Sociology and Animals

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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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, 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, 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, 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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This episode explores the many theoretical contributions and possibilities of political sociology and philosophy. Dinesh introduces some of the ways that Marx and Foucault can be applied to Critical Animal Studies and highlights some intriguing theoretical advancements in capitalist theory.

Dinesh is a senior lecturer in human rights and socio-legal studies at the University of Sydney, with a background in social and political theory. He has had over 15 years experience working within civil society organisations, including in anti-poverty and disability rights roles. He is the author of many publications including The War on Animals (Brill 2015).

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This episode examines the emerging field of Critical Animal Media Studies. We chat about the politics of teaching Critical Animal Studies, methodological developments, and effective communication with social movements, students, and academia. For Tobias, vegan sociology is “an opportunity.”

Tobias Linné is PhD in Sociology and Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the Department of Communication and Media, Lund University, Sweden. He has done research in the intersections of critical animal studies with media studies, for example in a project that analyses historical and contemporary examples of dairy milk being used as a symbol of white supremacy.

He has also designed and taught an undergraduate course named Critical Animal Studies: Animals in Society, Culture and the Media at Lund University, a course that provides an introduction to the field of Critical Animal Studies and discusses human-animal questions especially in relation to the media. In 2016 as an extension of the course, he also founded Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network (kom.lu.se/lucasn) a platform for developing Critical Animal Studies research, education and networking for academics and activists engaged in animal rights.

His current research analyses the global dairy industry through the concept of “milk colonialism,” looking specifically at how dairy products are marketed in countries with little historical traditions of dairy consumption.

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In our first episode of Season 2, Lynda M. Korimboccus joins us to discuss socialization theory. We chat about how children are socialized to eat other animals as well as emerging research on vegan childhood socialization. We also think about how sociologists themselves are socialized to ignore nonhuman animals. For Lynda, vegan sociology is “upsetting the applecart (or egg carton).”

Lynda M. Korimboccus holds a Masters in Anthrozoology from the University of Exeter. She gained both BSc (Hons) in Politics & Sociology and BA (Hons) in Philosophy & Psychology with the OU. A committed ethical vegan and grassroots activist since 1999, she also works as a Social Sciences Lecturer in Scottish Further Education. A prospective PhD candidate in Sociology, she is committed to making academia accessible to all, from both Open Access and PlainEnglish perspectives. Author of “The Peppa Pig Paradox,” her research interests are primarily the representation of animals in society, particularly children’s television; wider vegan studies; and the mixed-race experience.

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In this epilogue, Dr. Wrenn summarizes the lessons learned from our ten guests with regard to institutional barriers, positive points on which new scholars might capitalize, and some concrete strategies for success. Dr. Wrenn also offers some her own personal experiences as a working-class girl from Appalachia with a passion for social justice. Yes, that’s a cat! Ms. Trudy makes a very vocal appearance. 

Dr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology with the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR) and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements at the University of Kent. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016), was elected Chair in 2018, and co-founded the International Association of Vegan Sociologists in 2020. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of The Vegan Society’s Research Advisory Committee. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), and Animals in Irish Society (SUNY Press 2021).

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This episode discusses the possibilities of radical vegan sociology for activist-scholars. Dr. Yates also chats about some useful sociological theories such as critical theory, zemiology, green criminology, and phenomenology. Lastly, we consider how reading, conferences, and maintaining an online presence can be of benefit to research and job opportunities.

Dr. Roger Yates is a lecturer in sociology at University College Dublin and the University of Wales, specializing in animal rights. He is a former executive committee member of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), a former Animal Liberation Front (ALF) press officer, and a co-founder of the Fur Action Group. He currently runs the Vegan Information Project in Dublin and co-hosts Common Ground, an animal rights philosophy program. Dr. Yates was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in 1987 for conspiracy to commit criminal damage on behalf of the ALF. After his release in 1990, he began an academic study of animal protectionism and social movements, obtaining his PhD in 2005 on the subject of human/non-human relations. Dr. Yates maintains a blog on his web site, On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings and was a leading contributor to Animal Rights Zone (ARZone). Dr. Roger Yates also maintains an active Youtube channel.

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