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Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation
This accessible and cutting-edge work offers a new look at the history of western "civilization," one that brings into focus the interrelated suffering of oppressed humans and other animals. Nibert argues persuasively that throughout history the exploitation of other animals has gone hand in hand with the oppression of women, people of color, and other oppressed groups. He maintains that the oppression both of humans and of other species of animals is inextricably tangled within the structure of social arrangements. Nibert asserts that human use and mistreatment of other animals are not natural and do little to further the human condition.
Nibert's analysis emphasizes the economic and elite-driven character of prejudice, discrimination, and institutionalized repression of humans and other animals. His examination of the economic entanglements of the oppression of human and other animals is supplemented with an analysis of ideological forces and the use of state power in this sociological expose of the grotesque uses of the oppressed, past and present. Nibert suggests that the liberation of devalued groups of humans is unlikely in a world that uses other animals as fodder for the continual growth and expansion of transnational corporations and, conversely, that animal liberation cannot take place when humans continue to be exploited and oppressed.
Nibert's analysis emphasizes the economic and elite-driven character of prejudice, discrimination, and institutionalized repression of humans and other animals. His examination of the economic entanglements of the oppression of human and other animals is supplemented with an analysis of ideological forces and the use of state power in this sociological expose of the grotesque uses of the oppressed, past and present. Nibert suggests that the liberation of devalued groups of humans is unlikely in a world that uses other animals as fodder for the continual growth and expansion of transnational corporations and, conversely, that animal liberation cannot take place when humans continue to be exploited and oppressed.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 20, 2010
This is easily one of my favorite books as it was completely life altering for me. It's a tad too personal to discuss here, but I highly recommend this book. The author was also my professor three times and every course I took was enlightening. It's a quick, one sitting, read so there is no excuse to miss out on it!
January 16, 2013
This book was extremely educational and eye-opening, and it made quite an impact on me. I have taken three university courses from David Nibert, and found him to be a very intelligent and passionate person. His passion for human and animal rights is very clear in this book, in which he discusses the ways that the oppression of humans and animals are intertwined. The book is full of fascinating and shocking information, and is a quick and very informative read.
February 8, 2015
This is truly one of the most comprehensive books on history and compassionate morality that I have ever read. Nibert ties the oppression of humans throughout history to the oppression of animals in a way that touches any heart that is not dead deeply. Meticulously researched and extremely well-written. It is a book that I think all of us who are hurt and angered by the smallest oppression of the weak feel that we have waited all of our lives to read.
Below are just some notes and reflections I made as I read the book--not written as part of a whole essay/review, but perhaps indicative of the richness of the book to some small extent.
The development of "scientific" (read: "corporate friendly") farm practices and the growth of giant agribusinesses these practices facilitated reduced the number of farms in the United States from 7 million in 1930 to 1.9 million in 1994. Of the 1.9 million farms remaining by 1994, only 6 percent--125,000--produced the bulk of U.S. food. Seen another way, "in 1900, 50 percent of all Americans lived and worked on a farm. A century later, it's less than 1 percent. The enormous reduction in the number of farms in the United States, caused by the Green Revolution and the inherent necessity of large, for-profit capitalist firms to expand....forced millions of families from their farms into the ranks of the un- and underemployed and devastated countless individuals with businesses in farm towns. Many rural communities were impoverished by the loss of population and economic infrastructure. As one observer put it, "The result is a WalMart-ization of farms....[S]mall farms consolidate into bigger ones, or are bought out or leased by large agribusiness corporations, whose economies of scale put a further squeeze on small family farms."
David Nibert Animal Rights Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (pg. 105)
"Among countless examples of state acceptance of corporate crime exist, just one...will be mentioned here. In June 2001, the Sara Lee corporation, 'one of the nation's largest makers of hot dogs and supermarket deli meats,' pleased guilty to producing and selling contaminated 'meat.' While at least fifteen human deaths, six miscarriages, and scores of illnesses were linked to the tainted 'meat,' produced in dirty, unsanitary facilities, federal prosecutors brought only a misdemeanor charge against the corporation.
Meanwhile, many humans who struggle financially and who commit desperate, frequently petty, economic offenses are 'criminals' confined to jails and prisons. And those who use nonviolent methods to expose violence against other animals or who rescue animals from laboratories or 'production' facilities are labeled as dangerous 'terrorists.'" (Nibert 172)
"[H]umans violated animals by making them their slaves. In taking them in and feeding them, humans first made friends with animals then killed them. To do so, they had to kill something in themselves. When they began manipulating the reproduction of animals, they were even more personally involved in practices which led to cruelty, guilt, and subsequent numbness. The keeping of animals would seem to have set a model for the enslavement of humans, in particular the large scale exploitation of women captives for breeding and labor, which is a salient feature of the developing civilizations." Elizabeth Fisher (quoted in Nibert 198-199)
We need to avoid captivity, though, if we must involuntarily endure "mind forg'd manacles", let us not linger long in the dark dungeons of conformity, but emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. Emerson rightly said, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist", but the media and corporations want to permanently force us into bondage by reducing us to mindless conforming consumers.
