Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement
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About this ebook
Are "animal welfare" supporters indistinguishable from the animal exploiters they oppose? Do reformist measures reaffirm the underlying principles that make animal exploitation possible in the first place? In this provocative book, Gary L. Francione argues that the modern animal rights movement has become indistinguishable from a century-old concern with the welfare of animals that in no way prevents them from being exploited.
Francione maintains that advocating humane treatment of animals retains a sense of them as instrumental to human ends. When they are considered dispensable property, he says, they are left fundamentally without "rights." Until the seventies, Francione claims, this was the paradigm within which the Animal Rights Movement operated, as demonstrated by laws such as the Federal Humane Slaughter Act of 1958.
In this wide-ranging book, Francione takes the reader through the philosophical and intellectual debates surrounding animal welfare to make clear the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. Through case studies such as campaigns against animal shelters, animal laboratories, and the wearing of fur, Francione demonstrates the selectiveness and confusion inherent in reformist programs that target fur, for example, but leave wool and leather alone.
The solution to this dilemma, Francione argues, is not in a liberal position that espouses the humane treatment of animals, but in a more radical acceptance of the fundamental inalienability of animal rights.
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Reviews for Rain Without Thunder
11 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dr. Francione's philosophical framework ("ideology") is compelling, clear, consistent. He provides a very solid casing in which to arrange one's thinking about animal ethics. His writing is severely redundant, though perhaps because the evidence he marshals to demonstrate the attitudes of the "new welfarists" are so repetitive (not due to any fault of his own).
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A brilliant analysis of the politics of what are now multiple animal protection movements. Written 15+ years ago, but has only become even more relevant ever since.A must-read for animal advocates of any stripe.
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