Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation

This text offers a look at the history of Western civilization , one that brings into focus the interrelated suffering of oppressed humans and other animals. David Nibert argues that throughout history the exploitation of other animals has gone hand-in-hand with the oppression of women, people of colour, and other oppressed groups. He maintains that the oppression of both humans and other species of animals is inextricably tangled within the structure of social arrangements. Nibert asserts that human use and mistreatment of other animals is not natural and does little to further the human condition. Nibert’s analysis emphasizes the economic and elite-driven character of prejudice, discrimination, and institutionalized repression of humans and other animals. His examination of the economic entanglements of the oppression of humans and other animals is supplemented with an analysis of ideological forces and the use of state power in this sociological expose of the grotesque uses of the oppressed, past and present. Nibert suggests that the liberation of devalued groups of humans is unlikely in a world that uses other animals as fodder for the continual growth and expansion of transnational corporations and, conversely, that animal liberation cannot take place when humans continue to be exploited and oppressed.