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What Are Animal Rights For?

What Are Animal Rights For?

By Steve Cooke

“In this extraordinary book, the animals we share the world with receive the justice and gratitude they so deserve. Perhaps this is a ‘game-changer’ – and it comes not a moment too soon.” Virginia McKenna, Born Free Foundation

  • Description

    How should we treat animals? The long-held belief that other animals exist solely for human use has undergone radical challenge in the past half century. How much further do we need to go to minimize, and even eliminate, animal suffering?

    The field of animal rights raises big questions about how humans treat the other animals with which we share the planet. These questions are becoming more pressing as livestock farming exerts an ever-greater toll on the planet and the animals themselves, and we learn more about their capacity to think and experience pain. This book shows why animals ought to have greater rights and what the world might look like if they did.

  • In the media

    'Animals let down by broken promises' on Transforming Society

  • Contents

    1. Introduction

    2. A Brief Intellectual History of Animal Rights

    3. Rights, Interests and Choices

    4. Case Studies: Animals in the Farm, Home, Zoo and Lab

    5. Emerging issues: From Mollusc Rights to Animal Citizens

    6. Engaging the Imagination: Turning Prejudice into Compassion

    7. Conclusion: Beyond Animal Rights?

Product details

About the author

Steve Cooke is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Leicester. Previously, he held positions on animal rights theory and environmental politics at the University of Sheffield and Keele University and was the Society for Applied Philosophy’s 30th Anniversary Postdoctoral Fellow for a project on animal rights and environmental terrorism.

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