of
these five dimensions also informs the oppression of non-human animals.
Exploitation.
Exploitation involves the transfer of labor and productive value from one group to
another in ways that lead to unequal distributions of resources and that promote
inequalities that benefit some at the expense of others (Young, 2004). According to
Marxs Capital (1976), exploitation is concerned with the extraction of surplus value (or
profit) from the labor of the working class. For Tilly (2000), exploitation involves the
manipulation of social, legal and economic institutions and practices by elites to control
and direct the production of value in ways that prevent the actual producers (laborers)
from realizing and benefiting from the full value of their labor.
While Marx and Engels denied non-humans the essential attributes necessary for
participation in the proletariats historical project of upending capitalism (Gunderson,
2011a; Sztybel, 1997), a more nuanced Marxist analysis of capitalism and its exploitative
tendencies leads to the conclusion that non-human animals are undoubtedly among the
exploited class (Hribal, 2003; Nibert, 2013, 2002; Torres, 2007). They are exploited for
food, for clothing, as beasts of burden, as laboratory test subjects, for entertainment, and
for companionship, if not in countless other ways.
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The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (UNFAO; 2015)
estimates that more than 69 billion land animals5 are killed annually for food (almost
2,200 every second), while another 7.9 billion are kept in captivity so that their eggs or
milk can be appropriated for human consumption. These estimates are largely based on
official government estimates and do not account for untold billions of other kinds of
land animals that are also killed for food around the world (e.g., dogs, cats, guinea pigs,
reindeer, yak, and rats; see Sherman, 2002) or wildlife killed for consumption. These
numbers also dont account for the hundreds of billions of fresh- and salt-water aquatic
creatures pulled from the natural habitats or raised in captivity for food. According to
UNFAO (2011), global meat consumption has doubled since 1961 and is expected to
grow by more than seventy percent by 2050. Consequently, these numbers can be
expected to grow significantly in the years ahead.
Countless animals are also exploited worldwide for their skins, fur, or feathers to
supply the manufacture of clothing, footwear, and jewelry. Despite its association with
the cow, perhaps one of the most widely-recognized symbols of the predominant Hindu
religion, India has recently become one of the worlds largest exporters of leather
footwear and garments, second only to China. India produces approximately 2 billion
square feet of leather annually with an annual turnover of over US$ 7.5 billion (Council
for Leather Exports, 2015). In the Indian state of Kerala alone some 1.2 million cows are
slaughtered annually, two thirds of whom are reportedly transported and killed illegally
(Bengtsen, 2012). Chinas leather industry, which can boast an annual export revenue of
5
FAO statistics include estimates for cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, camel,
chicken, duck, turkey, rabbit, geese and guinea fowl.
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$270 billion (China Leather Web, 2015) and is largely unregulated by animal welfare
laws, sources not only the hides of cows, pigs, and sheep, but also the hides of millions of
domestic dogs and cats (Webb, 2014). According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Foreign Agricultural Service (2010), China is second only to Denmark as a leader in the
fur industry with an inventory stock of mink, fox, rabbits, and raccoon dogs estimated at
70 million head in 2010. The unregulated production and sale of fur from non-human
animals has become so profitable on the global market that it is often purposefully
mislabeled as faux fur to skirt import regulations established by countries that explicitly
ban the importation and sale of domestic dog and cat fur (Creswell, 2013).
For thousands of years, domesticated animals, especially cattle, horse, donkey,

elephants, camels, and dogs, have been exploited as beasts of burden for transportation,
and to facilitate human economic activity (Clutton-Brock, 2011). Until the invention and
mass production of the internal combustion engine in the early 20th century, non-human
animals provided the prime locomotive power on farms and in urban areas (Hansen,
2009; McShane & Tarr, 2011; Thompson, 2012). In many parts of the world, they
continue to be exploited as a principal means of transportation and source of power. In
addition to their exploitation in peacetime, various species of non-human animals have
for thousands of years also been compelled to participate in human wars (Morron, 2014).
From the Hyksos horse-drawn chariots and Hannibal Barcas elephants, to modern war
dogs and cavalry horses, countless non-humans have labored and died in conflicts not of
their making (Cooper, 2000; Kistler, 2011; Sorenson, 2014).
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Numerous species of non-human animals, including chimpanzees and other nonhuman primate species, are commonly used as subjects for a broad range of invasive and
non-invasive testing and biomedical procedures that aim to test the safety and efficacy of
drugs, biological products, and medical devices, to evaluate the potential dangers of
household or hygiene products, or to find or evaluate treatments, preventions, or cures for
human diseases. According to the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS;
2015), more than 25 million dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, sheep, monkeys, and chimpanzees
are used for biomedical experimentation, product and cosmetic testing, or are subjected to
traumatic injuries to provide students hands-on surgical and trauma care training.
NEAVS also estimates, however, that the number is likely much higher, perhaps
exponentially so because rats, mice, and birds, three species which comprise more than
90% of animals used in laboratories in the United States, are not covered by the Animal
Welfare Act of 1966 and are not subject to statutory reporting requirements. Hart, Wood,
and Hart (2008) estimate that more than twenty million non-human animals are used for
dissection or vivisection (experimentation on live animals) each year in schools and
universities in the United States alone.
Many of the animals that end up in laboratories, surgical theatres, or classrooms

are sourced from biological supply companies or acquired through the actions of a
handful of random source Class B dealers authorized to acquire animals from shelters,
auctions, free-to-a-good-home ads, or individuals like bunchers, private breeders, and
hunters with surplus dogs (Schaeffer, 2013). All but eighteen states still permit animal
shelters to sell dogs and cats, many of whom are lost, abandoned, or surrendered
14

companion animals, to Class B dealers at the end of a five-day mandatory holding period
(Draeger, Phillips, & Schaeffer, 2013; Katrinak, 2013). The line between pampered
family companion and nameless, disposable test subject is frequently a permeable one.
The use of non-human animals as objects of human entertainment has also had a
long and disturbing history. Ancient records from Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt speak of
walled menageries and paradise parks stocked with wild animals (Kalof, 2011).
Ancient Romes capture, transport, and display of wild beasts for public amusement is
also likewise amply documented. The dedication in 80 CE of the Flavian Amphitheatre
involved the murder of nine thousand animals, and in 107 CE the Emperor Trajan
celebrated his military conquest of Dacia with 120 days of celebrations involving the
killing of more than eleven thousand animals (Shelton, 2011). Although such large-scale
spectacles became increasingly rare with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, other
forms of violent entertainment involving non-human animals continued to flourish in the
Medieval Age and Renaissance, including cockfighting, bullbaiting, bearbaiting, and
various other animal blood sports that typically culminate with the participants violent
demise (Kiser, 2011).
In modern times, humanity continues to exploit millions of non-human animals

for entertainment in socially sanctioned venues known for their instrumental treatment of
other species, such as circuses, zoos, aquatic parks, bullfighting arenas, and racetracks;
however, few consider the costs to these amusements to the animals themselves. Its been
estimated that an average of 24 horses die each week at racetracks across the United
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States (Bogdanich, Drape, Miles, & Palmer, 2012), and according to a report produced by
the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and Grey2K USA
(2015), more than 900 racing greyhounds have died and more than 11,000 have been
injured on racing tracks since 2008. If humanity has demonstrated any capacity over the
last several millennia it has been for relentless innovation in the myriad ways we devise
to torment non-human animals for our amusement. Among the many violently
exploitative animal sports that continue to persist in modern times are horse fighting
(Smith, 2014); dogfighting (Villavicencio, 2007); fox hunting (Bawden, 2015),
bullfighting (Ogorzaly, 2006), and pigeon shoots (Fielder, 2013), to name but a few.
Finally, let us consider non-human animals as pets or companions. Dogs (Canis

