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Animal rights as a new environmental cosmology

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Abstract

The secularization and modernization of society have created opportunities for broad interpretations of fundamental questions of life. The Animal Rights Movement (ARM) challenges Judeo-Christian cosmology and offers an alternative. ARM redefines the distinctions between humans and animals and gives them a new meaning within the generalized environmental other. As an emerging cosmology, it functions to give believers a means of dealing with questions of order and chaos, suffering, good and evil, and justice. It also creates a community of people who seek redemption through saving animals. The Animal Rights Movement goes beyond moral protest and takes on the role of a religious cosmology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Macalester College, 55105, St. Paul, MN

    Anne Sutherland

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  1. Anne Sutherland
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  2. Jeffrey E. Nash
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Sutherland, A., Nash, J.E. Animal rights as a new environmental cosmology. Qual Sociol 17, 171–186 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02393500

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