Interview with Dr Trent Grassian

Richard White - Space and Place

Dr. Richard White is a critical geographer at Sheffield Hallam University. Richard is greatly influenced by anarchist praxis and his main research agenda explores a range of ethical and economic landscapes rooted in the intersectional contexts of social justice and total liberation movements. Richard has published heavily in the area of Critical Animal Studies and is the editor of The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt  (2016) and a contributor to Critical Animal Geographies  (2017).

In this episode (Richard’s first ever podcast interview!), we chat about the history of Critical Animal Studies, the role of capitalism in animal oppression, and the radical politics of food production. Richard explains how critical geography, with its focus on space and place, informs vegan sociology. Read more about Richard’s work on Academia.edu.

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Environmental Justice - David Pellow

Professor David N. Pellow is the Dehlsen and Department Chair of Environmental Studies and Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he teaches courses on environmental and social justice, race/class/gender and environmental conflict, human-animal conflicts, sustainability, and social change movements that confront our socioenvironmental crises and social inequality. He has volunteered for and served on the Boards of Directors of several community-based, national, and international organizations that are dedicated to improving the living and working environments for people of color, immigrants, indigenous peoples, and working class communities, including the Global Action Research Center, the Center for Urban Transformation, the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health, Global Response, Greenpeace USA, and International Rivers.

Because the environmental justice movement is so focused on public health, nonhuman animal life has been treated as a secondary concern. In this episode, we discuss how the discourse on environmental justice might be expanded to include nonhuman communities. “This is something that has got to change, and this is something that is starting to change,” David emphasizes.

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Amy Fitzgerald - Interpersonal Violence

Amy Fitzgerald, PhD is a Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, and also holds a hybrid appointment with the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, at the University of Windsor. Her research focuses on the intersection of harms (criminal and otherwise) perpetrated against people, non-human animals, and the environment, and she is a founding member of the University of Windsor’s Animal and Interpersonal Abuse Research Group. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and books, and is currently working on three grant-funded projects, one of which is a five-year SSHRC funded study titled “The intersection of violence against women and animals in Canadian homes: Developing much-needed research-informed programs and policies.” Fitzgerald is the recipient of a Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Animals and Society section of the American Sociological Association for an article co-authored with Linda Kalof and Tom Dietz, the Mid-Career Outstanding Faculty Research Award from the University of Windsor, and was most recently a visiting research fellow in the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard University.

For Amy, vegan sociology is “a sensitizing tool or a perspective [that is] helpful to better make sense of very complex human issues.” “It sensitizes me to pay attention to forms of intersecting harms that I think would otherwise wouldn’t receive attention.”

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Bonnie Berry - Social Problems

Bonnie Berry, PhD, is Director of the Social Problems Research Group and formerly university faculty. Her areas of research interests include appearance bias, animal rights, academic misconduct and ethical violations, and all measure of social inequality. She is the author of Social Rage: Emotion and Cultural Conflict; Beauty Bias: Discrimination and Social Power; The Power of Looks: Social Stratification of Physical Appearance; (co-author) Scholarly Crimes and Misdemeanors: Violations of Fairness and Trust in the Academic World; Appearance Bias and Crime; and numerous research articles on a range of social problems topics. She serves as editor of the Solving Social Problems series for Taylor and Francis/Routledge. She is the recipient of the Inconvenient Woman of the Year Award (Division of Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology), the Mentor of Mentors Award, and the Herbert Bloch Award (the latter two from the American Society of Criminology). To Bonnie, vegan sociology is “the purest form” or “the most evolved form” of critical sociology.

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John Sorenson - Globalization

John Sorenson, professor of sociology in Canada’s Brock University, is one of the founding sociologists in the field of Critical Animal Studies. In this episode, John comments on the globalized nature of speciesism and how global speciesism intersects with environmental, racial, and colonial violence. We also discuss his expansive teaching and research career; John has been teaching Critical Animal Studies since the 1990s. He is the author of numerous books, including Constructing Ecoterrorism: Capitalism, Speciesism & Animal Rights, Critical Animal Studies (ed.), and About Canada: Animal Rights. To John, vegan sociology is “trying to do our intellectual work in a way that is beneficial to animals” as an application of “cause no harm” that is in “service to our fellow beings.”

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