Political Animals and Animal Politics

Despite 20 years of environmental politics scholarship, the place of animals and the non-human realm in environmental politics has remained unclear. It has been addressed only in the margin of ‘environmental’ (=resource management) research questions, or by authors who were usually more interested in the ethical than the political status of the nonhuman. This workshop should begin to fill this void with contributions ranging from theoretical arguments about non-human nature to policy initiatives regarding animal welfare and rights. It aims at a systematic, interdisciplinary understanding of the politics of animals and their environments, by addressing a series of research questions consistently from three perspectives: normative political theory; the qualitative analysis of the discourses and ideology of policy makers, political parties and social movements; and more classic political analysis of public policy and party politics. The workshop will deal with the following, intrinsically related questions: 1. What do some of the recent normative approaches to animal/nonhuman politics add to our political approach to nature? 2. How have environmental and animal rights groups and parties framed their recent arguments for the protection of non-humans? What discourses have been most popular and appealing to movements and groups? 3. Which normative approaches and/or movement discourses have been successful, and which not, as frames for public policy initiatives? How can we analyze the policy processes that have led to successes and failures of animal politics initiatives? Contributors can address a variety of animal politics campaigns from single-state, regional, and comparative perspective.