familiaris) are believed to have first been domesticated around 13,000 BC (HobgoodOster, 2014), and thus have the distinction of being humanitys oldest companion. Cats
(Felis silvestris catus) began to associate themselves with humans a more recent 5,300
years ago (Hu et al., 2014) and are therefore something of a latecomer to human families.
For thousands of years, dogs and cats served largely utilitarian purposes (Clutton-Brock,
2011). The keeping of domestic animals as companions and treated as integral members
of the family is largely a modern phenomenon that can be traced back to the early 19th
century (Shevelow, 2008). Today, the care and feeding of companion animals has
become a multi-billion dollar industry. According to the U.S. Department of Labors
Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2013) there are about 218 million pets in the United
States and Americans spend more than $61 billion on their non-human companions. A
report from the National Retail Federation (Grannis, 2014) estimated that U.S. consumers
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were expected to spend more than $350 million just on pet costumes in 2014.
Nevertheless, our love affair with dogs and cats is complicated. While more than two
million puppies are bred and sold annually by licensed and non-licensed breeding
facilities, another three million stray and abandoned dogs and cats are euthanized by
animal shelters (Humane Society of the United States, January 2015).
Marginalization.
Those whom elites deem useless as a source of productive labor or perceived as
not adding value to society are often subjected to various forms of social exclusion that
limit their capacity to fully participate in the economic, intellectual, political, and social
life of the community (Young, 2004). Individuals become marginalized when they are
deprived of opportunities or access to resources on account of a perceived lack of value
or on the basis of perceived deficiencies associated with their physical attributes,
education, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, or social class, or because
of illness or infirmity (van den Hoonaard, 2008). Those classified as marginals are
more likely to be labeled disposable, and in extreme cases are more likely to be
displaced or exterminated.
Although many species of non-human animals are exploited to satisfy human

material or emotional interests, some are more marginalized than others. Even among
those relegated to the status of food animals, there are those who occupy a rung further
down on the ladder of instrumental value, and are thus subject to further marginalization.
Hens who have passed their egg-laying prime (HSUS, 2009), dairy cows with
decreasingly productivity (HSUS, 2009), and male calves born to dairy cows (HSUS,
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2009) are among those quickly disposed of by the animal agricultural industry as threats
to profitability. Millions of male chicks considered byproducts of the egg-laying industry
are killed each year by maceration, suffocation, or by exposure to the elements because
they are of a different breed than commercial variants used for the production of chicken
meat and are thus considered unprofitable (HSUS, 2009).
The status of those non-human animals who live within the orbit of human
families can also be a tenuous existence. While statistics are difficult to locate, most
rescue organizations agree that the surrender of companion animals to animal shelters is
still an all too common practice (Coe et al., 2014). Millions of dogs, cats, rabbits, horses,
and other mammal, reptiles, and birds are surrendered each year due to the cost of their
care, for becoming too old, too sick, because of often-correctable behavioral issues, or for
simply falling out of favor with their human families (Holcomb, Stull, & Kass, 2012;
Kass, New, Scarlett, & Salman, 2001; Weng & Hart, 2012). Wildlife perceived as threats
or obstacles to human material interests are also more likely to be marginalized as
disposable with their deaths, and perhaps extinction, often viewed as acceptable, if
unfortunate collateral damage of inevitable human progress (Bruckner, 2013).
Powerlessness.
Those whose participation in decision-making about the conditions of their
employment, mobility, education, health-care, or any other basic condition of their lives
is restricted or blocked on the basis of their assignment to social categories are said to be
powerless. Powerlessness renders the oppressed voiceless and leaves them unable to
advocate on behalf of their own self-interest or to use their individual or collective voice
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to alter their political, social, or material situation (Young, 20004). Societys elites tend
to benefit from this diminution of power because powerlessness prevents challenges to
the status quo (Young, 2004).
As with many other oppressed groups, non-human animals are frequently

rendered powerless, especially before human law. Non-human animals possess few legal
rights, and those legal rights that do afford them some protection against human
depredations are often carefully crafted to preserve humanitys privileged status and to
maintain the property-status of non-humans. For example, the Animal Welfare Act
(AWA) enacted in 1966 is the only U.S. federal law that regulates the treatment of nonhuman animals in research and exhibition, as well as their transport; however, it
specifically excludes rats, mice, and birds bred for research even though these species
constitute over 90% of animals used in laboratories. It also specifically excludes coldblooded animals (fish, reptiles, and amphibians), as well as all farmed animals raised for
food and fiber or used in experiments to improve animal production methods and/or the
quality of agricultural products. The exclusion of farmed animals by the AWA means that
pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and other species raised for food can be lawfully treated in
ways that would be illegal under various state anti-cruelty statutes that apply only to
companion animals. Similarly, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (7 U.S.C. 1901 et
seq.) governs the slaughter and handling of livestock; however, its protections do not
extend to poultry, which comprise the vast majority of non-humans killed for food.
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Increasing public criticism in recent years over the treatment of farmed animals at
the hands of the animal agricultural industry has encouraged industry efforts to shield
their practices from the public eye rather than reform them. Laws intended to criminalize
the documenting of animal abuse on factory farms have been passed in eight states, and
several other states have attempted or are attempting to pass similar legislation (Carlson,
2012; Oppel, 2013). These laws would criminalize the kinds of undercover photography
or videography that have in the past brought to light abuse in the animal agriculture
industry. Ostensibly aimed to protect farm animals from intentional or unintentional harm
perpetrated by undercover investigators, these ag-gag laws in practice constrain the
ability of investigative journalists to peek behind the curtain of the U.S. food chain, and
they limit the ability of whistleblowers to report the actual conditions under which food
animals live, suffer and die (Genoways, 2013; McNeal, 2014).
The domination of non-humans is made all the more invisible by their inability to
communicate with us as we communicate with each other, but as Frye (2008) notes, one
cannot tell the degree of oppression that an individual experiences solely from the
strength of their complaint. The belief that animals go to their deaths willingly to put food
in our stomachs and shoes on our feet is nothing more than a convenient and selfsoothing fiction. Non-human animals do resist their diminution of agency, they
persistently reject their powerlessness, and they actively seek freedom (Carter & Charles,
2013). Hribal (2010) argues that a careful reading of media reports and historical
accounts makes clear that non-human animals exercise agency and intent to escape
human oppression in their efforts to regain freedom. They fight for their territory, for
20

their progeny, for their survival, and when defeated they go kicking and screaming to
their deaths just as we do.
Cultural imperialism.
Cultural imperialism is a form of cultural chauvinism whereby the norms,
beliefs, attitudes, practices, and history of a dominant group are held as the universalized
standards to which societys members are expected to subscribe (Young, 2004). Cultural
imperialism (or dominance) implicitly and explicitly proclaims the inferiority of other
groups cultures and worldviews, and depicts their cultural expressions as strange,
exotic, and alien. Moreover, it promotes stereotypes based on weak distillations of
perceived essential characteristics and practices associated with members of dominated
groups. The privileging of dominant perspectives creates and perpetuates a cultural space
in which oppressed groups are rendered literally and figuratively invisible, and in which
dominant cultural expressions are propped up as normal, natural, and necessary
(Joy, 2010).
Cultural dominance in a constrained cultural space is reinforced by the

