Abstract
As the chapters is this section illustrate, we have to rethink our old categories of wild and domesticated animals. New relationships of mutual impact and hybrid management have been made necessary by relentless human expansion, anthropogenic climate change, and other ecological impacts. The animals involved in these new relations do not fit into the old dichotomy of independent wild animals untouched by humans on the one hand, or dependent domesticated animals under control of humans on the other hand. We need new ideas to help us understand the distinctive ethical challenges of these new relationships, with their mix of freedom and restriction, of independence and dependence, of self-willed agency and external control. The chapter authors of this section draw upon key concepts of animal ethics —care , flourishing, interests, intrinsic and instrumental value, capabilities, welfare, friendship—to negotiate human-animal entanglements. While broadly agreeing with their insights, we argue that their ethical approaches need to be integrated into a broader theory of interspecies justice which explicitly addresses issues of authority, responsibility and self-determination. The fact that humans inevitably affect and interact with ever more animals does not alter the fact that animals’ lives are still theirs to lead, and that human management and intervention is legitimate only insofar as it respects animals as intentional agents. Our theorizing should begin by asking what kinds of lives animals want to live, what kinds of relationships, if any, they want to have with us, and whether our interactions with them bolster or inhibit their ability to lead such lives. We illustrate what such animal agency may mean using the case of the feral horses of Assateague Island.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
We develop our fuller account in Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011).
- 2.
That the term ‘self-willedness’ as used in environmental ethics is often at odds with animal agency is further illustrated by the fact that self-willedness is often applied indiscriminately to animals, plants and ecosystems, collapsing the idea of agency as subjectively experienced by intentional beings with the idea of ‘actant’ in actor network theory. To equate animals and plants in terms of their ‘self-willing’ is precisely to erase animals’ capacity for intentional agency.
- 3.
We discuss liminal animals in Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011): Chap. 7. Swart uses the term “semi-wild” animals. Palmer refers to animals in the “contact zone”.
- 4.
We discuss such a process in Kymlicka and Donaldson (2014).
- 5.
For other examples, see Shelton (2004).
- 6.
As Brandon Keim (2014) notes, the Chernobyl disaster provides an important lesson about the difference between human effects on animals and human domination of animals. A 30 K exclusion zone around the nuclear plant has been in place for 30 years now. Countless individual animals in the region suffered terribly from the original radiation release, but as radiation levels have dropped, wildlife populations and diversity have not just rebounded but now significantly exceed surrounding regions. As one researcher notes: “It’s very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are much higher than they were before the accident. This doesn’t mean radiation is good for wildlife, just that the effects of human habitation, including hunting, farming, and forestry, are a lot worse” (Jim Smith, University of Portsmouth, quoted in https://news.vice.com/article/chernobyls-exclusion-zone-is-now-a-thriving-wildlife-habitat). Even a devastating human spillover effect on an ecosystem, like radiation poisoning, pales in comparison to the constraining/controlling impact of human presence, numbers and direct destruction of animals and their habitats.
- 7.
- 8.
We realize that it is reductive to talk about animals’ agency in these general terms, given the millions of different species and their unique situations. For some animals, the realm of meaningfully self-determined action may be minimal or non-existent. For others, it will be capacious. Whatever the case, the burden lies on humans who would manage animals’ lives and animals’ territories to demonstrate that they have looked for and been responsive to animal agency, and not simply to ignore or dismiss it. We should also note, contra Swart (13), that recognizing the importance of animals’ agency, autonomy, or self-determination does not presuppose the idea of self-sufficiency. For all of us, autonomy is a relational construct involving various kinds of inter-dependencies.
- 9.
