Bonus: Animals and the Right to Politics with Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka

Claudia talks to political philosophers Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka about their latest book Animals and the Right to Politics. They discuss the differences between societal and placed based politics, unpacking why both are necessary to enable animals’ political engagement. 

Date Recorded: 30 January 2026

Featured: 

• Animals and The Right to Politics by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka 
• Animal agora: Animal citizens and the democratic challenge by Sue Donaldson
• Environmental Ethics as Environmental Etiquette by Jim Cheney and Anthony Weston
• What Comes After Entanglement by Eva Giraud
• Public Things by Bonnie Honig
• The Frontenac Axis
• VINE Sanctuary

Other Episodes of The Animal Turn

• S1E1: Animal Rights with Will Kymlicka
• S2E7: Political Multispecies Communities with Sue Donaldson
• S6E1: Politics with Will Kymlicka
• Bonus: Koalas with Danielle Clode 

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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Transcript

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Fast Intro And Guest Context

Siobhan O'Sullivan 0:01

This is another iROAR podcast.

Will Kymlicka 0:05

Like so we sh so uh the goal is to think about I mean not this is a bit of an oversimplification, but that i in in these different contexts of both societal polities and place-based polities, we should be thinking about the various ways in which animals are saying yes and saying no. So they're making proposals to us to which we need to respond, we make proposals to them, and then we need to say, are they saying yes or no? And so yeah, so that these are we're trying to think about what are the relevant kinds of contexts and procedures, institutions, but also norms that would make possible these to t such that these political communities become the holding environments for animals political agents.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:14

I spoke to Sue and Will in January already about their book. I read it in December. I was very excited. Um I was pretty keen to be one of the first out there with an interview with them, but alas, uh, I just I just couldn't get things done quickly enough. Needless to say, it was a wonderful conversation. Um I enjoyed doing it and I really enjoyed going back and listening to the conversation. That said, uh it's clear that I was very excited to be talking to them about these ideas. The speed with which I'm speaking is insane. So I'm sorry, please bear with me. Particularly in the beginning, I seem to just be going at a million miles an hour. And I think that's because I am just so excited about the ideas that they bring up in their book, particularly as they relate to ideas of place-based politics. And that's kind of where I take us near the beginning of the episode to just see how they distinguish between place-based politics and societal-based politics. For now, uh, let me just tell you a little bit about them if you don't know. Uh, Sue Donaldson is a research associate in the Department of Philosophy at Queen's University in Canada. She's also the co-convener of Animals and Philosophy Politics and Law and Ethics, Apple, who you know is a longtime sponsor of this podcast. Sue's books include Zoopolis, a political theory of animal rights, and Animals and the Rights to Politics, which we focus on today. She lives in the Frontenac Arch region, north of Kingston, with her husband Will, who's the other guest on the show, and Roxy, their amazing, wonderful dog. Then there is Will, who's the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University. His current research focuses on the frontiers of citizenship and in particular on struggles to extend norms and practices of citizenship to historically excluded groups, ranging from children and people with intellectual disabilities to indigenous peoples and animals. All of these cases challenge inherited cases of what defines attributes of the good citizen. Of course, he's done a range of work with regards to questioning and thinking about animals and politics. He's been on the show twice before, a very first guest on the show talking about animal rights, uh, and then later also helping us to understand questions of what is politics. Today we go deeper into those questions, and um yeah, it's a it's a wonderful conversation. I hope you feel the energy, and uh, I hope you enjoy this episode. All