unchallenged reproduction of dominant discourses and regimes of truth across a range
of socializing agencies, including the media establishment, educational institutions,
language, and legal, political, and economic institutions (Foccault, 1995; Gramsci, 1971).
It is not necessary that every member of society fully and uncritically embraces and
internalizes dominant cultural expressions and ideological perspectives, only that the
state and elites are able to control the scope and intensity of dissent so that their own
material interests are not impinged or threatened (Nibert, 2013). The permissibility of
21

open dissent and resistance within the bounds of the law provides an illusion of freedom
of choice.
Muted group theory (Ardener, 1978; Ardener, 1975) argues that normative
discourse, which typically reflects the perspectives and interests of the dominant groups,
tends to resist the introduction of counter-normative concepts. One of the most powerful
ways in which they do so is through the use and control of language. The lexicon and
semantic structures of normative language used by the dominant-group effectively choke
off alternative perspectives. This linguistic arrangement constrains engagement in
discourse that threatens the existing order of things because it compels the use of
inadequate or ambiguous concepts and terminology. Concepts opposed to the oppression
of non-humans must be communicated and mediated through language that is already
constructed to reinforce that oppressions normality and necessity. Those who resist the
exploitation of non-human animals are forced to find ways to communicate their ideas
within dominant cultural discourses that assume the legitimacy of that exploitation
(Adams, 2010).
Language plays a critical role in the cultural entrenchment and perpetuation of

speciesism and anthropodenial. The term speciesism was coined in the 1980s by
psychologist Richard Ryder (1983), and has since become widely used in animal rights
and critical animal studies literature to refer to a form of anthropocentric prejudice and
discrimination that privileges human needs and desires above those of other species.
Peter Singer (2000), whom many consider the father of the modern animal rights
22

movement, defines speciesism as a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests
of ones own species and against those of members of other species (p. 6).
Anthropodenial is a motivational concept proposed by the primatologist and

ethologist Frans de Waal (2006, 1999) to explain efforts by human beings to look past
human-like characteristics of non-human animals, while denying attributes of animality
in humans. Speciesism and anthropodenial both work to elevate our species interests
above those of all other species by obscuring similarities and accentuating differences
between human beings and non-human animals (Adams, 2010). The vegetarian-feminist
Carol Adams notes, Speciesism is a lie, and it requires a language of lies to survive. (in
Dunayer, 2001, p. ix), but unlike sexist language which many book publishers,
professional organizations, and government agencies now proscribe speciesist language
remains socially acceptable even to people who consider themselves politically
progressive. (Dunayer, 2001, p. 10).
A number of scholars have worked in recent years to shed light on the many ways
that language maintains what Midgley (1983) describes as the inertia of custom (p. 27).
Dunayer (2001) has perhaps done more than any to tease out the linguistic ploys of
speciesism (p. xviii). Her explication of the many ways that lexical and semantic slightsof-hand legitimize and sanitize speciesist attitudes and practices have helped stripped
away languages veneer of innocence and demonstrated the power of language to
anesthetize human conscience by making non-human animals verbally absent. Among
the different kinds of language unmasked by Dunayer (2003, 2001), as well as by Adams
23

(2010), Smith-Harris (2004) and Stibbe (2001), are vocabulary that promotes
objectification (it vs. he or she) and commodification (e.g., unit of production,
protein), obscurant language (e.g., drumstick, hamburger, broiler), euphemistic
language (e.g., to cull, to harvest, to put down), mass nouns of deindividualization
(e.g., meat), category labels (e.g., furbearer, circus animals, farm animals), and
dysphemistic epithets (e.g., bitch, pig, weasel, vermin). Birke and Smith (1995)
and Smith, Birke and Sadlers (1997) deconstruction of the language used in scientific
reports of experiments involving non-human animals has similarly evidenced how even
professional scientists resort to euphemisms, omissions, and circumlocutions to obscure
the horrors of their actions.
Violence.
Finally, oppressed groups often suffer from systematic violence. Their members
must anticipate not just the possibility, but also the probability of random, unprovoked
attacks on their persons or property, which have no motive but to damage, humiliate, or
destroy them (Young, 2004, p. 56). Although these attacks at times may appear random,
spontaneous and irrational, they are in fact the result of the depiction of members of
oppressed groups as unworthy of full inclusion in societys circle of moral concern.
Moral exclusion (Opotow, 1990; Opotow, Gerson, & Woodside, 2005) narrows a
communitys scope of justice and permits some to be marked as naturally and inevitably
deserving of physical and emotional violence, deprivation, and exploitation. The assumed
blameworthiness of the oppressed makes them ideal targets onto which the powerful are
free to project their frustrations, insecurities, and fears (Aronson, 2012, 326-330). As
Girard (2006, 1989, 1987) notes in several of his seminal works, scapegoating involving
24

the ritual persecution, sacrifice or expulsion of the weak and the different has long
provided an effective cathartic mechanism used by communities to restore communal
harmony in the aftermath of a crisis.6
Non-human animals are threatened by and subjected to numerous forms of

violence associated with their exploitation in the furtherance of human material interests.
Their bodies and agency are violated to produce food and clothing for others, and to to
promote health benefits that others enjoy. They are subjected to violence for the
entertainment of others, and they are frequently deprived of their habitats and lives to
safeguard or enhance the material benefits that humans enjoy. Just as importantly, all
these forms of violence are sanctioned culturally and legally in ways that make human
privilege appear normal, necessary, and natural.
Species Privilege: The Knapsack Revisited
Baileys (2009) understanding of privilege builds on Fryes concept of
oppression. According to Bailey, privilege is an important mechanism for maintaining
systems of domination that permit the perpetuation of oppression. The distinction she
makes between privilege and advantage parallels the distinction Frye (2008) makes
between oppression and harm. Although oppression harms the individual and
community, Frye contends that not all harms rise to the level of oppression. Similarly,
Bailey argues that while privilege creates particular advantages, not all advantages
individuals or social groups enjoy necessarily rise to the level of privilege. Some
The paradigmatic scapegoat was a goat cast out into the desert on the Day of Atonement
to carry away the sins of the Jewish people (Leviticus 16:21).
25

advantages may be what Bailey refers to as earned advantages, the kind of advantage
that individuals achieve by their own merit; however, the failure to distinguish between
earned advantages and those that are unearned and enjoyed solely because of ones
membership in a social group can perpetuate an illusion of fairness where it does not
exist. The inability to distinguish between earned and unearned advantages, Bailey
(2009) writes, allows people born on third base to believe sincerely that they hit a
triple (p. 310).
Bailey (2009) argues that systems of privilege, such as those that benefit
heterosexuals, whites, or males, are built on unearned structural advantages that depend
on a culture of silence and denial. Schwalbe (2009) notes, Whites and men tend not to
see these privileges because they are taken to be normal, unremarkable entitlements (p.
189). Denial of the existence and impact of such privileges preserve and protect them
from being fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended (McIntosh, 2008, p.
61). The freedom to remain unaware and unconcerned with the challenges and
experiences of members of out-groups is yet another characteristic form of privilege
(Schwalbe, 2009, p. 189).
For Bailey (2009), the concept of privilege involves four elements. First, privilege
creates advantages or benefits that are always unearned and conferred systematically to
members of dominant social groups (p. 306). Bailey (2009) distinguishes between
negative privileges and positive privileges. The former involve the absence of barriers,
while the latter involve the enjoyment of specific freedoms and other benefits. Second,
26

