ABSTRACT
In Chapter 26 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Freeman introduces the term ‘human animal earthling’ to name a new ethical subject around which activists can reframe values in human rights, animal rights, and environmental campaigns. Combatting humanity’s dominant modes of unprecedented mass exploitation of life that threatens all living beings requires the unified efforts of all social movements (on behalf of human and nonhuman species). Movements can work in solidarity to emphasize messages that foster a cultural shift in human identity away from an egoistic anthropocentrism and toward a humbler universal benevolence where people begin to perceive their ecocultural identities as ‘human animal earthlings.’ To formulate the basis for this shift, Freeman examines common values represented in global rights declarations on behalf of human rights, animal rights, and environmentalism, and uses these findings to identify overlapping self-transcendent core values (related to respect, fairness, life, caring, and coexistence) around which social movements can cultivate respectful relations among ‘human animal earthlings,’ fellow sentient beings, and the planet. Based on this study, Freeman shares terminology and ideas for reframing values in biocentric and ecocentric ways that may encourage consideration of the more-than-human world as within the human ingroup and sphere of moral concern.