The Book’s Core Claim

Claudia Hirtenfelder 3:42

right, uh hi, Will and Sue. It's lovely to have you back on the show and to see you and to hear from you. Congratulations, both of you, on the book. I finished reading it this morning, so I've been working my way through it. I really so enjoyed uh reading it and learning from it and picking apart and finding new words and concepts that are really helpful. So I'm hoping we can talk about the main ideas of your book today, uh, and maybe even focusing on some of these um, you know, specific concepts that you introduce. Because some of the ideas I think you have spoken about previously on the show, and some of them are pretty new. Uh so I'm actually going to take a stab at giving an overview, a synopsis, and then we'll jump from there and you can tell me how right or wrong I am, and we'll we'll kind of follow from there. So, in effect, you say animals have a right to politics. It's not only a question about morals, it's a question about politics. And animals actually not only have a right to politics, they currently engage in politics, and what's needed is uh, I guess, an legitimate acknowledgement of the fact that they do politics as well as an enabling of that politics. And you start off saying that this is important and necessary work, and then you say other people are also doing important and necessary work, but you disagree with them in some important ways. There's the wardship model, there's the cosmopolitans, and there's the resistance model, and I'm sure we'll we'll unpack those. But in effect, you say that they're doing interesting stuff, but sometimes they might actually be undermining the ways in which animals can do politics. And then from there, you switch to saying, okay, so we've done all the critical work, which is where a lot of us tend to stop. We tend to point at things and say, nah, you screwed up over there. And then you turn to saying, well, this is our contribution, and this is what we think politics actually looks like. And this is where I think you do something really quite interesting. In many ways, I think your book is like the end of a movie. You know, uh, everyone has the movie where the couple gets together and then they get married, and that's when the movie ends, and we think, oh, okay, there's been this big thing. Actually, you guys say, well, what happens after the marriage, right? What happens once once um things have continued? And you start with this idea, I guess, of a bounded politics. And then you say, okay, societies matter, memberships matter, and places matter. And you unpack how these matter and the different ways in which they manifest for a variety of animal communities. And the three following your work with Zewopulis that you look at are domesticated animals, wild animals, and liminal animals. Is that a is that a is that a kind of overview of what your book achieves and is trying to do?

Sue Donaldson 6:17

Yeah, that's a good way of that's a good way of summarizing it. Nicely done.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 6:22

Yeah. That's why I did it. I just wanted everyone to be like, wow, she actually read the book. Okay. Congratulations.

Societal Vs Place-Based Polities

Claudia Hirtenfelder 6:30

So I want to start in the middle if that's okay. I I have a fear that often when you're interviewed about these, you always have to justify the importance of politics and the importance of agency. And I think many of the listeners already maybe know that. So if it's okay with you, I want to start in the middle with this question of societal polities and place-based polities. Could you unpack for me what what why the idea, why the splitting apart of these two ways of thinking about politics? And if you need to give the definition of politics before doing that, feel free to go. I'm opening it to you. Go ahead.

Will Kymlicka 7:05

So um we start with uh the inherited uh assumption in political theory that uh political communities are societal. That is, that they they presuppose some kind of shared social world, and that politics is first and foremost about negotiating the terms of a shared social life. That's if you pick up any sort of political science, political theory textbook, that's likely to be the definition on page one that politics is first and foremost a a vehicle by which the members of a shared society negotiate and determine the terms of their scheme of social cooperation, uh, the norms of social life, the distribution of the benefits and burdens of social life. Um and we think that's what that is one really important kind of political community, that we need these societal polities, that members members of a of a social world in fact have the right to uh amongst themselves steer the direction of their society. So we call those societal polities. And the criterion for being a member of a societal polity is that you're a member of that social that that social world, that scheme of social cooperation. Uh and and okay, so so that's that's one image of political community that is defined by sharing a social world and using politics to steer that social world. But in our relation and in relation to those, uh that if we think about the social polities that humans form, uh one of our arguments is that domesticated animals should be seen as part of our social world, and therefore as members of these societal polities with us, and therefore as sharing steering rights in relation to this societal polity. But we also argue, and this is this is something that um is new in in the book compared to our earlier work, that there are times and places in which people who belong to different societies nonetheless share the same place. Um and uh this is most clearly true uh when we think about the ways in which humans live on the same territory as what we call liminal animals. So, for example, urban wildlife. So if you think of just a city, the the humans and the domesticated animals form a societal polity, but they share a territory with liminal animals who are not part of the social world, they're not part of the scheme of social cooperation. They may in fact try as much as possible to avoid uh interacting with with humans, but uh we share the same place, and so we need a way of governing this shared place. Um uh we need a way of uh uh thinking about governing places that doesn't presuppose that we're all members of the same society. And so we call this a place-based polity, and we suggest that it we could um so we use the term multispecies commons as our label for how to think of this. Um that uh in it so in addition to the societal politicians, and we're not trying to get rid of societal policies because members of societies have the right to steer their shared society, also think of ourselves as denizens, the humans, the domesticated animals, and the liminal animals are all denizens of a place-based uh polity, this multi-species commons. And and we we really quite strongly try to argue that neither you can't reduce one to the other. Um that that we can't just have societal polities because then we're not going to acknowledge the need to govern the multispecies commons in a just way, but nor can we get rid of societal polities and just have place-based polities, which is one suggestion that you can see in some versions of environmental theory that that we should just get rid of societal polities and just think. So we're we're we try to make an argument that each has a role to play.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 11:41