privileges granted to members of a dominant group based solely on their group affiliation
are almost never justifiable; that is, they are granted not on the basis of merit, but
instead on the basis of perceived essentialized characteristics associated with some
conferred identity. Heldke and OConnor (2004) write, Most often, privilege, like
oppression, is explained in terms of natural or given traits. People with privilege tend to
appeal to those traits in an attempt to justify having the privilege in the first place (p.
300).
Third, privileges tend not to be recognized or acknowledged as such by those who

enjoy them. Those who have privileges take as normal, unremarkable entitlements
(Schwalbe, 2009, p. 189). Finally, the enjoyment of privilege provides a wild card
benefit that extends advantages to cover a wide range of unspecified circumstances and
conditions. In other words, privilege acts akin to blank check that can be used in almost
any situation to gain advantage. McIntosh (2008) similarly characterizes privilege as an
invisible package of unearned assets, as an invisible weightless knapsack of special
provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes,
compass, emergency gear, and blank checks (p. 62), and as a pattern of assumptions
passed on from prior beneficiaries (p. 65).
Humans enjoy a host of unearned privileges at the expense of other species, but
most obviously we enjoy the privilege of exploiting them for food, clothing, as beasts of
burden and as laboratory test subjects, for entertainment, and for companionship, as well
as in countless other ways. Another privilege is the privilege of not having to question or
27

defend that exploitation. If McIntosh (2008) is correct when she writes, I think whites
are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize
male privilege. (p. 62), then I believe it would be equally valid to say, humans are
taught not to recognize human privilege. Our species-based privilege becomes part of
the unremarked background noise that we are taught from a very early age to ignore and
leave unremarked (Cole & Stewart, 2014).
Enjoyment of human privilege demands not only that we must not speak of the
oppression of non-human animas, but also that we deliberately avoid noticing it
(Zerubavel, 2006, p. 9). A question worth asking, however, is why doesnt anyone really
want to talk about it? In the next section, Ill explore the concept of a species contract
to help explain this culture of denial and the silence that surrounds human privilege.
The Species Contract
Just as Carole Patemans The Sexual Contract (1988) makes the case that
societys prevailing political and moral ideologies evidence an unspoken social contract
that disadvantages some on the basis of gender, Charles Mills The Racial Contract
(1997) argues that racism, which Mills calls white supremacy, similarly evidences an
unnamed and taken for granted global political system that actively excludes some
people from its benefits on the basis of socially constructed racial categorizations.
Drawing on the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, JeanJacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, Mills conceptualizes the racial contract as a
contract established not between all members of society for their common benefit, but
28

rather as a contract between just the people who count (1997, p. 3). In other words, the
racial contract is in reality an exploitation contract that permits whites to further their
own material interests at the expense of people of color through the establishment and
enforcement of economic domination and white privilege. The exploitation that the racial
contract promotes and legitimates, as Thomas (2007) notes, usually involves not just the
physical oppression and exploitation of people of color, but also the appropriation of their
resources (e.g., land and labor) as well.
As a theory, Mills argues that the racial contract provides an analytical lens for
understanding the emergence and structure of modern society, the functions of the state
and other supporting agencies of socialization, as well as the moral psychology of its
citizens. It explains how and why an exploitative society ruled by an oppressive
government and regulated by an immoral code, comes into existence (p. 5; original
emphasis) and how it is subsequently sustained and perpetuated through violence and
ideological conditioning. The racial contract is more than a theoretical lens, however, as
it also speaks to racism as a historical and empirical reality in the world.
Mills racial contract rests on three basic elements. First, white supremacy has
been an existential global and local phenomenon for centuries. Second, white supremacy
can be conceived of as a political system that promotes a particular power structure of
formal and informal rule, socioeconomic privilege, and norms for the differential
distribution of material wealth and opportunities, benefits and burdens, rights and duties
(Mills, 1997, p. 3). Third, white supremacy as a system of domination that excludes,
29

oppresses and exploits people of color can be understood as a contract established
among whites to further their own perceived material interests. Although the contract is
a global historical reality, peoples experience of it can vary across time and place
(Thomas, 2007).
According to Mills (1997), the survival and perpetuation of the racial contract
depends on the existence of what he characterizes as an inverted epistemology or an
epistemology of ignorance that makes it difficult for whites to understand the world
they have co-constructed (p. 18). It represses critical self-reflection on the nature of social
realities and the part one plays in them as a member of society. As a result, those who
live under the terms of the racial contract (knowingly or by default) occupy an invented
delusional world, a racial fantasyland, and a hallucination divorced from the reality
of those excluded by the contract (p. 18). The racial contract requires misunderstanding,
misrepresentation, evasion, and self-deception on matters related to race in order to
justify and rationalize the conquest, colonization, enslavement, exploitation, and
extermination of others (Mills, 1997, p. 18).
If Mills racial contract proves useful for understanding the resilience of racist
institutions, norms, practices and the privileges that exploit some for the benefit of others,
then surely there is something to be gained from considering what I would call the
species contract. The species contract can also be described as having three central
elements. First, human domination of non-humans has shown itself to be an existential
global and local phenomenon not for centuries, but for millennia. Second, human
30

domination and privilege, sometimes called anthroparchy (Calvo, 2008; Cudworth,
2014, 2005), can be thought of as a anthropocentric political system that promotes a
particular power structure of formal and informal rule, socioeconomic privilege, and
norms that distribute material resources, benefits and burdens, teleological opportunities,
and moral rights and duties on the basis of species categorization. Finally, human
domination can be understood as a species contract established among humans to
further their own perceived material interests through the physical domination of other
species, as well as through the exploitation of their labor and habitats, and the
appropriation of their very bodies for food and medical testing.
Mills (1997) maintains the racial contract became a historical feature of the
modern world beginning with the age European conquest and colonialism that
commenced in the early 15th century and continued well into the 20th century. By his
account, the racial contract has for the past five hundred years shaped patterns and
features of European domination through globalized white supremacy; however, the
species contract predates the racial contract by millennia. It began in pre-history with
humanitys gradual but ultimately catalytic transition from foraging to mobile huntergather societies, and intensified with the shift to agricultural-based communities with
deep material interests in the domination and exploitation of domesticated non-human
animals (see Barker, 2009; Nibert, 2013, 2002; Winterhalder & Kennett, 2005). As an
economic and social phenomenon the species contract served and continues to serve as
the primordial model for all subsequent contract variations on the themes of gender,
class, race, ethnicity, religion, heteronormity, and ability, among many others, some of
31

