Professor Rob Garner discusses Siobhan O’Sullivan’s enduring legacy for animals

September 24, 2024

Earlier this month (September 2024), CASJ Trustee Professor Rob Garner spoke at the prestigious Manchester Centre for Political Theory about the late Siobhan O’Sullivan‘s pioneering work in the study of animal protection politics. His talk, which was part of the ‘Animals, Equality, and Democracy: Themes in Memory of Siobhan O’Sullivan’ workshop, focussed in particular on the ‘political turn in animal ethics’ since, roughly, the millennium, and Siobhan’s central contribution to this development.

One way of summarising the meaning of  ‘the political turn in animal ethics’ is that it refers to an evolution in thought and advocacy for the sake of nonhuman animals: where moral theorising about animal welfare and rights is been increasing augmented by work in political theory and public policy that is concerned about how those ethical theories could, to least to some extent, be converted into long-term, real-world positive change for other sentient beings.

There are, in fact, a number of dimensions to this political turn, as outlined in Rob’s paper. Both Siobhan’s work and that of our charity are part of a strand that applies a degree of political pragmatism to the imperatives of animal ethics. Rob explains:

‘What Siobhan cleverly did in her work was to shun contentious moral debates about the way we ought to treat animals, focusing instead on making the claim that the way that some animals are treated is unacceptable from the standpoint of the values that most accept in liberal democratic societies. In particular, the liberal democratic value of equity is transgressed, Siobhan argues, by the very different ways in which animals of the same species are treated. There is, she suggests, an internal inconsistency. Most notably, the infliction of suffering on animals that liberal democratic states allow in the case of farm and laboratory animals is regarded as morally and legally impermissible in the case of companion animals, despite the fact that the animals cannot be morally separated in terms of cognitive capacities and, in some cases, even species. So, for example, a dog loved and well-cared for by a family will have a quality of life that is infinitely preferable to a dog in a research laboratory.’

The CASJ is proud to have supported Professor Garner’s participation in the Conference, and his fascinating and enlightening paper can be viewed here and the accompanying slide show presentation can be accessed here. We also urge you to check out the inspiring work of all the contributors to the workshop, such as Alastair Cochrane and Josh Milburn, to name just a few.