How democratic is animal activism?

We are delighted to announce that CASJ-funded PhD researcher Lucy Parry has had her first article accepted for publication in the journal Environmental Values. Lucy has been carrying out research at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Politics into the relationships between animal protection and democracy, particularly how processes of deliberation and discussion can represent the interests of animals and affect their wellbeing.

In this paper, Lucy uses the ‘deliberative systems‘ approach to take a new look at whether apparently ‘non-deliberative’ actions such as protests can enhance democracy through enabling previously-excluded individuals – in this case animals and their advocates – to have some representation in political debates. However, Lucy cautions that such ‘non-deliberative’ tactics need to be used judiciously to avoid undermining animal protection.

You can download a pre-publication version of Lucy’s paper, entitled ‘Don’t put all your speech-acts in one basket: situating animal activism in the deliberative system‘, from here.