which have yet to manifest historically. Put another way, the oppression and devaluing of
non-humans has set the pattern for all forms of intraspecies oppression. The original
wound must first be healed if these subsequent manifestations are to be healed as well.
Although only a fraction of humanity benefits from the sexual contract or from
the racial contract (or both), all humans benefit to some extent from the species
contract. The dominance and oppression of non-humans, to extend McIntoshs (2008)
critique of racial privilege, dont just manifest in individual acts of discrimination,
meanness, or cruelty by particular humans (p. 68); they are also manifest in the larger
invisible systems that confer unquestioned privilege. Species membership for humans
provides unearned advantages whether or not individual members of our species approve
of the foundational dominance upon which those advantages are based.
Contractual Ideologies
The perceived normalcy, necessity, and naturalness of human oppression of nonhuman animals is woven so thoroughly and so tightly into human socio-cultural,
linguistic, and economic systems that it is almost inconceivable to imagine what a world
without such oppression would look like. The culture of denial and silence that ignores
and permits the continued oppression of sentient non-human beings to further human
material or psychological interests7 is perhaps the most engrained of all of humanitys
taboo subjects. It is also the one at the root of an the fundamental unrecognized wound
Becker (1973, 1962), Goldenberg et al. (2001), and Marino and Mountain (2015)
suggest that people strive to distinguish themselves from non-human animals because the
distinction helps humans deal with conscious and unconscious worries about their own
animality and mortality.
32

we modern humans suffer and from which many other wounds and divisions
naturally and inevitably follow (Tuttle, 2005, p. 9).
In her analysis of privilege, Bailey (2009) cautions, If the structural features of

oppression generate privilege, then a complete understanding of oppression requires that
we also be attentive to the ways in which complex systems of domination rely on the
oppression of one group to generate privilege for another (p. 314). Just as importantly,
the ideological justifications for that oppression should be laid bare and challenged.
According to the Marxist tradition, ideologies are among the most powerful
mechanisms for promoting a false consciousness. Ideologies help elites impose,
maintain, and defend their material interests, advantages, privileges, and interests at the
expense of other classes (Marx & Engels, 1970). In capitalist societies the ideology of
capitalism promotes the material interests of the ruling elites by creating a false
consciousness among the working class (Stoddart, 2007). Sexism, classism, and racism
are classic examples of dominant ideologies that purport to reflect real and true
representations of the natural order of things, but which also promote false
consciousness. Speciesism also serves this purpose (Nibert, 2002, p. 13).
Ideologies are group phenomena; that is, they concern systems of ideas shared by
members of a group and that form the basis for commonly held beliefs and attitudes
about other phenomena (van Dijk, 2009). The crucial characteristic that distinguishes an
ideology from other types of belief systems, van Dijk (2009) asserts, is that these systems
33

of beliefs are presupposed and taken for granted by its subscribers. Ideologies have the
function of shaping particular kinds of knowledge acquired and shared in common by
members of a group. Thus, scientists who adhere the ideology of positivism can be said
to hold a set of common ontological and epistemological beliefs about the nature of
scientific knowledge and how it is produced. Similarly, those who embrace the ideology
of speciesism have a set of beliefs and attitudes about the nature and moral worth of nonhuman animals that informs their views about the appropriateness of using other animal
species for food, clothing, medical experimentation, and entertainment. Metzner (1998)
points to these anthropocentric beliefs as evidence of a humanist superiority complex
(p. 241). In any event, all such ideologies have origins, and in the next section Ill explore
the origins of speciesism as the justifying ideology of non-human oppression.
The Origins of Speciesism
In Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation
(2002), sociologist David Nibert adopts the historical-materialist perspective of the
Marxist tradition to conduct a sociological analysis of the economic basis of human
oppression and exploitation of both humans and non-humans. He argues that unjust
beliefs and practices against devalued others (whether human or non-human) are not
merely the inevitable consequence of innate human ethical or moral weaknesses. The
natural human capacity for caring, empathy, equality, and fraternity have been (and
continue to be) compromised and neutralized by economic, political, and belief systems
that glorify private wealth and promote egotism (Nibert, 2002, p. 197). He contends that
is has largely been economic interests, rather than biological or psychosocial pre-
34

dispositions that have fueled humanitys long history of devaluing, oppressing, and
exploiting other humans and non-humans alike.
Nibert (2002) shares the view in common with many other scholars (Diamond,
1997, Gunderson, 2011b) that humanitys complex and evolving relationship with nonhuman animals has deeply and broadly influenced the developmental course of human
civilization. The domestication of non-human animals, a process that began more than ten
to fifteen thousand years ago in the early Holocene period (Barker, 2009; Diamond,
2002; Gupta, 2004), radically transformed the physical and social environments in which
human communities were embedded (Winterhalder & Kennet, 2005). Although others
have made a connection between the domestication of non-human animals, the transition
to agriculture-based settlements, and the subsequent stratification of human societies
along various lines (e.g., gender, class, race, etc.), Nibert (2013, 2002) proposes that
fundamental changes in intraspecies relations associated with these developments set in
motion social and economic forces that led to the emergence of speciesism. These forces
eventually led to the rise of capitalism and to the modern industrialization of agricultural
practices that many not only blame for widespread social and ecological injustice
(Matsuoka & Sorenson, 2003), but also for a looming global environmental crisis of
unprecedented scale (Oppenlander, 2011; Robbins, 2010; Smil, 2002; UNFAO, 2006).
Niberts historical-materialist analysis is grounded in Marxs materialist

conception of history, which argues in part that societys cultural, political, and economic
beliefs, practices, and institutions are primarily conditioned by material conditions.
35

According to Marx (1976), material conditions refer to a societys social organization,
labor processes, productive capacity, organization of capital and any other aspect that
conditions the human lived experience. A historical-materialist interpretation looks at
economic activity and the concomitant production relations that arise among various
members of society to explain that emergence and evolution of fundamental beliefs,
values, institutions, and practices that define society. Niberts analysis argues that the
human domestication and exploitation of non-human animals as an evolving form of
economic activity directly and indirectly guided the emergence of economic, political,
and ideological systems designed to safeguard and expand the privileges of a small
economic elite. It is his contention that these oppressive and exploitative beliefs and
practices became deeply enmeshed in social arrangements that came to appear natural,
normal, and necessary, but that ultimately restrain the development of enlightened
thought and ethical social and economic practices (p. 3).
Niberts theory of oppression (2002, 2012) is deeply informed by Donald Noels

theory of the origin of ethnic stratification (1968); however, the inclusion of non-human
animals as targets of oppression necessitates two key assumptions be clarified.
For the purposes of this paper, prejudice is defined as an individual

predisposition to devalue a group of others (Nibert, 2000, p. 9), and discrimination is
defined as action-differential and unequal treatment of the members of a specific group
solely because they are members of that group (p. 9). From Niberts perspective, neither
prejudice nor discrimination should be held to be the cause of oppressive social or
36

economic arrangements; rather, both reflect post hoc attitudes and practices that evolve to
legitimate, safeguard, and perpetuate disparate social and economic privileges that have
already arisen. Quoting from sociologist Donald Noel, Nibert (2002) writes, As an
attitude prejudice is a characteristic of an individual-not of a cultural structure. It may be
a very widespread, common attitude, but it's locus, nonetheless, remains the individual
(p. 9). In other words, prejudice involves psychosocial processes, while oppression is
concerned with how societal structures and institutions, especially those of an economic
nature, conspire to dominate and exploit.
A second central facet of Niberts theorizing involves the use of speciesism as a

central concept. As addressed above, the term has been defined in a number of ways;
however, he treats speciesism as an ideology along the lines of racism, classism, sexism,
heterosexism, and ableism. Each of these ideologies is a justification for exploitive and
unjust social arrangements, rather than their cause. Nibert (2002) defines speciesism as
a set of socially shared beliefs that justifies an existing or desired social order that
relegates non-human animals to the status of commodities, and that places them for the
most part outside the circle of moral concern.
Noels theory of the origin of ethnic stratification.
Niberts theory of oppression borrows heavily from Donald Noels theory of the
origin of ethnic stratification (1968). Noels theory attempts to identify the key elements
that contribute to the emergence of ethnic stratification; systems of social stratification in
which some feature of group identity (e.g., rage, religion, language, nationality) is used as
37