When I read quotes like the following from Robert McChesney, I have to thank my mother for not raising me with a television in the house as a child. Perhaps that is why I have always thought differently about submission to power and authority, and why I have always thought independently.
"By age seven, the average American child is watching fourteen hundred hours and twenty thousand TV commercials per year, and by age twelve his or her preferences are stored in massive data banks maintained by marketers of consumer goods. In the 1990s commercial television for children may well have been the most rapidly growing and lucrative sector of the U.S. industry, with 1998 ad revenues pegged at approximately $1 billion. Each of the four largest U.S. media giants has a full-time children's cable TV channel to capture the thirty-nine million viewers aged two to eleven." (quoted in Nibert, 210)
My maternal grandmother, a true rational thinker, teacher, graduate of Cornell, and "citizen of the world", always referred to the television as "the idiot box." Do you feel that wisdom?
Below are just some notes and reflections I made as I read the book--not written as part of a whole essay/review, but perhaps indicative of the richness of the book to some small extent.
The development of "scientific" (read: "corporate friendly") farm practices and the growth of giant agribusinesses these practices facilitated reduced the number of farms in the United States from 7 million in 1930 to 1.9 million in 1994. Of the 1.9 million farms remaining by 1994, only 6 percent--125,000--produced the bulk of U.S. food. Seen another way, "in 1900, 50 percent of all Americans lived and worked on a farm. A century later, it's less than 1 percent. The enormous reduction in the number of farms in the United States, caused by the Green Revolution and the inherent necessity of large, for-profit capitalist firms to expand....forced millions of families from their farms into the ranks of the un- and underemployed and devastated countless individuals with businesses in farm towns. Many rural communities were impoverished by the loss of population and economic infrastructure. As one observer put it, "The result is a WalMart-ization of farms....[S]mall farms consolidate into bigger ones, or are bought out or leased by large agribusiness corporations, whose economies of scale put a further squeeze on small family farms."
David Nibert Animal Rights Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (pg. 105)
"Among countless examples of state acceptance of corporate crime exist, just one...will be mentioned here. In June 2001, the Sara Lee corporation, 'one of the nation's largest makers of hot dogs and supermarket deli meats,' pleased guilty to producing and selling contaminated 'meat.' While at least fifteen human deaths, six miscarriages, and scores of illnesses were linked to the tainted 'meat,' produced in dirty, unsanitary facilities, federal prosecutors brought only a misdemeanor charge against the corporation.
Meanwhile, many humans who struggle financially and who commit desperate, frequently petty, economic offenses are 'criminals' confined to jails and prisons. And those who use nonviolent methods to expose violence against other animals or who rescue animals from laboratories or 'production' facilities are labeled as dangerous 'terrorists.'" (Nibert 172)
"[H]umans violated animals by making them their slaves. In taking them in and feeding them, humans first made friends with animals then killed them. To do so, they had to kill something in themselves. When they began manipulating the reproduction of animals, they were even more personally involved in practices which led to cruelty, guilt, and subsequent numbness. The keeping of animals would seem to have set a model for the enslavement of humans, in particular the large scale exploitation of women captives for breeding and labor, which is a salient feature of the developing civilizations." Elizabeth Fisher (quoted in Nibert 198-199)
We need to avoid captivity, though, if we must involuntarily endure "mind forg'd manacles", let us not linger long in the dark dungeons of conformity, but emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. Emerson rightly said, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist", but the media and corporations want to permanently force us into bondage by reducing us to mindless conforming consumers.
When I read quotes like the following from Robert McChesney, I have to thank my mother for not raising me with a television in the house as a child. Perhaps that is why I have always thought differently about submission to power and authority, and why I have always thought independently.
"By age seven, the average American child is watching fourteen hundred hours and twenty thousand TV commercials per year, and by age twelve his or her preferences are stored in massive data banks maintained by marketers of consumer goods. In the 1990s commercial television for children may well have been the most rapidly growing and lucrative sector of the U.S. industry, with 1998 ad revenues pegged at approximately $1 billion. Each of the four largest U.S. media giants has a full-time children's cable TV channel to capture the thirty-nine million viewers aged two to eleven." (quoted in Nibert, 210)
My maternal grandmother, a true rational thinker, teacher, graduate of Cornell, and "citizen of the world", always referred to the television as "the idiot box." Do you feel that wisdom?
