Animals, Ethics, and Justice: Capitalism as an Animal Ethics Problem
Across societies, nonhuman animals are often treated as resources, tools, or background to human life in areas such as science, food systems, urban environments, education, and environmental policy. This series brings together scholars, educators, practitioners, and advocates who are working to rethink these relationships through the lens of animal protection, ethics, and justice.
The series is grounded in the concept of multispecies justice, which recognizes that animals are morally relevant beings whose lives are shaped by human institutions. From this perspective, protecting animals cannot be separated from addressing broader challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and planetary health.
Rather than focusing narrowly on welfare improvements or harm reduction, the series asks how our legal, economic, educational, and scientific systems might be transformed in order to support more ethical, just, and compassionate forms of coexistence between humans and other animals.
Across the series, speakers will discuss a range of topics including human–animal relations, animal ethics and political theory, wildlife coexistence, the role of companion animals in society, the ethics of education and knowledge production, climate change, and the political and economic structures that shape life across species.
Presenters
Dinesh Wadiwel is an Associate Professor in human rights and socio-legal studies at the University of Sydney, with a background in social and political theory. He is author of The War against Animals (Brill 2015) and Animals and Capital (Edinburgh University Press 2023). Dinesh is co-editor, with Matthew Chrulew, of Foucault and Animals (Brill, 2016). Dinesh is also a disability rights researcher and was part of a team of researchers who have produced two reports for the Australian Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.
Moderators
This webinar series organized and hosted by Dr. Kathrin Herrmann that explores what it means to live responsibly with other animals on a shared plane
