Eva Haifa Giraud (born 1984) is a cultural and critical theorist and a scholar of media studies and feminist science studies whose work concerns activism and non-anthropocentric theory. She is presently a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield. Her 2019 monograph What Comes After Entanglement? Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion was published by Duke University Press; her second sole-authored book, Veganism: Politics, Practice and Theory, was published in 2021 by Bloomsbury.
Giraud read for a Master of Arts (MA) in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh from 2002–2006, and then went on to read for an MA (2006–7) and PhD (2007–11) in Critical Theory at the Centre for Critical Theory, University of Nottingham. [1] [2] Her doctoral thesis was entitled Articulating Animal Rights: Activism, Networks and Anthropocentrism. [3] She worked at Nottingham for three years, before joining the Keele University in 2014. [2] In 2019, she published a monograph entitled What Comes After Entanglement? Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion with Duke University Press.
Giraud joined the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield as a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media & Society in 2021. [4] In the same year, Bloomsbury Academic published her book Veganism: Politics, Practice, and Theory. [5]
Giraud's research concerns the use of media by activists (including animal activists, food activists, environmental activists, and anti-racist activists); non-anthropocentric theory exploring how to live in ways that reject human exceptionalism; [2] and online hate speech. [6]
In What Comes After Entanglement?, Giraud addresses the theoretical idea of entanglement, which cautions theorists and activists to "avoid proposing simple solutions to the world’s complex problems". [7] Giraud explores case studies of activism including anti-McDonald's campaigning, anti-G8 campaigning, the SPEAK campaign, and food activism in Nottingham, arguing that there is a tension between, on the one hand, theoretical work on entanglement, and, on the other, the political practice of activists. She argues for an "ethics of exclusion", which recognises that certain ways of being are inevitably foreclosed by decisions made, and that decisions sometimes have to be made. [6] [8] [9] [7] [10] She thus challenges the charges made by certain theorists that activist decision-making essentialist and insufficiently attentive to the world's complexity; [8] [6] [7] her descriptions of protest ecologies and their everyday practices of decision-making and labour organisations "trouble the notion" of staying with the trouble. [8] One reviewer said that the book would be valuable for scholars of a wide range of disciplines; [9] another drew attention to the ongoing conversation that Giraud was conducting with Donna Haraway, [7] a major influence on Giraud's work; [6] and a third argued that one of the book's major contributions was emphasising the difference between animal studies and critical animal studies. [8]
Posthumanism or post-humanism is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st-century thought. Posthumanization comprises "those processes by which a society comes to include members other than 'natural' biological human beings who, in one way or another, contribute to the structures, dynamics, or meaning of the society."
In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism, and theocentrism. Environmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.
Anthropocentrism is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From an anthropocentric perspective, humankind is seen as separate from nature and superior to it, and other entities are viewed as resources for humans to use.
Carol J. Adams is an American writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004), focusing in particular on what she argues are the links between the oppression of women and that of non-human animals. She was inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2011.
Applied philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems of practical concern. The topic covers a broad spectrum of issues in environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics and education. The term was popularised in 1982 by the founding of the Society for Applied Philosophy by Brenda Almond, and its subsequent journal publication Journal of Applied Philosophy edited by Elizabeth Brake. Methods of applied philosophy are similar to other philosophical methods including questioning, dialectic, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation, thought experiments and logical argumentation.
Ecocentrism is a term used by environmental philosophers and ecologists to denote a nature-centered, as opposed to human-centered, system of values. The justification for ecocentrism usually consists in an ontological belief and subsequent ethical claim. The ontological belief denies that there are any existential divisions between human and non-human nature sufficient to claim that humans are either (a) the sole bearers of intrinsic value or (b) possess greater intrinsic value than non-human nature. Thus the subsequent ethical claim is for an equality of intrinsic value across human and non-human nature, or biospherical egalitarianism.
Total liberation, also referred to as total liberation ecology or veganarchism, is a political philosophy and movement that combines anarchism with a commitment to animal and earth liberation. Whilst more traditional approaches to anarchism have often focused primarily on opposing the state and capitalism, total liberation is additionally concerned with opposing all additional forms of human oppression as well as the oppression of other animals and ecosystems. Proponents of total liberation typically espouse a holistic and intersectional approach aimed at using direct action to dismantle all forms of domination and hierarchy, common examples of which include the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, cissexism, disablism, ageism, speciesism, and ecological domination.
