The animal ethics literature tends to focus on animals either as individuals (with rights or moral standing) or as part of biological populations or species (vulnerable to extinction, loss of genetic diversity, resilience, abundance, etc.). But politics takes place at the level of social and cultural groups, not individuals or biological populations, and it concerns how members of groups navigate and shape the terms of collective life together. We explore the importance of seeing animals as members of groups or associations (e.g. herds, pods, neighbours, clans, commoners), and how such groups fit into larger visions of interspecies politics and justice. Political theory has long faced the challenge of how to relate different scales of political community (local, national, transnational), each with its own rules of membership, authority and legitimacy. Adding animal groups to the mix ramps up this complexity, but we argue that this complexity is generative. It helps clarify the need to think about political communities as interdependent (not isolated or self-sufficient), grounded (in physical space and/or social connection), and overlapping (with different communities having divided authority in shared places, not exclusive or unitary power). We explore how political community of this scale and scope could enable justice in more-than-human politics.

The traditional aim of Western social democracy has been to create a society that is a 'common possession' of its members (in T.H. Marshall's words). Social democratic politics has therefore been both society-making and membership-making, orienting people to a shared society as an object of attachment and loyalty, and nurturing membership-based conceptions of democracy and the welfare state. This aspiration to create a society that is the common possession of its members has underpinned many social justice movements. However, some commentators argue that this model cannot address the most pressing issues of today's world, and that we need to find a way to theorize politics that does not rest on ideas that individuals are 'members' of 'societies', or on ideas that politics should aim to orient people to a shared society as an object of loyalty and a basis for solidarity. In this article, I explore whether the ideal of society as a common possession of its members can be redeemed in the face of these critiques, and in particular whether it can be pluralized in a way that respects the experiences and aspirations of racialized minorities and Indigenous peoples.

In recent decades, activists and leaders of government and nongovernment organizations have increasingly and explicitly called for greater attention to human dignity in their efforts to promote pro-social relations. In this study, we investigate whether appeals to this core human value actually influence how individuals act with regard to those who might be otherwise ignored or neglected. Using the digital advertising platform on Facebook, we randomly assign ads to over 90,000 adult American users to estimate the effects of dignity appeals on their likelihood of engaging with content concerning people facing homelessness or incarceration. Consistent with preregistered hypotheses and specifications, we find that adding dignity appeals increases the likelihood of positive reactions to such ads, but only when the vulnerable are considered less “blameworthy” for their situation.

Immigrants tend to be seen as less deserving of welfare benefits than native-born citizens, but little consensus exists to explain this finding or how to build greater public support for more inclusive policies. Recent work suggests that support for redistribution may be tied to citizens' perceptions of the "membership commitment" of immigrants. This study provides the first systematic test of this hypothesis in the comparative setting using an original seven country survey conducted in 2021-2022. The survey explored perceptions of immigrants' membership commitment in the host society in seven liberal democracies and their effect on public support for the extension of social benefits to immigrants. The study shows that immigrants systematically suffer a "membership penalty" within host societies across a wide range of states with different citizenship and welfare regimes, with important consequences for welfare state support.

This article examines Will Kymlicka’s theory of minority rights and its place within contemporary liberal political thought, emphasizing his attempt to reconcile universal liberal principles with the recognition of national minorities. It argues that Kymlicka revives an important but neglected strand of the liberal tradition by defending minority rights as compatible with democratic equality rather than as exceptions to it. The discussion also assesses the limits of his approach, highlighting the absence of a broader engagement with Marxist theories of nationality and the practical difficulties of applying his framework to cases such as the Hungarian minority in Romania. The article concludes that, despite these limitations, Kymlicka’s work remains a significant contribution to debates on multiculturalism, liberalism, and the political status of national minorities. This abstract is generated with artificial intelligence.

In public debates, multiculturalism and nationalism are often seen as expressing incompatible values or commitments. Nationalists view multiculturalism as corrosive of national identity and solidarity; multiculturalists view nationalism as entailing an assimilationist or exclusionary approach to difference. In practice, however, multiculturalism and nationalism often seem to co-exist. Indeed, insofar as contemporary states have adopted multiculturalism as a public policy and a public value, it has often taken the form of a multicultural nationalism. This linkage between multiculturalism and nationalism is a source of debate and dispute amongst supporters of multiculturalism. I will suggest that we can better understand the links between multiculturalism and nationalism, and the strengths and limits of actually-existing multicultural nationalism, by situating them in relation to what I will call an “ethics of membership”.

