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Scheingold's The Politics of Rights and The Political Novel while having different objects of study at the center of their analyses, both concern themselves with the difficulties in producing meaningful social change on a late modern political terrain. His critiques of rights-claiming are echoed in debates over the practical and philosophical difficulties incorporating animals into contemporary legal regimes. This chapter considers insights from Scheingold's two texts arguing that his insights into the legal imaginary in the latter text anticipates the critique of animal rights while his emphasis on the fictional imaginary in the former text can also be found in contemporary texts that suggest animals can help us rethink political agency.

This paper explores the relationship between social movement protest, economic sabotage, state capitalism, the “Green Scare,” and public forms of political repression. Through a quantitative analysis of direct action activism highlighting the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, the discourse surrounding mechanisms of social change and their impact on state power and capitalist accumulation will be examined. The analyses examines the earth and animal liberation movements, utilizing a Marxist-anarchist lens to illustrate how these non-state actors provide powerful critiques of capital and the state. Specifically, the discussion examines how state-sanctioned violence against these movements represents a return to Foucauldian Monarchical power. A quantitative-qualitative history will be used to argue that the movements’ actions fail to qualify as “terrorism,” and to examine the performance of power between the radical left and the state. State repression demonstrates not only the capitalist allegiances between government and industry, but also a sense of capital’s desperation hoping to counter a movement that has produced demonstrable victories by the means of bankrupting and isolating corporations. The government is taking such unconstitutional measures as a “talk back” between the revolutionary potential of these movements’ ideology as well as the challenge they present to state capitalism.

Bioethics and environmental ethics have been largely separated, in principle. However, the two types of ethics do overlap when dealing with significant issues such as human embryos, animal experimentation, and responsibility to future generations. In this paper, the possibility of synthesizing these two ethics through the concept of care is considered. Accordingly, the range of the object of the concept of care is similarly broadened. Moreover, after considering the serious defects of care-based theory, a care-based position, which regards human rights or their substitute as a complement to care, is advanced. This position can be said to be a Japanese approach to bioethics.

Identities reside not just in objective realities but also in the perceptions of actors and observers, reflecting actual group memberships as well as ideologies about their relevance and significance. Salient group identities can influence perceptions of the justice of social events and policies as well as perpetuating intergroup conflicts. This chapter reviews the relationship between psychological perspectives on identity and beliefs about justice, including new data illustrating the relevance of identity to support for animal rights. Experiences that emphasize shared identities between groups may reduce the deindividuation of outgroup members and promote the resolution of intergroup conflicts.

This study examines how highly disruptive issues cause profound dissonance in societal members that are cognitively and emotionally invested in existing institutions. The authors use PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) entrepreneurial advocacy for animal rights to show how this highly disruptive issue interrupted and violated taken-for-granted interpretations of institutions and institutional life. The authors compare 30 YouTube videos of PETA’s advocacy to explore pathways to effective sensegiving and sensemaking of highly disruptive issues. The findings augment the analytical synergy that exists between sensemaking and institutional analysis by unpacking the micro-level dynamics that may facilitate transformational institutional change.

Nineteenth-century animal protectionists endeavored to frame laws that gave animals direct legal protections, and they conducted large-scale public education campaigns to define the harm of cruelty to animals in terms of animals’ own suffering. However, animal suffering was only one of the many possible definitions of cruelty's harms, and when judges and other legal interpreters interpreted animal protection laws, they focused less on animal suffering and more on human morality and the dangers of cruelty to human society. Battling over the definition of human guilt for cruelty, protectionists and judges drew and redrew the boundaries of the law's reach and the moral community.

We develop theoretical and conceptual insights into a social movement’s strategic articulation, through an examination of the relationships among the conservative, moderate and radical organizations within a movement field before, during and after a wave of contention. Definitions for conservative, moderate and radical organizations that have been lacking in the literature are provided. Three U.S. cases are employed including the Civil Rights Movement, the Animal Rights Movement, and the AIDS Movement to illustrate/apply our concepts and test our theoretical assertions. We find a distinct conservative flank in movements which facilitates linkages to state officials. Moderates have a unique role as the bridge between the radical and conservative flanks. A lack of formal organization among radicals appears to incite state repression. The radical flank, or strong ties between the radial flank and moderates or conservatives, does not have a positive effect prior to or at the peak of a wave of contention when there is significant state repression. In the absence of state repression and after concessions or the peak of activism, moderates and conservatives benefit by distancing from the radical flank. Moderate organizations marginally institutionalize except when conservative movement organizations are absent; then full incorporation occurs.

Scholars increasingly recognize the centrality of legal ideas and language to the political vision that inspires American conservatism. However, relevant studies have been limited to the discursive practices that motivate conservative activism at the grass-root level. Exploration of the legal discourses employed by prominent public officials thus carries significant scholarly potential. For example, this chapter's investigation of President Ronald Reagan reveals that his political vision was suffused with legal discourse. Reagan's legal discourse, moreover, has exerted constitutive effects both on American conservatism and on the form and substance of a great deal of contemporary American public policy.