Well, what's interesting, so I mean, of when people think about politics, um obviously the nation-state comes up, which you mention a lot in the book, and there is a conflation when thinking about the nation-state of both place and society, that it's a bounded, it's a bounded society because we belong to this nation, and uh the borders of the nation have been determined for us, whoever the us is. So you can see how for many folks trying to pry apart that societal and the place-based. So you're not exclusive, you're not saying that they're exclusive from one another. Someone can have a place-based policy. Actually, you can have uh commitments to numerous places, um, but you can also have commitments to numerous political communities. Is that a fair thing to say?

Will Kymlicka 12:24

Well, I've just so I I think you're absolutely right that the the inherited concept of the nation-state when people visualize it, they visualize it both as a society, it's an American society, a Dutch society, a French society, and as a territory. And uh that that nation-states govern territories. And so um, I mean, it's true that societies are emplaced, and so um uh we'll we need to think about what are the kind of um material and ecological and environmental conditions or the territorial um bases of societal polities. But we really need, I this is a crucial part of the argument, that we need to get away from the idea that nation states have exclusive jurisdiction or ownership over the territory that they currently uh claim, and that we should instead recognize that there are likely to be multiple uh political demoy, multiple political communities uh that have different kinds and forms of jurisdiction over different dimensions of of the territory. Um, and so it's going to be a quite complicated picture of their kind of different forms of self-government rights and shared government rights over different kinds of political community, both societal political communities and these place-based uh multi-species commons.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 14:01

So that means that political communities is not only a matter of like my relationship to the state. So, my as a South African citizen, my relationship to South Africa and South African governing laws, I could belong to a range of political communities, right? So I don't know if I'm if I'm part of a church, for example, you know, or I belong to a specific advocacy community that's engaging in, let's say, civic uh protests. That's a form of political engagement where I've created a political community around a specific issue or a topic. Is that is that the kind of multi-scalar way thinking about humans that I could think about the multiple levels at which we practice politics, but how it also brings different places into action? So I live in Vienna and I'm upset with how the Vienna, the urban governments is dealing with a specific animal, and I mobilize a group of people. We're responding to a spatial problem, but it's also a political problem.

Sue Donaldson 14:52

Um okay, so I think I need to go back and maybe give an example of the kind of um thing we're talking about because you're bringing in different kinds of sort of political identities, um, social groups, and that's

Rail Lines And Animal Corridors

Sue Donaldson 15:10

not quite what our focus is. Uh, it's really on relations to um to place territory and jurisdictional authority in in relation to places. So uh I think an example that we use that's helpful for getting at this. So currently, Canada is planning to build a high-speed rail line that's going to connect um eventually, uh, well, Toronto to Quebec City, eventually, maybe uh more than that. And so this will be an east-west train, high-speed train corridor that connects a lot of the major population centers in eastern Canada. It's very much a project, a national infrastructure project of Canada as a societal-based polity, right? It's it's important environmentally, it's important for all kinds of reasons for Canada as a societal polity to build that high-speed rail. However, that east-west corridor of the rail line is going to bisect what is a crucial kind of a different territorial set of relationships, very important for humans that live there, but mostly important for animals who live there. So in eastern Ontario, that rail line is going to bisect a probably the most important northeast green corridor in North America. Uh so it's it's uh called the front neck axis. And this is a is a spur basically of the Canadian Shield that connects uh vast wilderness areas in the north with wilderness areas in upper New York State and onto the chain of the Appalachians. So it's a it's a crucial North Sev corridor that animals already use. Uh, birds use, mammals use, reptiles and amphibians use, all kinds of animals use this corridor in in part, or or going uh long distances over its length. As climate change advances, it's going to become more crucial. So it's going to be the key climate corridor in the East for animals who need to use, move north and south in relation to climate change. So here we have a set of relationships amongst all these animal groups and this piece of land, and it's it conflicts with the with the agenda of the Canadian state to put a uh a train corridor through. Now, it's not that that conflict can't be overcome, but it can only be overcome if we think, if we recognize that that other place-based polity, it's not that all the animals who use that corridor are part of the same society or that they're all a society with humans, they are all parts of their own societies, but there are a great many of them, and they and this this um geographical and ecological um place is crucial for them to be able to live their lives, to do politics in their own ways, uh, and so on. And so our project is about okay, how do we recognize that political community and and how do we empower that political community so that this train corridor can't just be plowed through there ignoring all of these critical relationships? They have to be fully uh weighted and taken into account. So it's it's taking away some of the powers of that national social community to recognize that they're important place-based communities, and and those are more typically more local, uh, and they need to be empowered. And so what that might mean practically, for example, is that anywhere that that train corridor is crossing the Frontenac Arch, it needs to be uh, you know, have all kinds of accommodations for the animals who are moving north-south. So whether that's tunnels and overpasses, um, other kinds of accommodations, need to be fully uh right from the beginning as they as this corridor is being planned, uh, and who it's going to serve and what we're trying to accomplish with it, and uh and who needs to be empowered to have a say in how that works. Um, so that would be an example of the kind of thing uh so you can see that both of these are uh both of these communities, the place-based one and the society-based one, are about a relationship to territory, but just in in different uh in different ways.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 19:38

