Speciesism, Power and Human Prejudice

Description

IMPORTANT ROOM UPDATE: Room G.33 or G.7 (please check with panel organiser), Humanities Bridgeford Street Building

Speciesism has become a central concept in moral, social and political scholarship and movements concerning animals. Broadly understood, speciesism refers to discrimination based on species-membership and is often compared to racism and sexism. Nonetheless, unlike racism and sexism, speciesism is still generally regarded as an acceptable bias by the public and, also amongst philosophers, opinions diverge. Nowadays, most philosophers reject forms of speciesism which rely merely on membership in the human species. However, anthropocentric approaches which are justified in more indirect terms are widespread. Indeed, these have received renewed defences recently – including accounts which rely on rationality or social categories, among others. 

This raises pressing metaphysical, normative and epistemic concerns about what it means to be a human, whether anthropocentric approaches to moral and political theory can be successfully defended, and a wider question about why philosophers might be compelled to defend them at all. At the same time, there are a variety of related concerns that are more overtly political in character, which theorists of race and gender attend to, but which are under-addressed in the literature on animals. These include issues regarding systems of power, structural injustice, social hierarchy, domination and oppression. This panel is therefore broadly concerned with the following question: if speciesism is similar to racism and sexism, what lies behind the former’s largely unchecked dominance in our thinking, conduct and social structures? And how might we better understand its continued socio-political power, within and beyond analytic political and moral philosophy? 

Wednesday 2 September

11:30–13:00
Registration

12:30–14:00
Lunch

14:00–16:00
Session 1

David Holroyd — Political Realism as Methodological Speciesism

Marla Hasin — Speciesism and the Predation Puzzle

16:00–16:30
Tea and Coffee Break (optional)

16:30–17:30
Session 1 (continued)

Hannah Battersby — Interspecies Justice and Ableism

17:45–19:00
Wine Reception

19:30
Conference Dinner

10:30–11:30
Session 2

Piia Vinnari — Speciesism versus Racism: Does the Analogy Hold?

11:30–12:00
Tea and Coffee Break (optional)

12:00–13:00
Session 2 (continued)

Yujiro Yamamoto — Anti-Speciesist Epistocracy for the Political Inclusion of Animals

13:00–14:00
Lunch

14:00–16:00
Session 3

Christian Golden — Loyalty to Humankind

Maya von Ziegesar — What’s in a Dreaded Comparison?

16:00–16:30
Tea and Coffee Break (optional)

10:30–11:30
Session 4

Valéry Giroux — Animals at the Intersection of Speciesism and Cognitive Ableism

11:30–12:00
Tea and Coffee Break (optional)

12:00–13:00
Session 4 (continued)

Valérie Topf (Online) — TBC

13:00–14:00
Lunch

14:00–16:00
Session 5

Dominick Cooper — Species Beings: Reconciling Marxism and Speciesism

Matthew Wray Perry — Dignity Without Speciesism

15:00
End of Conference