Abstract While there are many examples of humans showing ‘solidarity with’ animals, some commentators have denied that there can be ‘solidarity among’ humans and animals—that is, the sort of solidarity that involves a sense of ‘we-ness’ among participants in a shared norm-governed social world. This chapter defends the possibility—and indeed necessity—of social solidarity particularly in human relations with domesticated animals. It reviews three broad ways that political theorists have interpreted the ethics of social solidarity—rooted respectively in ideas of a scheme of cooperation, a moral covenant, and an intergenerational cultural community—and argues that in each case, domesticated animals can and should be seen as participants in the ‘ethical community’. Indeed, considering the case of domesticated animals can help illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of these different accounts of social solidarity.

Liberal democracy arguably requires a sense of equal membership in a shared society, and in today’s world, this “shared society” is inextricably linked with ideas of nationhood. Defenders of majoritarian nationalism worry that this sense of membership in a shared national society is being eroded by multiculturalism, and argue that we must instead reaffirm the centrality of shared national identities, perhaps through “majority rights.” In this chapter, I argue that while the idea of a shared society is indeed important for liberal democracy, and that it will inevitably reflect ideas of nationhood, this is in fact an argument for strengthening, not weakening, multiculturalism and minority rights. The fact that membership claims are filtered through the lens of nationhood creates a series of formidable “membership penalties” for minorities. A robust commitment to multiculturalism and minority rights can be seen, not as a threat to the ideal of equal membership in a shared society, but as a remedy for membership penalties, and as a way of building a more inclusive ethics of membership.

Abstract Due to their heavy reliance on public goodwill, community-based animal protection organizations (APOs) often face a dilemma in animal advocacy. Either they preserve institutional efficacy by focusing on popular causes—for example, protecting cats and dogs from individual acts of cruelty—at the expense of their own progressive institutional mandates. Or they honor their own institutional mandates by pursuing progressive causes—for example, challenging factory farming or the property status of animals—at the risk of losing public support. In this chapter, the authors argue that APOs can avoid this dilemma by adopting a new model of advocacy: “we”-reasoning. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of social norms, the authors claim that “we-reasons” rooted in group norms, distinct from both prudential reasoning (“reason-for-me”) and from moral reasoning (“reason-for everyone”), can generate support for progressive agendas. They apply this model to recent controversies about the adoption of vegan diets in shelters.

In many countries, the idea of minority autonomy is a taboo topic, rejected out of hand as a threat to the state. Yet the desire for some degree of self-government runs deep in many ethnic and religious communities. Some people have suggested that a generalized scheme of decentralization or devolution, understood as a country-wide process that shifts power from the central state to lower levels of government, can de facto enable minority autonomy without invoking any idea of group rights or ethnic autonomy. This chapter argues that this proposal is unlikely to work. Generalized decentralization can be implemented in ways that disempower and fragment minorities, and has often been adopted precisely with this intention. Decentralization is only likely to benefit minorities if and when it is designed with minority aspirations in mind. And this in turn requires that minority aspirations be moved out of the taboo category into the category of normal democratic politics: minority aspirations must be “normalized” and “desecuritized.” This is likely to require changes both in the broader geopolitics of the region and in the local self-understandings of nationhood and peoplehood.

Abstract Part I offers a set of ethical recommendations on various aspects of the everyday operations of animal shelters. The authors begin by clarifying the ethical framework on which the recommendations are based as well as setting out several overarching issues. The authors then address specific ethical questions arising in the context of the shelter’s internal structure and decision-making processes; its relationship with the public, donors, industry, and government; its role in the enforcement of animal welfare legislation; shelter operations, such as responses to overpopulation and decisions about when to end animals’ lives; how it should respond to animals in the community, such as feral cats; and issues arising in relation to shelter staff. The first part of the policy document summarizes these recommendations; the second part explains, in more detail, the reasoning behind these recommendations.

Abstract Because institutional constraints often preclude animal protection organizations (APOs) from taking an uncompromising public stand on animal rights, they are assumed to play a primarily meliorative rather than transformative role in the animal advocacy movement. This chapter questions this assumption, arguing that APOs can indeed contribute to genuine transformation through their own internal practices and ethos and through grassroots partnerships. One way to promote transformative change is to engage in “prefigurative” practices. Even within the current circumstances of profound injustice, it is possible to carve out moments or spaces for treating animals the way they should be treated in a (more) just society and establish the kinds of relationships with animals that would characterize a (more) just society. The chapter explores the scope for such prefigurative change within APOs in two main areas: (1) the creation of interspecies community and (2) the facilitation of animal agency.

