Discourse and the Oppression of Nonhuman Animals: a Critical Realist Account
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Discourse and the oppression of nonhuman animals: a critical realist account. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of RHODES UNIVERSITY by Leslie Roy Mitchell December 2007 Abstract This work examines the use of nonhuman animals in the farming industry and seeks to understand why this practice takes place and what supports its continuation. The research is approached from a critical realist perspective and after a description of past and current practices in the industry, it uses abduction and retroduction to determine the essential conditions for the continuation of the phenomenon of nonhuman animal farming. One essential condition is found to be the existence of negative discourses relating to nonhuman animals and this aspect is examined in more detail by analyzing a corpus of texts from a farming magazine using Critical Discourse Analysis. Major discourses which were found to be present were those of production, science and slavery which construct the nonhumans respectively as objects of scientific investigation, as production machines and as slaves. A minor discourse of achievement relating to the nonhumans was also present. Further analysis of linguistic features examined the way in which the nonhumans are socially constructed in the discourses. Drawing on work in experimental psychology by Millgram, Zimbardo and Bandura it was found that the effects of these discourses fulfil many of the conditions for bringing about moral disengagement in people thus explaining why billions of people are able to support animal farming in various ways even though what happens in the phenomenon is contrary to their basic ethical and moral beliefs. i Table of Contents Abstract...........................................................................................................................i Table of Contents...........................................................................................................ii Table of figures..............................................................................................................vi List of acronyms.........................................................................................................viii Preface...........................................................................................................................ix Chapter 1........................................................................................................................1 1. Introduction................................................................................................................1 1.1. Animals in society...............................................................................................1 1.2. Animal farming today..........................................................................................3 1.3. Research focus, texts and sources.......................................................................7 Chapter 2........................................................................................................................9 2.1. Introduction.........................................................................................................9 2.2. Critical Realism.................................................................................................10 2.2.1 Overview.....................................................................................................10 2.2.2. The nature of reality...................................................................................11 2.2.3. Three domains of reality.............................................................................14 2.2.3. Cause and effect.........................................................................................16 2.2.4. Stratified reality: emergence and autonomy...............................................19 2.2.5. Intransitive and Transitive Objects of Knowledge.....................................22 2.2.5.1. Scientific knowledge as socially constructed......................................24 2.2.5.2. Meaning...............................................................................................25 2.2.5.3. The double hermeneutic......................................................................27 2.2.6. Emancipation, explanatory critique and critical theory .............................29 2.3. Epistemological strategies.................................................................................32 2.3.1. Methods of constructing knowledge..........................................................32 2.3.2 Abduction – seeing things differently.........................................................34 2.3.3. Retroduction - asking what the world must be like....................................35 2.3.4. Language and the construction of reality...................................................37 2.3.4.1. Discourse.............................................................................................39 2.3.4.2. Ideology...............................................................................................42 2.3.4.3. Power...................................................................................................46 2.3.4.4. Critical Discourse Analysis.................................................................49 2.4. Data Collection..................................................................................................52 2.4.1 Source of texts.............................................................................................52 2.4.2. Analysis......................................................................................................52 2.4.2.1. Lexical selection..................................................................................53 2.4.2.2. Structured Silence...............................................................................53 2.4.2.3. Transitivity..........................................................................................54 ii 2.4.3. CDA and animals.......................................................................................55 Chapter 3......................................................................................................................57 3.1. Introduction.......................................................................................................57 3.2. Animal Farming.................................................................................................58 3.2.1 Overview.....................................................................................................58 3.2.2 History.........................................................................................................59 3.2.3 Domestication..............................................................................................59 3.2.4 Eating flesh..................................................................................................61 3.2.5. Growing control and increasing numbers..................................................64 3.3. The industry today.............................................................................................69 3.3.1. State of the art killing.................................................................................69 3.3.2 Transportation..............................................................................................75 3.4. The lives of farmed animals..............................................................................81 3.4.1 Milk.............................................................................................................81 3.4.2 Meat.............................................................................................................83 3.4.2.1 Finishing and mutilating.......................................................................84 3.4.2.2 Veal.......................................................................................................86 3.4.2.3 Pigs.......................................................................................................89 3.4.2.4 Chickens...............................................................................................91 3.4.3 Animal breeding..........................................................................................95 3.5. Conclusion.........................................................................................................97 Chapter 4......................................................................................................................98 4. Abduction – seeing things differently.....................................................................98 4.1. Introduction.......................................................................................................98 4.2. Thinking about animals.....................................................................................99 4.2.1 Philosophical Theories: Animals and their moral standing.......................100 4.2.1.1 The great divide..................................................................................100 4.2.2. Indirect Theories.......................................................................................101 4.2.2.1. Cartesian Theories ............................................................................101 4.2.2.2. Kantian Theories .............................................................................104 4.2.2.3. Contractualist Theories......................................................................105