June 30, 2019
One of the best, if not the best book on animal rights I've ever read. Such an important read for anyone interested in justice, Nibert shows that the mechanisms for oppression are the same among groups whether those groups be defined by race, sex, or species.
November 11, 2014
Sometimes it would be helpful for book blurbs to be more upfront about the politics inside. It isn't that I disagree with the the politics Nibert presents (or, rather, the solutions to the current problems our society faces in treating both other animals and humans); it is that I was hoping for a more unique look at the "entanglements of oppression." Although some things Nibert writes I was unfamiliar with (aka: the way specific corporations like Sears got a slap on the wrist for harming customers' finances), much of it is repetitious to me. I hate to say it, but after a while one begins to take for granted the horrors that face so many other animals: the phrase "cruelly treated" is one that now annoys me for its overuse. You don't need to write "cruel" about any practice that nonhumans are subjected to: castration, gestation crates, implanting electrodes into the brains, raising animals for research in sterile environments, etc ARE cruel. They don't need that descriptor. In any case, I have heard/read/seen these things all before.
Nibert offers a little that's new to me, and though it's nice to not read something that considers the audience stupid, Nibert still takes til the last chapter to rather summarize and deliberately link behaviors of oppression toward non-humans and humans. I would have preferred to see something so explicitly drawn/linked earlier on.
This is also a scholarly book; not as densely academic as some, but surely not as user-friendly as others. This is a problem. People who fight for the rights of others may soon get bored and stop reading, because the style just is not compelling enough to keep me going. (It has taken me about three years to get through this because I just kept finding more interesting things to read at the same time.) It's possible Nibert's audience is basically academic, but this is a problem I've noticed in much animal rights writing: the intended audience is very limited compared to the scope of the problem. We need to reach non-academics with these ideas.
What I liked about this book: thank god for people who get intersectionality! Nibert addresses most of it: patriarchy, racism, homophobia, sexism and people with disabilities. There are some very gut-wrenching scenes regarding the exploitation of others, particularly of non-humans, that make even hardened folk like me stop and go "No effing way," even though of course it's true (what humans do to other animals is atrocious).
By and large, though, this book is an argument for a more-socialist society as the best way to end exploitation of all "others."
Academia has its place, I'm sure, but for an issue as critical as animal rights, I do think we need more writer-writers, like Safran Foer, making the case, because they may be able to hit the emotions in ways that academics just can't.
Nibert offers a little that's new to me, and though it's nice to not read something that considers the audience stupid, Nibert still takes til the last chapter to rather summarize and deliberately link behaviors of oppression toward non-humans and humans. I would have preferred to see something so explicitly drawn/linked earlier on.
This is also a scholarly book; not as densely academic as some, but surely not as user-friendly as others. This is a problem. People who fight for the rights of others may soon get bored and stop reading, because the style just is not compelling enough to keep me going. (It has taken me about three years to get through this because I just kept finding more interesting things to read at the same time.) It's possible Nibert's audience is basically academic, but this is a problem I've noticed in much animal rights writing: the intended audience is very limited compared to the scope of the problem. We need to reach non-academics with these ideas.
What I liked about this book: thank god for people who get intersectionality! Nibert addresses most of it: patriarchy, racism, homophobia, sexism and people with disabilities. There are some very gut-wrenching scenes regarding the exploitation of others, particularly of non-humans, that make even hardened folk like me stop and go "No effing way," even though of course it's true (what humans do to other animals is atrocious).
By and large, though, this book is an argument for a more-socialist society as the best way to end exploitation of all "others."
Academia has its place, I'm sure, but for an issue as critical as animal rights, I do think we need more writer-writers, like Safran Foer, making the case, because they may be able to hit the emotions in ways that academics just can't.
December 27, 2015
This book offers a new way of thinking about human-constructed culture, and has completely changed how I think about history, government, businesses, democracy, and capitalism, as well as of course human and other animals' rights. I will have to rethink what I thought I knew about many historic and recent events - I'm shocked by how I was previously misled. And I see current events through a new lens.
Parts of it are very discouraging, particularly chapter 2, which is an unrelenting and unblinking survey of 10,000 years of abuses of power. It's necessary to read it, however, to understand the points he's making later in the book.
Anyone interested in human rights should read this book, as well as anyone looking to make AR/HR connections.
Parts of it are very discouraging, particularly chapter 2, which is an unrelenting and unblinking survey of 10,000 years of abuses of power. It's necessary to read it, however, to understand the points he's making later in the book.
Anyone interested in human rights should read this book, as well as anyone looking to make AR/HR connections.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews