Feminist Animal Studies: Theories, Practices, Politics

Strands of feminist thinking have made an incisive critique of the ways in which gender and other intersecting differences and inequalities are constitutive of our destructive, exploitative and often violent relationships with non-human worlds. The essays in this collection take forward contemporary debates within feminism about our relationships with other animals and with each other. They showcase cutting edge work in the field of feminist animal studies by established scholars and newer voices in the field, working in cultural studies, criminology, geography, law, philosophy, politics, and sociology. Amongst the issues addressed in this collection are questions of animal being and animal rights, caring relations, the relationships between activism and theory and activism and trauma, interspecies sexual violence, tension in the animal defence movement around body politics, gender politics and professionalisation, different spaces of gender and animal relations from social media to sexology, safe spaces and sanctuaries, spaces of home – both in times of ‘business-as-usual’ and times of lockdown. In addition, important historical legacies in theory, empirical research and activism are acknowledged. The contributors add their collective voices to the many others arguing for profound change in the ways human being manage their relationships with the myriad other creatures with whom they share this planet; change for which revisioning relationships of gender and intersected inequalities will be imperative.