a basis for assigning social positions with their attendant differential rewards (p. 158).
According to Noel, ethic stratification depends on the presences of ethnocentrism,
competition, and power differential; the absence of any of these elements will militate
against the emergence of ethnic stratification.
According to William Summer, ethnocentrism is a perspective in which ones

own group lies at the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with
reference to it (in Noel, 1968, p. 158). From the ethnocentric perspective, the qualities,
characteristics, norms and practices of ones own group are held to be better, more
natural, and more moral that those of other groups. Although any difference
whatsoever can provide sufficient grounds for the negative evaluation of the other, Noel
(1968) suggests that the greater the difference demarcating ones own group from that of
another, the greater is the likelihood that the out-group will be perceived negatively. One
of the ways in which ethnocentrism is likely to manifest is in what Noel characterizes as a
dual ethic that promotes intragroup standards and norms of morality that are salient
only in relations among members of the in-group. These standards do not apply in
relations between in-group members and members of out-groups who may thus be
exploited and economically disadvantaged.
The second element of Noels theory involves competition marked by shared

goals and scarcity of rewards (p. 160). In other words, for ethnic stratification to occur
between different groups, they must be in competition for the same scarce goal, such as
land, natural resources, jobs, food, etc. The more vital or valuable the scarce goals over
38

which two groups compete to attain or exploit, the more intense the perceived
competition will become, and the more likely it is that ethnic stratification will occur.
Noel (1968) notes, however, it is not necessary that both groups be in active competition
for the same goal(s). It may be sufficient that one group merely perceives that another
group could potentially block exploitation of a scarce resource. In a similar vein, it could
also be that a requirement for labor (and the potential for a group to fill that need) could
serve as the resource goal that stimulates the competition that promotes ethnic
stratification.
Resource competition need not be constrained to intraspecies competition, and

may just as likely manifest in an interspecies context. For example, the Mauritian Dodos
were hunted to extinction in the late 17th century once the colonialists developed a taste
for their flesh (Hume, 2006), and the American Bison were virtually wiped out in the 19th
century due to the demand for their skins, flesh, and grazing lands (Isenberg, 2000; Smits,
1994). Other examples of non-humans species frequently framed as economic
competitors include the black-tailed prairie dog (Johnson & Collinge, 2004), Northern
Spotted Owl (Andre & Velasquez, 1991), American Gray Wolf (Shackelford, 2007), sea
otter (Barboza, 2012), and Delta smelt (Savage, 2015). Each of these non-human animal
species have been viewed as an obstacle to human economic interests and have found
their survival threatened.
Finally, according to Noels theory (1968), the emergence of ethnocentric

perspectives and competition for scarce, vital resources are not together sufficient cause
39

for ethnic stratification to arise. There must also be a power differential between these
groups such that one group in able to impose its will on the other group (p. 162).
According to Noel, the greater the power differential, the more lasting and resilient will
be the emergent stratification. Once one group has achieved dominance over another
group, they will invariably seek to entrench their advantages and privileges in a stable
system of social, cultural, economic and political institutions and practices that hamper an
oppressed and exploited groups ability to resist.
Noel applies his theory to explain the emergence of slavery in Britains American
colonies in the 17th century, and its further expansion and entrenchment in the 18th and
19th centuries. He argues that indigenous Africans were particularly susceptible to
exploitation by colonial powers because they satisfied all three preconditions for ethnic
stratification. First, Noel (1968) argues that Africans were substantially distinct from
English settlers in terms of their physical appearance, culture, religion, and language. As
a result, he suggests, they would have aroused intense feelings of ethnocentrism in
Europeans. Second, Noel makes the case that the expansion of both the physical
boundaries of the colonies and the growth of the colonial economy, especially in the
southern colonies, precipitated increasing demands for labor that could not be satisfied
domestically; therefore, labor itself became the critical object of competition. Africans
became that source of labor and social, cultural, political, economic, and legal
justifications evolved to drive down the cost of that labor until the dehumanizing
institution of slavery came to be accepted as natural, normal, and necessary. Finally,
differentials in power based both on money and superior technology, especially weapons,
40

allowed Portuguese, French, and English slave traders to build and favorably leverage
exploitative trade relationships with fragmented African states in West and West Central
Africa to fill the slave ships that would eventually transfer more than twelve African
million souls to the colonies (Green, 2014; Sparks, 2014).
Once slavery became integrated into the economic fabric of the colonial economy,
it eventually became institutionalized in the political, social, religious, and moral beliefs,
norms, and structures that came to be assumed to be both normal and natural, and that
found expression in legal and political institutions that actively resisted efforts by the
enslaved to attain their freedom. Noel thus contends that slavery was not the inevitable
consequence of an instinctive prejudice of whites against dark-skinned Africans, but
rather that it inevitably occurred as a result of the convergence of ethnocentrism,
competitive pressures for labor in a particular temporal and geographic context, and
marked power differentials.
Niberts theory of oppression.
Niberts (2002) theory of oppression argues that the subjugation, exploitation,
displacement, and oftentimes the extermination of other humans and non-human animals
by human societies tends to be principally motivated by economic self-interest. Like
Noel, Nibert also identifies three key elements that promote the emergence of oppressive
ideologies that are subsequently employed to justify and rationalize systemic practices
that promote the interests of dominant groups at the expense of those that are dominated.
41

First, there must be competition between social groups over the acquisition and
preservation of vital or valuable economic resources (e.g., land, water, energy, labor,
etc.). Nibert (2002) holds that the emergence of oppression is rooted in competition
between two or more groups for the same scarce resources. This criterion echoes Noels
(1968) claim that resource competition is an essential precursor to ethnic stratification.
Opotows theory of moral exclusion (1990) likewise posits that economic competition is
a strong driver of moral exclusion and is often used as justification for deprivation,
exploitation, and other harms that might be ignored or condoned as normal, inevitable,
and deserved (Opotow, Gerson & Woodside, 2005, p. 305).
According to Nibert (2013, 2002), the shift from foraging to hunter-gathering

cultures had three major effects on human society. First, the relationship between
humans and non-humans shifted from co-habitation to predation. This demanded a
concomitant shift in human mindsets that thereafter framed non-humans as substantially
different in ways that justified their killing as necessary, but also as morally acceptable.
Second, the shift to hunting and gathering precipitated increasing role specialization in
societies that found men responsible for the hunt and women for foraging and child
rearing. The value of meat as a non-season source of food served to elevate the prestige
of the hunt, giving men by association increased prestige in the community. This, Nibert
(2002) argues led to the rise of gender-based stratification and patriarchy (see also
Mason, 2011). Finally, the eventual shift to sedentary agricultural communities and the
increasing domestication of non-human animals for food, clothing, transportation, and
42

labor further stratified societies along economic lines, leading to the development of
classes and castes.
Second, Niberts theory makes the case that the exploitation of an oppressed
group to further the in-groups economic interests necessitates a power imbalance that
provides elites the ability to quash an oppressed groups capacity to resist domination.
Gramsci (1971) argues that coercive power, especially the threat or use of military and
police force, is a central enabler of the elites control. Economic, political, cultural, and
diversionary forms of power offer additional means to establish, maintain and justify
dominance (Turk, 1976). Such powers are in modern times largely vested in and
reproduced by state political, economic, and educational institutions (Nibert, 2002)
Finally, Nibert (2002) argues that oppression is dependent upon ideological