Anthony Burke is an Australian political theorist and international relations scholar. He is Professor of Environmental Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales. He is co-principal at the Planet Politics Institute.
Steven Frederic Sapontzis is an American moral philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay and specializes in animal ethics, environmental ethics and meta-ethics. His best known work is Morals, Reason, and Animals, published in 1987. Sapontzis' philosophy advocates for extending moral personhood and ethical consideration to animals based on their capacity for interests and suffering, challenging anthropocentric norms and speciesism, and instead promoting empathy, vegan activism, and systemic change to reduce animal exploitation.
Siobhan O'Sullivan was an Australian political scientist and political theorist. She was an associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. Her research focused, among other things, on animal welfare policy and the welfare state. She was the author of Animals, Equality and Democracy and a coauthor of Getting Welfare to Work and Buying and Selling the Poor. She co-edited Contracting-out Welfare Services and The Political Turn in Animal Ethics. She was the founding host of the regular animal studies podcast Knowing Animals.
Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic, and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors, it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts, respectively concerning institutional change for animals, the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism, and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies, but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism, exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse, and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics.
Vegan studies or vegan theory is the study of veganism, within the humanities and social sciences, as an identity and ideology, and the exploration of its depiction in literature, the arts, popular culture, and the media. In a narrower use of the term, vegan studies seek to establish veganism as a "mode of thinking and writing" and a "means of critique".
Laura Wright is a professor of English at Western Carolina University. Wright proposed vegan studies as a new academic field, and her 2015 book The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror served as the foundational text of the discipline. As of 2021 she had edited two collections of articles about vegan studies.
The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror (2015) by Laura Wright coined the term and proposed the academic field of vegan studies and serves as the field's foundational text.
Óscar Horta Álvarez is a Spanish animal rights activist and moral philosopher who is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and one of the co-founders of the nonprofit organization Animal Ethics.
Philosophy of ecology is a concept under the philosophy of science, which is a subfield of philosophy. Its main concerns centre on the practice and application of ecology, its moral issues, and the intersectionality between the position of humans and other entities. This topic also overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, as it attempts to answer metaphysical, epistemic and moral issues surrounding environmental ethics and public policy.
Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice is a 2018 book by the English political theorist Alasdair Cochrane, published by Oxford University Press. In the book, Cochrane outlines and defends his political theory of "sentientist cosmopolitan democracy". The approach is sentientist in that it recognises all sentient animals as bearers of rights; cosmopolitan in that it extends cosmopolitan political theory to include animals, rejecting the importance of state borders and endorsing impartiality; and democratic in that it aims to include animals in systems of representative and cosmopolitan democracy. It was the first book to extend cosmopolitan theory to animals, and was a contribution to the "political turn" in animal ethics – animal ethics informed by political philosophy.
Catia Faria is a Portuguese moral philosopher and activist for animal rights and feminism. She is assistant professor in Applied Ethics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and is a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics. Faria specialises in normative and applied ethics, especially focusing on how they apply to the moral consideration of non-human animals. In 2022, she published her first book, Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature.
Richard Twine is a British sociologist whose research addresses environmental sociology as well as gender, human/animal and science studies. He is noted for his "foundational" work in critical animal studies. He is a reader in sociology in the Department of History, Geography & Social Sciences at Edge Hill University, where he is the co-director of the Centre for Human-Animal Studies. He is also the chair of the Research Advisory Committee of The Vegan Society.
Emelia Quinn is a British scholar of English known for her work developing vegan theory. She is an assistant professor of world literatures and environmental humanities at the University of Amsterdam.
External media | |
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Audio | |
"Eva Giraud: Food as Media", Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity (UBVO) seminars, University of Oxford | |
"What Comes After Entanglement? With Eva Haifa Giraud, Knowing Animals | |
Video | |
"Eva Giraud and Gregory Hollin on Care, Laboratory Beagles and Affective Utopia" |