And what makes this political is that they have a political claim for their space to be respected or their spatial rights to be respected. Because I mean, people might hear this and think, okay, well, that's just a moral claim, right? Morally, it's it's wrong to destroy their environments. But I think what you're doing in your book is you're saying, well, it's not just that it's a matter of it's right or wrong, it's that politics requires negotiation and and consideration of, I guess, different societies' claims on the same space. Um is so is that what you're suggesting here?

Will Kymlicka 20:10

Yeah, so the the starting point, uh, as you mentioned in your in your summary of the book, is that animals have a right to politics. And uh what we're trying to think of in the book is what what are what uh we use the language of holding environments because this is a term that's uh we found fruitful. What are the what are the best possible holding environments for animals to exercise political agency in relation to the forces that that shape their their lives? And so what we're saying is that thinking uh of ourselves uh so the humans should think of themselves not only as citizens of societal polities, but also as denizens of these multi-species commons. And that if we think of ourselves in this way, as both citizens of societal polities and denizens of of uh multispecies commons, then we need to ask, how do we and we and we need to acknowledge that both of these polities are are themselves multi-species. So there are domesticated animals who are members of our of our societal polity, and there are lots of uh wild non-domesticated wild animals who are members of these multi-species commons. And so we need to think about, before we can make any legitimate decisions, either as a societal pol as citizens of a societal polity or as denizens of a multi-species commons, we need to think about what is our oblig what are our obligations to facilitate the political agency of the animals with whom we share the societal polity or the place based polity. So what are the forms of political communication we can engage in with those animals? What are the forms of how how can they make proposals to us? How do we make proposals to them? Uh are we attentive to the ways in which they resist? Like so we should so uh the goal is to think about I mean not this is a bit of an oversimplification, but that i in in these different contexts of both societal polities and place-based polities, we should be thinking about the various ways in which animals are saying yes and saying no. So they're making proposals to us to which we need to respond, we make proposals to them, and then we need to say, are they saying yes or no? And so, yeah, so that these are we're trying to think about what are the relevant kinds of contexts and procedures, institutions, but also norms that would make possible these such that these political communities become the holding environments for animals, political agents.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 23:01

And you bring up different rights, I think, to make these arguments, okay? So,

Polity Versus Public Explained

Claudia Hirtenfelder 23:05

like you're uh so there are these two firstly, wait, before we go on, can you clarify for me what the difference is between polities and publics? This was a conversation I was having with someone else. What's the difference between a polity and a public?

Will Kymlicka 23:17

Yeah, so a a polity is uh I mean it's in in some contexts they are kind of used as synonyms, but just if if one tried to draw a sharper distinction between them. Uh uh a polity is uh is uh an entity that uh uh claims and is recognized as having certain rights to govern. So a polity, I uh in my view almost by definition, uh has uh and aspires to exercising collective decision-making authority and and and governance. The public is particularly in a in a in a democratic tradition, um having uh publicness um is a requirement for people, for the members of a polity, to be able to interact with each other, to make claims on each other, to learn about each other, to express their frustrations, their aspirations. So uh a public is uh it tend you know, it it it's yeah, it it plays a particularly important role. For those who want more participatory uh polities, one of the questions one would ask is what's what's the nature of the public? Public spaces, public institutions, public things, to use Bonnie Honick's term, that facilitate people to participate in the decisions of the polity. But you can imagine that there are some polities, you know, you think about kind of dictatorships run with secret police. That there is no real public. Everyone just uh hides from state authority. The state still is it's a polity, it's governing, but there's no there's no public that that becomes the vehicle by which the members exercise participatory.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 25:23

