Just Fanciers: Transformative Justice by Way of Fancy Rat Breeding as a Loving Form of Life

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 32 (1):105-126 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A growing trend within feminist animal studies is to eschew the abolitionism/welfarism binary in favor of attending carefully to the politics of existing interspecies relationships in context. This literature maintains that domestication produces special interspecies relationships which generate ongoing responsibilities for human companions and communities. With the goal of clarifying how tending to these ongoing responsibilities to domesticated animals can qualify as enduring forms of interspecies justice, this paper unpacks the politics of these special relationships and obligations in context, specifically, that of fancy rat breeders’ attempts to eliminate aganglionic megacolon. Contrasting fanciers’ efforts with those of laboratory breeders and researchers, I argue that what sets the fancy apart is its shared code of ethics and the loving, principled form of life from which it emerges. Furthermore, the knowledge that rats are worth loving not only enables fanciers to attend to the injustice of megacolon but facilitates transformative justice for domestic rats more broadly.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 100,154

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Welcoming, Wild Animals, and Obligations to Assist.Josh Milburn - 2021 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 34 (6):1-20.
Special Issue on Animals and their Welfare.Johan Tavernier & Stefan Aerts - 2006 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 19 (1):3-5.
Interspecies politics: the nature of states.Rafi Youatt - 2020 - Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Farm animal diseases in context.Ben Mepham - 2004 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 17 (4-5):331-340.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-04-01

Downloads
42 (#524,997)

6 months
7 (#673,909)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Julia Gibson
Michigan State University (PhD)

Citations of this work

The Indispensability of Holistic Species Experts for Ethical Animal Research.Julia D. Gibson - 2021 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 34 (6):1-18.

Add more citations