Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement by Gary Francione

Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement

Author: Gary Francione
ISBN-nr: 1566394619
Category: Animal Rights Issues
added by terri

In Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement, Gary L. Francione argues that the modern animal rights movement has become indistinguishable from a century-old concern with the welfare of animals that in no way prevents them from being exploited.

Are "animal welfare" supporters indistinguishable from the animal exploiters they oppose? Do reformist measures reaffirm the underlying principles that make animal exploitation possible in the first place? In this provocative book, Gary L. Francione argues that the modern animal rights movement has become indistinguishable from a century-old concern with the welfare of animals that in no way prevents them from being exploited.

Francione maintains that advocating humane treatment of animals retains a sense of them as instrumental to human ends. When they are considered dispensable property, he says, they are left fundamentally without “rights.”

Rain without thunder
By Gary Lawrence Francione
Published by Temple University Press, 1996
ISBN 1566394619, 978-1566394611
269 pages

The first paragraph of Rain without Thunder:

During the past hundred years or so, until the late 1970s, concern about animals had been limited to assuring that they were treated "humanely" and that they were not subjected to "unnecessary" suffering. This position, known as the animal welfare view, assumes the legitimacy of treating animals instrumentally as means to human ends as long as certain "safeguards" are employed. For example, animal welfarists argue that the use of animals in biomedical experiments and the slaughtering of animals for human consumption are acceptable as long as these activities are conducted in a "humane" fashion.

Content

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Animal Rights and Animal Welfare
1. Animal Rights: The Rejection of Instrumentalism
2. The New Welfarists
3. The Philosophical and Historical Origins of New Welfarism
4. The Results of New Welfarism: The "Animal Confusion" Movement
5. The Empirical and Structural Defects of Animal Welfare Theory
6. Is Animal Rights a "Utopian" Theory?
7. Rights Theory: An Incremental Approach
Conclusion
Postscript: Marching Backwards
Notes
Index

Reviews

"Gary Francione has written a very important, very timely book about the contemporary animal movement in America. In it he offers a more insightful, better reasoned and altogether more persuasive analysis of this ’social protest’ movement than other would-be commentators. . . . No less importantly–and, quite likely, more importantly–he has crafted a book that will be of enormous interest to and influence on the very movement whose confused ideology he endeavors to clarify, as well as the powerful special interests that are financially, and in other ways, committed to resisting it. . . . No other scholarly observer of the animal movement has seen this movement’s lack of a consistent ideology as clearly as Francione. . . . Francione’s book represents a quantum leap forward in every respect by which anyone might reasonably measure an understanding of both the ideology of animal rights and what this movement can and should be." -Tom Regan, Professor of Philosophy, North Carolina State University, author of The Case for Animal Rights

"Rain Without Thunder is a must read for all those interested in the difficult but extremely important issues centering on how nonhuman animals are used and abused by human animals. Francione, a well-known legal scholar, writes in a clear and concise manner about how welfarist and rightist views differ in their basic assumptions, and how advocacy for each leads people–who really DO care about nonhuman animals–in vastly different directions concerning the future of nonhumans in a world dominated by humans. Francione is not shy and does not hesitate to take on ‘big names’ on both sides of the fence. In his view, welfarists’ concerns are not enough. As long as nonhuman animals are used as instruments for humans and are viewed as dispensable property, they are in big trouble. The only way to give nonhumans the protection to which they are entitled is to accept the fundamental inalienability of their rights and to grant them personhood. No matter what you think about Francione’s own views, a careful reading of this bold and tightly argued book will expose you to the important and complex issues that must be given serious attention as we head into the 21st century. These issues simply will not disappear if we ignore them, and we cannot afford to put them on the back burner longer." -Marc Bekoff, Professor of Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder

Gary Francione is Professor of Law and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University Law School. He is the Co-Director of the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Centre.

Crucial for Animal Rights Advocates

If you have embraced the idea that all sentient beings have fundamental rights--particularly the right not to be used exclusively as a resource--and have made the step to advocating on their behalf, this is the most important book you will ever read on the subject. Gary L. Francione's _Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement_ literally woke me up and gave me the resources I needed to avoid the seriously harmful strategy of animal welfare and new welfare. Before reading it, I took part in "bigger cages" campaigns, thought that such advocacy was helpful in the short term and had a very strong desire to continue to do so. After reading Francione's extremely compelling theoretical arguments, empirical evidence and well evidenced practical implications of different advocacy methods, I had no choice but to reject welfarism and new-welfarism in favor of a clearly defined concept of animal rights. In a nutshell, Francione's central thesis in _Rain Without Thunder_ is as follows:

In everyday language with respect to human animals, the word "welfare" has very good connotations. However, in the areas of _law_ and _institutional policy_ with respect to non-human animals, words like "welfare," "humane," "care," "unnecessary suffering," and so on only mean _one_ thing. Namely, they mean that the interests of non-human animals will be protected only to the extent necessary to exploit them in an economically efficient manner. For example, in law and policy, the welfare of a pig not to starve is protected because it is necessary to feed the pig in order to get her or his meat. The same is necessarily true of every animal welfare law and regulation. Therefore, any advocacy that attempts to achieve animal rights and the abolition of animal exploitation in the long-term by using the supposedly short-term strategy of trying to pass welfare regulations achieves only _one_ thing. Namely, if those measures are implemented, it will be further ensured that the only interests of non-human animals that will ever be protected are those that are required to exploit them efficiently. In other words, the supposed "success" of implementing a welfare measure only further ensures that the interests of other animals that are not required to exploit them efficiently will *always* be violated in the most abhorrent ways imaginable. In short, welfare measures *only* harm non-human animals and never help them.

Again, before I read Francione's arguments and evidence, I found his claim to be counter-intuitive. If this describes your views on the subject, for the sake of non-human animals who are exploited everywhere, I urge you to read and seriously consider _Rain Without Thunder_. Francione offers an excellent practical alternative to welfarist advocacy that, if followed, will further the rights of other animals on a workable *incremental* basis. As an animal rights advocate, I am extremely grateful that this book exists.

Review by Jeff Perz, found at Amazon.

Review added by terri.