So publics publics are heard to some extent. They're they're they're they're they're they're heard. They okay, wait. So we've got we've got governance, I guess, happening at a space uh in terms of territories, and we've got governance happening in terms of society, so how places are governed and how societies are governed, and this has political implications for the groups in both, right? So it has political implications for how various groups socially organize as well as how they spatially organize. And this has, to use that classic, uh, uneven benefits and burdens, right? So who is benefiting and who is burdening from the putting in of a new train? Um, how are these benefits and burdens being distributed? And those are deeply political, almost at its base, asking these questions. Okay. And then we're speaking about the fact that different groups of animals and different groups of humans and different groups of humans and animals together live together as societies and live together on shared spaces. And therefore, this entitles them to specific kinds of rights. And I think that this is one of your big contributions as you're saying depending on which group we're looking at, and depending on what kind of polity we're looking at, we're also talking about different kinds of rights. And you speak about steering rights, stewardship rights, safeguard rights, amongst others. Uh Sue, I don't know if you want to give us an unpack of how these rights are connected.

Sue Donaldson 26:44

So I'll I'll maybe stick with the example because it maybe it's it's helpful to just uh that we've already been talking about to build on that. So if we think about that front neck arch corridor, so there are various animal communities as part who live it in and use that corridor. There are also human, different kinds of human communities. There are, of course, indigenous peoples and land claims relevant to those territories. So all kinds of uh overlapping social groups who are um affected by anything that happens in that corridor, who live there and and use that land. So the the idea of the rights that attach to the political-based community versus the society-based community are that those various groups have shared interest and need to govern in relation to what happens to that area uh geographically and ecologically. They don't have a shared interest or need to govern about how each of their social communities governs its internal politics, right? So the bears who are going up and down that corridor don't need to have a voice in how humans are in towns there are organizing their police and rescue services. And the bears don't have an interest in or have any right to weigh in on how the raccoon communities govern their internal relationships and and their forms of social cooperation and so on, right? So the rights that attach to these different kinds of polities, in the case of the placepace polity, uh, we describe the most the most significant sort of rights and interests attached to this are going to do with mobility, right? Obviously, everybody has concerns about their mobility through that corridor. It's going to be access to just the habitats and resources that various parties need in order to survive. It's going to be coordination issues, right? It's going to be things around potential conflicts about resource mobility and so on. But really, the rights attached to a place-based polity are heavily concerned with just anyone who makes their life there, having a right to make their life there. And that that implies certain things about their ability to move around and use the place. Whereas the societal-based polities are much more socially integrated and complex kinds of polities. So when we think instead about, you know, a town along the corridor, it's governing all kinds of dimensions of the social relations of those who are governed by that polity. So that's that's sort of the difference.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 29:44

So it's it's also thinking, I guess, about um how the internal dynamics of the group are working. So who gets to steer, I guess, uh who gets to steer how that group looks and functions in future. Uh and I guess I mean you do say kind of up front that safe, I think it's safeguard rights. Like every everyone has the right to not be, this for you is the starting point. Politics is not violence. Politics is politics is trying to find a way to not be violent and to negotiate those. So everyone has, and please, please correct me here because this is outside of my terrain. But so safeguard rights are the right for no one to be um uh hurt. And we can't, we can't, that's perhaps the wrong word. To to actively inflict pain and suffering should not be a goal or objective. But then as a group, whether that group is a group of raccoons or a multi-species community in a sanctuary or uh people living in Vienna, those people who have a invested interest in that place and in those societies should have steering rights to determine what that looks like. But then there are also intergroup conversations. So there's politics amongst ourselves as a group, and then there's politics between us and another group. And I think, I mean, you you talk here, I think, primarily about the relationships with liminal animals and with wild animals. How do we negotiate with other groups that have their own politics, their own way of doing things and getting things done? And we have to find ways of respecting their ways of doing that. Is that a um and it's most basic, is that what those rights kind of mean?