conditioning to further entrench the devaluation of others as both natural and necessary.
Gramsci (1971) highlighted important linkages between ideology, culture, and power,
arguing that elites maintain their dominant materialist position in society using two
different forms of power; 1) coercive power that involves the threat or actual use of
physical force (i.e., military or police) to compel participation in oppressive and
exploitative systems; and 2) hegemonic power that cultivates mass acceptance of the
social values and norms of an inherently exploitative system and that inform a shared
sense of what constitutes common sense. In modern western societies, the state is often
held to be the only institution that may legitimately wield coercive power (Weber, 1958),
but hegemonic power tends to be more broadly vested in families, communities,
43

educational institutions, religious bodies, the mass media, libraries, the entertainment
industry, and many other institutions of civil society. In modern western capitalist culture
the dominant discourses of science, education, politics, religion, and agriculturalindustrial complex interact in mutually supportive ways to inform and reproduce the
anthropocentric construction of non-human animals as inferior and less morally relevant
than members of our own species. It is a belief system imparted to the young at a very
young age (Cole & Stewart, 2014).
The Interconnected Entanglements of Oppression
Niberts (2002) tripartite theory of oppression is useful for framing the economic
basis for the oppression and exploitation of non-humans, as well as the entanglement of
non-human oppression with other oppressive ideologies. As a theoretical lens, the model
proposed by Nibert provides a means to understand how material interests woven into the
increasing exploitation of animals for food, clothing, transportation, labor, and
amusement that began many millennia ago stimulated the development of a speciesist
worldview, and set into motion a raft of changes in human social arrangements that
ultimately led to the emergence of patriarchy, classism, racism, and other manifestations
of structural inequality and injustice.
Like many before him who have realized the intersectionality of lived experience,
Nibert (2002) too argues that the exploitation of one group frequently augments and
compounds the mistreatment of others. An intersectional analysis of oppression demands
that we understand how individuals fulfill different concurrent social roles and can thus
find themselves oppressors as well as oppressed (Collins, 2009, 2000). As I have noted
44

previously, all humans benefit to some extent from the species contract and from the
privileges it affords us as members of our species. As such, even the most oppressed
among us are oppressors; however, some among us pay more dearly for the illusory
benefits of that oppression than others (Matsuoka & Sorenson, 2013).
Space precludes a full exposition of the numerous ways that human oppression of
non-human animals comes with a steep price for human societies, especially for those
already the poorest and most exploited among us. Modern animal agriculture, which has
been industrialized to satisfy humanitys growing meat addiction is perhaps the most
egregiously exploitative of all forms of non-human oppression. It is not only responsible
for the suffering and deaths of countless billions of sentient, non-human animals, but its
effects also rebound on humanity in ways that most fail to recognize. Horkheimer (2004)
said just as much when her wrote, The history of man's efforts to subjugate nature is also
the history of man subjugation by man (p. 93).
Industrial animal agriculture is one of the greatest producers of anthropogenic

greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide
(Steinfeld et al., 2006). It pollutes water supplies on which communities depend (Pew
Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, 2008a,b), degrades the land needed
to grow food (UNFAO, 2006), undermines human health (Greger & Koneswaran, 2010),
and increases the risk for the development and transmission of zoonoses and other deadly
pathogens (Nierenberg & Garces, 2005; Pew Commission, 2008c; Wolfe, 2011). The
poorest and most disenfranchised among us, to include a large percentage of non-citizens,
45

are drawn into the lowest paid jobs in the animal agriculture industry and suffer from
some of highest rates of suicide, occupational injury, and death (Eisnitz, 2006; Fitzgerald,
Kalof, & Dietz, 2009; Pew Commission, 2008d). It undermines the mental health of the
most vulnerable (Dillard, 2008), threatens the food security of the worlds poorest (Cox,
2007; Humane Society International, 2011), weakens the economic and social viability of
impoverished communities (Pew Commission, 2008e), and diminishes our capacity for
compassion, empathy and moral concern towards others (Bastian, Costello, Loughnan, &
Hodson, 2012; Costello & Hodson, 2014, 2010; Tuttle, 2005).
Perhaps not surprisingly, the ways that humans oppress non-humans also becomes
reflected in the ways we mistreat each other. It is worth pondering the many ways that
our domination and exploitation of non-humans becomes reproduced in human-human
relations. According to Tuttle (2005), we cause our farmed animals to grow unnaturally
obese, and we experience escalating rates of human obesity; we break apart non-human
animal families, and we experience the increasing fracture of human families; we
commodify non-human animals as units of production, and in our culture we experience
the commodification of humans; we forcibly and repeatedly rape sows, hens, and cows to
impregnate them in order to commercialize their children and bodily fluids, and we
experience rising incidents of rape in human societies; we inject huge quantities of
pharmaceuticals into farmed animals to stimulate growth and to counter the effects of
intensive confinement, and we too experience escalating drug abuse, dependence, and
addiction; we confine billions of animals to cages and we experience a society in which
nearly seven million men and women languish behind bars; we ignore the psychological
46

needs of sentient non-human animals, and we experience mental health crises in human
societies; we place farmed animals into living conditions that expose them to new and
deadly diseases, and we too experience the emergence of new and deadly diseases; we
terrorize non-human animals, and we experience the terror of terrorism.
Tuttle (2005) offers many other examples of interconnected injustice, but his
central thesis is clear; our oppression, exploitation, and mistreatment of non-human
animals has rebounded back upon our own species with a vengeance. The manner in
which humans interact with non-human animals involves far more than a personal choice.
Our treatment of other species is inextricably tied up in the way we treat those like us.
Decades of research concerning the origins and expressions of dehumanization and
infrahumanization (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014; Leyens, 2009) suggest that our capacity
and willingness to other and devalue human beings whom we perceive to be different is
influenced by our assumptions about our animality and the relative value of non-humans.
According to the interspecies model of prejudice (IMP; Costello & Hodson, 2010,
2014), the intensity of peoples beliefs in the saliency of the human-animal divide
mediates the intensity of their out-group dehumanizing tendencies. The more people
believe themselves superior to non-human animals, the easier it seems to be for them to
dehumanize others by likening them to inferior non-human animals. In other words, the
derogative value of animalistic-outgroup dehumanization is theoretically dependent upon
the hierarchical devaluation of animals relative to humans in the first place (Costello &
Hudson, 2014, p. 178). Bastian, Costello, Loughnan, and Hodson (2012) found that the
47

way people frame comparisons between humans and non-human animals has a
demonstrable effect on how they treat not just non-humans, but other humans as well. In
particular, they found that humans tend to express less prejudice and to treat each other
better when they have more favorable baseline views about the inherent value and moral
worth of non-human animals. Tuttle (2005) has argued that the oppression and
exploitation that humans inflict upon each other will never be remedied until humanity is
at last ready to confront our collective treatment of our fellow denizens of planet Earth.
He may well be correct.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have sought to demonstrate that the subjugation, domination, and
exploitation of non-human animals do in fact satisfy the definition of oppression as put
forth by Frye (2008), and that non-human animals as an oppressed group satisfy all five
dimensions of oppression described by Young (2004). Young (2004) argues, for every
oppressed group there is a group that is privileged in relation to that group (p. 39). I
have argued that human privilege, which remains a widely unacknowledged
phenomenon, depends upon the continued oppression of other species.
Just as patriarchy depends upon a set of social relations between men, which have
a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and
solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women (Hartman, 2004, p. 143),
human privilege or anthroparchy also has a material based, and while similarly
hierarchical, likewise depends on social relations that create interdependence and
solidarity among humans that enable them to individually and collectively dominate
48

