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Who Is To Blame For Harm To Animals? Nick Pendergrast
Acknowledgement  I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation – the traditional owners of the land from where ...
Structure, Agency and Veganism Gary Francione  Individuals create the demand for animal products.  Individuals becoming ...
Cheese Consumption in the US  Adam Ruins Everything.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYI9uUl1Ey4
Amanda Vanstone (former Howard government minister): Perhaps the Australian protesting kids could all decide to not own a ...
Climate Change and Animal Agriculture  School Strike 4 Climate @StrikeClimate  HERE ARE OUR DEMANDS:  1. No new coal, o...
Image: Renata Halpin.
Further Information/Plugs  ‘How to Help When It Hurts? Think Systemic’ by Corey Wrenn in the Animal Studies Journal (2018...
Who is to blame for harm to animals? By Nick Pendergrast
Who is to blame for harm to animals? By Nick Pendergrast
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Who is to blame for harm to animals? By Nick Pendergrast

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Recorded at the Worldly Togetherness? Showcasing sociological contributions to understanding multispecies entanglements conference, 8 August 2020. Organised by The International Association of Vegan Sociologists.

Who is to blame for harm to animals?
By Nick Pendergrast
This presentation will cover what sociological concepts have to offer the debate over who is to blame for harm to animals. The animal advocacy movement is generally focused on individuals’ contribution to animal exploitation through their purchases and focuses a lot on encouraging people to choose veganism to avoid this harm. While I absolutely support this strategy, which emphasises individual agency, I will highlight the way that the sociological concept of social structure encourages us to look beyond the individual and towards larger factors that have significant impacts, including influencing individual choices. In the case of animal exploitation, governments and animal-using industries are particularly important in this regard.
I will give practical advice on how we can incorporate an acknowledgement of the impact of governments and animal-using industries, and not just individuals, into our advocacy. I will do this by focusing on an analysis of environmental vegan advocacy, which encourages individuals to eat a plant-based diet for environmental reasons. I will discuss the way we can draw on lessons from the messaging of environmental movements in incorporating more structural demands around a plant-based food system into our environmental vegan advocacy, in addition to advocacy that is more focused on individual change.

Bio:
Nick Pendergrast has a PhD in Sociology and his thesis applied sociological theories on social movements and organisations to the animal advocacy movement in Australia and the United States. He taught Sociology and Anthropology at Curtin University from 2008 to 2015 and currently teaches Sociology at the University of Melbourne. He has published widely on Critical Animal Studies, human/non-human relations, the media, social movements and social change.

Published in: Environment
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Who is to blame for harm to animals? By Nick Pendergrast

  1. 1. Who Is To Blame For Harm To Animals? Nick Pendergrast
  2. 2. Acknowledgement  I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation – the traditional owners of the land from where I am speaking. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be here today.  Todd (2016, p. 16):  Lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous perspectives in ‘the Ontological Turn–with its breathless ‘realisations’ that animals…are sentient and possess agency, that ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, ‘human’ and ‘animal’ may not be so separate after all’. Todd, Zoe. 2016. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ is Just Another Word for Colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology 29:1, 4-22.
  3. 3. Structure, Agency and Veganism Gary Francione  Individuals create the demand for animal products.  Individuals becoming vegan = reduce the demand. Anthony Nocella  Corporations create the demand for animal products.  ‘Socially engineered demand’ (Nibert).  Capitalism produces inequalities = socio- economic barriers to veganism. Humans shape and are simultaneously shaped by society. Free choice Forced
  4. 4. Cheese Consumption in the US  Adam Ruins Everything.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYI9uUl1Ey4
  5. 5. Amanda Vanstone (former Howard government minister): Perhaps the Australian protesting kids could all decide to not own a car and to use public transport instead. At home they could not use air conditioning: my generation grew up without it.
  6. 6. Climate Change and Animal Agriculture  School Strike 4 Climate @StrikeClimate  HERE ARE OUR DEMANDS:  1. No new coal, oil and gas projects, including the Adani mine.  2. 100% renewable energy generation, and exports by 2030.  3. Fund a just transition & job creation for all fossil-fuel workers and communities.
  7. 7. Image: Renata Halpin.
  8. 8. Further Information/Plugs  ‘How to Help When It Hurts? Think Systemic’ by Corey Wrenn in the Animal Studies Journal (2018).  All of my publications are available on my theconversation.com profile.  Twitter @NickPende  3cr.org.au/freedomofspecies

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