Will Kymlicka 31:17

So, yes, but l let me just

Steering Rights And Safeguard Rights

Will Kymlicka 31:20

uh step back and uh explain a bit about the background to this argument. So, uh you know, we're we're political philosophers, and so one of the eternal questions in political philosophy is what's called the boundary problem in political theory, but it's basically who should have a say over decision making. That's the uh that's one version of the boundary question. And it's a hard question because political decisions tend to have very broad-ranging effects over large numbers of people. And so, just you know, when when the Canadian government makes a decision, it doesn't just affect Canadian citizens, it affects people around the world. And so too with every other level and and form of government. And so some people have drawn the conclusion that ideally at least, everyone who's affected by a decision should have a say in that decision. That's that's one argument that you get in democratic theory. And what we want to say is, and we we spend quite a bit of time uh trying to make this case, that that's a bad principle partly because it's impossible to know who's going to be affected by various decisions. So it's just epistemically impossible to to actually operationalize. But even if you could it it it's it's a it's the wrong principle because it means that that the members of these social worlds would be oftentimes vulnerable to being outvoted by the the the this much wider number of people who who would be affected. So what we want to insist on is that the members of a social world, they are the ones who have the right to steer their shared society. So steering rights are limited to those who are members of societal polities. It's of course true that the decisions affect others who are not members, and and though, and we need to make sure that those impacts are not do not violate people's rights, do not impose unjust burdens on them, and so so we need safeguards uh against harmful, wrongful impacts on outsiders. But that that on our view, uh uh a proper democratic theory, rather than thinking that everyone who's affected has has a vote, or like the instead, we should think about the members have the right to steer. They and they alone have the right to determine the direction in which their society will move, but we need to ensure that the that when when members exercise their steering rights, they do so within the limits set by the rights of outsiders or third parties. And those are safeguard rights. So members exercise steering rights within the limits set by safeguard rights. And we argue that that way of thinking is crucial to defend meaningful self-government, both for human social groups, but also for animal social groups. That if that that if we if we really went down the road of that what's called the all-affected interest principle, you gave everyone who's affected by a decision a say over that decision, all sorts of uh animal communities would be extremely vulnerable to being outvoted by the vast diverse interests of outsiders that might be have an interest in plundering their territory, dispossessing of them, uh their territory, and so on. So we're we're quite strongly uh committed to the idea that we need a kind of slightly more narrow account of who has steering rights, but supplemented with a strong account of safeguard rights.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 35:19

Yeah, and you you spent quite a bit of time, as you say, in the the first three chapters. Uh I think I was particularly persuaded by your conversation around cosmopolitanism, right? Because it is, it is a romantic uh not romantic, it is an appealing uh idea that you know everybody matters. And why wouldn't we want everybody to matter? And I really appreciate Eva Gerard's kind of um her take on what comes after entanglements as well. Like you it is, it's not an easy decision. When you say everybody matters, you're you're not really taking account of just how uneven things are and how messy it is. And that when uh I mean, this is why I think there was a lot of backlash when people all started to say, like, all lives matter, when it was the Black Lives Matter movement, because it was a matter of saying, no, we need to see how a specific community is being impacted by specific political actions. And yeah, there's a kind of tendency, I think, to maybe just say, especially when it comes to animals, to just use this nature, you know, nature is becomes the catch-phrase for all the interests there, and they get flattened, right? And the politics between different animals don't get taken into consideration. Um, but also how difficult it actually is to think about doing politics with and letting animals do politics by themselves, is it's it's it's flushed away, kind of. Um, and similarly with what you said with the the wardship model, right? I was always persuaded, I always thought the wardship model sounded

Why Popular Models Fall Short

Claudia Hirtenfelder 36:40

good. Like at least you've got a political representative in a government speaking on behalf of animals. You know, at the very least, you've got someone sitting there. But you said, uh, I mean, you made a pretty convincing argument that in many ways the wardship model can actually usher in some problems where animals are not taken seriously. They're kind of reduced to what you say, the minimal, the minimal animal instead of the maximal animal. So, really great. Uh, I want to stick with the examples. So, so Sue, you have the um, it's I think you called it the A Z A Commons, right?