members of other species. The species contract that maintains and perpetuates human
privilege is justified and rationalized by the ideology of speciesism and by
anthropocentric beliefs about the relative lack of inherent value of non-human beings.
The oppression of non-humans is often justified by appeal to speciesist reasoning,

but as Nibert (2002) argues, that very reasoning is historically grounded in human
material self-interest and is the result rather than the cause of oppression. We dominate,
devalue, commodify, and exploit non-humans not because they are inherently worthy of
such mistreatment, but because we find it in our material interests to do so. We then
devise post hoc philosophical and metaphysical rationales for a hard essentialist
demarcation between our species and all others, and we set the empirical bar such that
science takes human cognitive and behavioral faculties as the unimpeachable measure of
worth. Just as importantly, this primordial variant of oppression, has established the
pattern for all subsequent forms of oppression and their justificatory ideologies. Ending
injustice in all its forms demands that we oppose it in this form as well.
It seems plausible to suggest that the quest for racial and gender equality and the
rectification of other forms of social and ecological justice will remain unfulfilled as long
as the primordial wound remains unhealed. The healing of this wound, however, is
complicated by a number of challenges, not least by the reticence of even the most
progressive among us to critically question deeply held assumptions about human
exceptionalism, and by an unwillingness to plumb the murky depths of our assumptions
about and rationalizations for the devaluation, commodification, and subjugation of other
49

sentient beings simply because they look and act different than ourselves.
In her analysis of racism and white privilege, McIntosh (2008) wrote of the need
confront and challenge unearned privilege; however, her admonition can and should be
interpreted also as a call to confront the speciesism engrained in human society,
especially in the hallowed halls of the academy where it remains largely unquestioned.
With rare exceptions, sociologists, social psychologists, ethicists, philosophers, and
political scientists have failed to seriously study how humanitys relations with other
species has fundamentally distorted intraspecies relations (Alger & Alger, 2003; Irvine,
2007; Nibert, 2003; Peggs, 2013). This should perhaps not be surprising; Zerubavel
(2006), points out, what we avoid or ignore socially is often also avoided or ignored
academically (p. 13). Similarly, the post-humanist scholar Cary Wolfe laments, debates
in the humanities and social sciences between well-intentioned critics of racism,
(hetero)sexism, classism, and all other isms that are the stock-in-trade of cultural studies
almost always remain locked within an unexamined framework of speciesism. (in
Lundblad & De Koven, 2012, p. 5). Unlike the subjects of womens studies or ethnic
studies, the oppressed among other species cannot advocate for themselves in any of the
languages that the academy acknowledges as valid (Weil, 2012); however, their inability
to testify on their behalf does not fail to make their plight any less worthy of note or their
grievances any less credible.
Even as broad swaths of the academy have turned away from positivist research
traditions in favor of epistemologies and methodologies that seek to pierce the veil of
50

dominant discourses to critique the underlying assumptions, motivations, values, and
practices that inform inquiry (Smith, 2012), only a relative handful have made what Weil
(2012) refers to as the animal turn (p. 3). With few exceptions the academy continues
to embrace an epistemology of ignorance (Sullivan & Tuana, 2007; Tuana, 2004) that
avoids critical analysis of the myriad ways in which the hegemony of speciesism has
informed not just our sense of what it means to be human, but how this self-serving
ideology has shaped the social, cultural, economic and political contours of the modern
world as well.
Students and faculty who readily acknowledge the role of oppression and
privilege often find the idea of non-human animal oppression a very difficult theoretical
and practical Rubicon to cross. Many social justice activists argue that it is necessary to
address intraspecies forms of oppression before tackling animal rights (see Harris, 2009
for a survey of such arguments). There is, however, no need to subscribe to what Kaye
(1982) called the scarcity theory of political struggle, the zero-sum belief that activists
cannot concurrently struggle against many different forms of oppression. In fact, as
Torres (2007) cautions, we have no choice but to struggle on many different fronts,
There can be no half-justice for the weak, or justice means nothing at all and we live in a
world where might makes right (p. 3).
Those who stand against non-human oppression also face the inevitable
arguments that different cultures view human-animal relations in different ways, and that
a failure to recognize these variations is itself a form of cultural imperialism. It seems to
51

me, however, that efforts to rationalize the oppression of non-humans as more
permissible than the oppression of humans (e.g., Four Arrows, Jacobs, & Ryan, 2010)
fails the challenge of critical consciousness. Such maneuvering provides a distinction
with no difference. No form of oppression, whether it involves humans or non-humans, is
excusable on the basis of tradition, especially when non-oppressive alternatives exist.
Such arguments must be challenged whenever and wherever they arise to defend the
indefensible.
As a leader in social justice scholarship and practice, Fielding has long

demonstrated a commitment to the eradication of oppression and exploitation in whatever
forms it may take; however, the stream of non-human animal oppression has failed to
attract much attention among the Fielding community, just as it has failed to attract
attention in the academy writ large. Nevertheless, Fielding scholars would be well served
by an incorporation of deeper consideration of the origins and implications of non-human
oppression into our critical consciousness and praxis. It is my hope that Fielding will in
the years to come lean forward on this issue just as it has led before in so many important
struggles.
I fear we will never achieve the peace and justice for which we yearn unless we at
last acknowledge the stifled cries of countless billions and learn to respect their dignity as
fellow sentient beings with whom we share this world in common trust. Undoubtedly, as
DeGrazia (2005) has warned, this last frontier will be hard to cross (para 4), but there
seems no escaping the truth that it must nevertheless be crossed.
52
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April 13, 2015

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Slovic (2007) attributes this phenomenon to psychophysical numbing, a deadening of

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Minority group is a sociological term used to describe any group in human

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Frye (2008) employs the birdcage metaphor to illustrate the experience of

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

For a thorough discussion of the Aristotelian understanding of telos, see Hauskeller

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

For thousands of years, domesticated animals, especially cattle, horse, donkey,

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Many of the animals that end up in laboratories, surgical theatres, or classrooms

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

In modern times, humanity continues to exploit millions of non-human animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Finally, let us consider non-human animals as pets or companions. Dogs (Canis

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Although many species of non-human animals are exploited to satisfy human

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

As with many other oppressed groups, non-human animals are frequently

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Cultural dominance in a constrained cultural space is reinforced by the

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Language plays a critical role in the cultural entrenchment and perpetuation of

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Anthropodenial is a motivational concept proposed by the primatologist and

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Non-human animals are threatened by and subjected to numerous forms of

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Third, privileges tend not to be recognized or acknowledged as such by those who

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

In her analysis of privilege, Bailey (2009) cautions, If the structural features of

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Niberts historical-materialist analysis is grounded in Marxs materialist

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

Niberts theory of oppression (2002, 2012) is deeply informed by Donald Noels

For the purposes of this paper, prejudice is defined as an individual

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

A second central facet of Niberts theorizing involves the use of speciesism as a

RUNNING HEAD: Oppression of Non-Human Animals

According to William Summer, ethnocentrism is a perspective in which ones

The second element of Noels theory involves competition marked by shared