Livestock: Food, Fiber, and Friends

This book is one of the few to take up animal ethics drawing on resource in the tradition of American philosophy. Building on the work done by the author on pets, this book extends her pragmatist ecofeminist perspective to the lives and deaths of those animal beings commonly considered to be livestock. In this case, the author focuses on the work of John Dewey and Val Plumwood to develop a stance that critically engages with actual practitioners (farmers) and with other environmental/animal philosophies such as deep ecology, the land ethic, and ontological veganism. She draws on the work of Mark Johnson, Gregory Pappas, and Steve Fesmire in developing her account of a Deweyan animal ethic. In addition to Dewey, the author takes up the work of Jane Addams, William James, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This book should make it possible for those already working in environmental and animal issues to see how the American tradition might be a valuable resource. It should also challenge those already working within the American tradition to re-examine the perception many of have of figures in this tradition as being rooted in human exceptionalism and technological “fixes” that often given rise the very environmental problems we face today. This book should help make space for American philosophy to enter contemporary environmental and animal debates in which they are currently largely ignored or dismissed as problematic.