ABSTRACT
The social institutions, ideologies, and practices that lead to the oppression and dehumanization of human beings derive in part from the structures, beliefs, and practices used by human beings to control, dominate, and kill nonhuman animals. The current animal rights movement derives from the same historical and cultural context as the modern human rights movement specifically, the bourgeois democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century that legitimated and codified the belief in natural and inalienable rights. Some animal studies critics maintain the processes of capitalist exploitation and environmental destruction through the lens of animal domination. Animal studies faces a danger that it may refine the instruments of analysis and inquiry but play little role in the actual reform of society and social institutions. Solving the growing problems of global poverty and environmental destruction in the twenty-first century will thereby creating a transformative potential to minimize the suffering and expand the rights of both human and nonhuman animals.