Work in deep ecology shares a similar view that humans must learn to see ourselves as visitors in wild animal habitat, without rights of colonization, but tends to defend this view in terms of the inherent value of nature, rather than the sovereignty rights of wild animals (eg., Wuerthner et al. 2014). This disagreement about underlying justification need not and should not preclude cooperation between animal right advocates and deep ecologists, but as we noted earlier, the value of nature must be pursued within the constraints of justice. Otherwise, the inevitable result is the instrumentalization of animals in pursuit of a human vision of nature, as in the OVP rewilding projects.
- 10.
For a similar argument, see Panagiotarakou (2014).
- 11.
We should note that the following discussion is based on an analysis of the policy statements of the agencies which manage the feral horses, not on first-hand knowledge. Information in this section is largely derived from the National Park Service website and reports: http://www.nps.gov/asis/learn/nature/horses.htm;
http://www.fws.gov/uploadedFiles/Appendix%20D_CHN%20Draft%20CCPEIS.pdf
- 12.
We are grateful to pattrice jones for alerting us to this case, and some of its implications, although she bears no responsibility for our interpretation of it.
- 13.
The swim can be very stressful for the horses, especially young foals, and lactating mares who sometimes have to be treated for hypocalcemia. Horses also suffer cuts from oyster and clam shells. See https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/Pages/081101f.aspx.
- 14.
The contraceptive darting is probably stressful for the mares, and sometimes can cause temporary inflammation, but does not cause serious injury. We find it curious that the papers in this section make frequent reference to culling as a means of population control, but do not discuss contraception.
- 15.
The other vet intervention in the North is that Assateague horses are sometimes euthanized if they are suffering a painful decline/death.
- 16.
We don’t wish to idealize the situation of the northern herd. They are more self-determining relative to the Chincoteague ponies, but this doesn’t mean that human interactions are based on this value, or consistently achieve it.
- 17.
We develop this notion of agency, and the micro/macro distinction, in Donaldson and Kymlicka (2016).
- 18.
Palmer and Bovenkerk discuss these preference-satisfaction and functionalist conceptions of wellbeing, none of which adequately capture the importance of macro agency.
- 19.
See Streiffer (2014) for a helpful discussion.
- 20.
Our position is not that there aren’t values in wildness and biodiversity that we should attend to. But justice must set the parameters for our pursuit and realization of them.
References
Crist, E. 2013. On the poverty of our nomenclature. Environmental Humanities 3: 129–147.
Donaldson, S., and W. Kymlicka. 2011. Zoopolis: A political theory of animal rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Donaldson, S. and W. Kymlicka 2016. ‘Rethinking membership and participation in an inclusive democracy: Cognitive disability, children, animals. In Disability and political theory, ed. B. Arneil and N. Hirschmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).
Keim, B. 2014. ‘Earth is not a garden,’ AEON, September 18, 2014. https://aeon.co/essays/giving-up-on-wilderness-means-a-barren-future-for-the-earth.
Kymlicka, W., and S. Donaldson. 2014. Animals and the frontiers of citizenship. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 34(2): 200–219.
Lestel, D. 2011. What capabilities for the animal? Biosemiotics 4: 83–102.
Monbiot, G. 2013. Feral: Rewilding the land, the sea and human life. Toronto: Penguin.
Panagiotarakou, E. 2014. Right to place: A political theory of animal rights in harmony with environmental and ecological principles. Ethics Forum 9(3): 114–139.
Shelton, J-A. (2004). ‘Killing animals that don’t fit; Moral dimensions of habitat restoration,’ Between the species, issue 4 (http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/).
Streiffer, R. 2014. The confinement of animals used in laboratory research: Conceptual and ethical issues. In The ethics of captivity, ed. L. Gruen, 174–192. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wuerthner, G., E. Crist, and T. Butler. 2014. Keeping the wild: Against the domestication of earth. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Donaldson, S., Kymlicka, W. (2016). Comment: Between Wild and Domesticated: Rethinking Categories and Boundaries in Response to Animal Agency. In: Bovenkerk, B., Keulartz, J. (eds) Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44206-8_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44206-8_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44205-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44206-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)