ABSTRACT

This unique book brings together research and theorizing on human-animal relations, animal advocacy, and the factors underlying exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards animals.

Why do we both love and exploit animals? Assembling some of the world’s leading academics and with insights and experiences gleaned from those on the front lines of animal advocacy, this pioneering collection breaks new ground, synthesizing scientific perspectives and empirical findings. The authors show the complexities and paradoxes in human-animal relations and reveal the factors shaping compassionate versus exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards animals. Exploring topical issues such as meat consumption, intensive farming, speciesism, and effective animal advocacy, this book demonstrates how we both value and devalue animals, how we can address animal suffering, and how our thinking about animals is connected to our thinking about human intergroup relations and the dehumanization of human groups.

This is essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals in the social and behavioral sciences interested in human-animal relations, and will also strongly appeal to members of animal rights organizations, animal rights advocates, policy makers, and charity workers.

chapter 1|8 pages

Loving and Exploiting Animals

An introduction

chapter 2|20 pages

The Animal In Me

Understanding what brings us closer and pushes us away from other animals

chapter 4|17 pages

Putting the “Free” Back in Freedom

The failure and future of animal welfare science

chapter 6|14 pages

Kittens, Pigs, Rats, and Apes

The psychology of animal metaphors

chapter 7|17 pages

Uncanny Valley of the Apes

chapter 9|17 pages

Featherless Chickens and Puppies That Glow In the Dark

Moral heuristics and the concept of animal “naturalness”

chapter 11|17 pages

The Meat Paradox

chapter 12|21 pages

How We Love and Hurt Animals

Considering cognitive dissonance in young meat eaters

chapter 13|20 pages

Humane Hypocrisies

Making killing acceptable

chapter 14|16 pages

The End of Factory Farming

Changing hearts, minds, and the system

chapter 15|15 pages

Steakholders

How pragmatic strategies can make the animal protection movement more effective

chapter 16|24 pages

Animals as Social Groups

An intergroup relations analysis of human-animal conflicts

chapter 17|19 pages

The Moral March to Meatless Meals

The scripted Hebrew meat prohibitions versus the unscripted path to becoming vegetarian or vegan

chapter 19|22 pages

So Why Do We Love But Exploit Animals?

Reflections and solutions