Abstract: An increasing number of theorists are challenging the idea that only humans can engage in politics and propose that humans must learn how to do politics with animals. But what does it mean to do politics with animals? We consider several recent developments at the frontiers of social inquiry that are relevant, including (1) proposals for the institutional representation of animals’ interests in human political decision-making processes; (2) growing ethological evidence for animals’ own capacities for language, culture, and collective decision-making; and (3) new theoretical accounts of political agency and community that emphasize its embodied, emplaced, and interdependent nature. Each illuminates potential futures for animal politics and for just human-animal relations.

AbstractPrevious research has shown that the public tends to see some groups as less deserving of social rights. Our focus in this article is whether they are also seen as less entitled to engage in political claims-making. Recent theorists of inclusive nationalism argue that whether minorities are seen as having the right to codetermine the future may depend on whether the majority believes minorities are morally committed to the nation. Drawing on a unique survey experiment, we test this intuition by analyzing how majority perceptions of a minority's commitment to the larger society influence support for claims-making by immigrants and national minorities. We show that immigrants, French-speaking Quebeckers, and Indigenous peoples are judged more harshly about their right to make claims and that this is in part explained by the majority's views that these groups are not, in fact, committed members of the larger political community.

AbstractIt is increasingly acknowledged that animals have an intrinsic moral status, in part due to the influential work of many moral philosophers. However, surprisingly little has been written by philosophers on whether animals are owed social membership and the rights that attach to membership in society. In this paper, I explore why the idea of social membership matters, particularly in relation to domesticated animals, and how it can guide legal and political reforms. Focusing on social membership identifies neglected avenues for transformative change, and offers new ways of challenging the deeply-embedded ‘human use typologies' that currently govern our relations to domesticated animals. It also raises fascinating philosophical questions about the definition of ‘society' and the role of an ethics of membership. Ultimately, we will need to develop a new philosophy of interspecies society.

Liberal nationalists argue that identification with the nation promotes feelings of mutual obligation, including support for redistribution. Existing attempts to test this hypothesis have focused on whether the higher sense of national identity among the majority increases support redistribution. We argue for a twofold shift in focus. First, beyond the majority’s own national identity, we need to explore their perceptions of whether minorities share this identity. Second, we need to shift from one-dimensional ideals of ‘identity’ to more complex ideas of attachment and commitment. Do members of the majority view minorities as committed to the nation and willing to make sacrifices for it? Drawing on a custom-designed online survey in Canada, we show that three salient out-groups (Aboriginal peoples, French-speaking Canadians and immigrants) are seen by majority respondents as less committed to Canada, and that this is a powerful predictor of support for general and inclusive redistribution.

Plusieurs commentateurs – incluant certains theoriciens des droits des animaux – ont soutenu que les animaux non humains ne peuvent pas etre consideres comme des membres du demos parce qu’il leur manque les capacites critiques d’autonomie et d’agentivite morale qui seraient essentielles a la citoyennete. Nous soutenons que cette inquietude est fondee sur des idees erronees a propos de la citoyennete, d’une part, et a propos des animaux, d’autre part. La citoyennete requiert la maitrise de soi et la sensibilite aux normes partagees, mais ces capacites ne devraient pas etre comprises en un sens indument intellectualise ou idealise. Des etudes recentes sur l’agentivite morale montrent que les relations civilisees entre les citoyens sont largement fondees, non pas dans la reflexion rationnelle et l’assentiment a des propositions morales, mais dans des comportements intuitifs, irreflechis et habituels qui s’enracinent dans une gamme d’emotions prosociales (l’empathie, l’amour) et de dispositions prosociales (cooperation, altruisme, reciprocite, resolution de conflits). Cinquante ans de recherches ethologiques ont demontre que plusieurs animaux sociaux – particulierement les animaux domestiques – partagent le type de dispositions et de capacites rendant possible le civisme quotidien. Une fois que nous elargissons notre conception de la citoyennete pour inclure une comprehension plus riche des bases des relations civiques, il devient evident que les animaux domestiques et les humains peuvent etre les co-createurs d’un monde moral et politique commun. Nous n’avons rien a craindre, et beaucoup a gagner, a les accueillir comme membres du demos.