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Date of Publication: February 23
Year of Publication: 2023
Publication City: Cambridge, MA
Publisher: Tellus Institute
Author(s): Eileen Crist
Violence and Love
The animal economy, wherein animals routinely suffer truncated and brutalized lives, weaves massively through the global economy. Billions of animals are utilized each year, with virtually no compunction, in industries of food, feed, supplements, clothing, furnishings, textiles, footwear, accessories, luxury products, entertainment, traditional medicine, and pharmaceuticals.
The normalization of mass killing, exploitation, and displacement of animals exhibits the ingrained assumption that animals are legitimately subject to absolute human power and that humanity is entitled to repurpose natural habitats without consideration of their being animal homes. Indeed, the animal economy is pervaded by structural violence, meaning institutionalized and established forms of violence are disavowed as being violent or kept hidden from view. In our time, violence against animals is opposed by increasing numbers of people from all walks of life. Yet the balance of power continues to favor a Conventional Worlds scenario within which the domination of nature is regarded as human prerogative—whether God-given, biologically endowed, or just taken for granted.
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