Karen Morgan/ Matthew Cole
Justifying exploitation: How and why society separates humans from other animals
Human exploitation and violence against other animals is commonplace in modern Western societies, for instance in farming and slaughtering, or in animal testing. Most people, however, do not want to think about the connection between their everyday choices about what to eat or wear and the pain and suffering that these choices depend on. Society has therefore developed many ways to help us to break that connection:
• Exploitation and violence are usually hidden from public view, which makes it easier to deny responsibility for suffering, and reduces uncomfortable feelings of guilt and shame.
• Other animals are argued to be morally inferior to humans, which excuses their treatment as objects or things.
But, the extent to which other animals are treated as things depends on the different uses we make of them. For instance, animal companions who we live closely with (‘pets’), are spared the worst excesses of exploitation, pain and suffering experienced by factory farmed animals, or those used for experimentation. In this talk, we discuss some of the techniques used to reinforce these separations between humans and other animals and consider how we can begin to challenge these divisions and work towards ending our exploitive and violent relationships with other animals.