Sue Donaldson 37:12

Yeah, so it's the A2A. Uh Adirondack, Adirondack to Algonquin.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 37:17

That's me not being able to read my handwriting. That's that's a Z and a two, a Z and a two looking the same. Okay. Um, so okay. We've got the place, we've got the societies, we've got groups inside communicating amongst themselves, and we've got groups communicating across one another. Then you bring into play these two concepts to try and talk about the multi-species dynamics that are going on. And on the one hand, you bring in commons, and on the other hand, you bring in agora. Now, Sue, we've spoken about agora on the show before, and I think we went down a whole different array of what constitutes agora in that episode. Uh, so I maybe want to give you a chance now to also just bring us back to what you're trying to achieve with uh making this distinction between agora and commons uh in terms of thinking about animals and their right to politics.

Sue Donaldson 38:09

Uh okay, yes. So I'm going to switch here to uh to talking about so I'll use Kingston as an example, which is in the Kingston Commons. That's the Kingston Commons that we do. Uh so Kingston is in this front neck arch corridor, uh or on the boundary of that corridor. Um so one, I think the clearest way of getting uh of thinking about the difference between the agora and the commons is to think about how a place like Kingston is both a multi-species commons and an animal agora, as we are are developing those ideas. And so

Agora Versus Commons In A City

Sue Donaldson 38:50

the members of the agora, the Kingston Agora, that's our term for the the community of humans and domesticated animals who form a shared social polity there. And the idea is that um the way to think of so we've talked about these polities as being the holding environments, right? Where we need to enable the politics of and enable the political participation of the members of those polities. So if we think of that animal agora, Kingston as an animal agora, how do we enable domesticated animals who, at least for now, are part of that agora? Over time, they may choose to leave and and become different kinds of communities. Um, but at least initially, we need to think of us all as being part of a shared political community, those of us who live in Kingston. So the reason we talk about the agora is that the, you know, the sort of ancient ideas behind the uh uh uh around the agora are very much focused on politics as an activity between individuals who live in reasonable proximity, who have chances to see each other, to get to know each other. And so we use that idea because we very much think that the relevant scale of politics for animals who share a social community with humans is going to be more local. It's going, it's neighborhoods, it's towns, it's cities. It's at a scale where it's a meaningful sized uh space for them, uh, which they can get to know and figure out how they want to live there and flourish there. Uh it's a scale at which they and and the humans living there can come to see who's who's trustworthy, who uh who is doing what and who they want to interact with. It's a scale at which we can, Will was talking earlier about making proposals, listening to proposals. It's a scale at which proposals can happen.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 40:51

So you could think about dogs, for example, uh and and dog parks, right? So I'm lucky in that I'm listening to you and I've I'm I've lived in Kingston, which is it's handy. Because I mean, obviously, so when people are thinking about domesticated animals in Kingston, there are a whole host of domesticated animals, right? There are dogs and cats, but there are also cows and chickens, and they're they're they're more invisible to people, but they are there in the city. But at the scale of what you're thinking, I mean, I could certainly see how dogs are making proposals for better dog parks in Kingston, right? Like that there's that one dog park without any shade, um, and it's inundated with with with people and pits, right?

Sue Donaldson 41:28

Yes, absolutely. And so, and proposals vis-a-vis many other things, like why can't I go into these buildings? Why why am why am I kept on a leash instead of being able to explore my town and uh and um and and meet up with my friends as I wish?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 41:44

And uh because that'll be quite strange for people outside of Kingston hearing, because like living here in Vienna, I can take Linus on the subway, I can take him into restaurants. Uh just yesterday I went shopping in a shopping center with him to buy. Uh he can't go into uh like a grocery store, but most places are open. Whereas in Kingston, they he they can't go into restaurants, he can't go on the bus. He he's much more, and he's lived in both cities. He's uh one of those international dogs. He had a much more constrained urban experience in Kingston than he's had in in Vienna in many ways, which is, yeah. Sorry, I'm derailing you here, so I keep taking you.

Sue Donaldson 42:20

No, no, you're not not at all. That's that's exactly right. So what we see is a is a is a range of uh it that gives a sense of if uh if dogs say or other domesticated animals were given greater liberty instead of being confined, were given sort of uh uh a right to to make the city their own in in ways that are important to them. Initially, Kingston might start looking more like Vienna, but then we could push that, continue to push that, right? I mean, obviously still dogs in Vienna are are are restricted in various ways. But the question is, we don't know. We don't know what kind of city with the the dogs and cats, but also all, you know, if we think about all the currently farmed animals who will be uh have to be liberated from animal exploitation industries and so on, what what role might they have in cities or towns? Uh and here we sort of think of the agora in a way we've, because of the work that we've done in sanctuaries for formerly farmed animals like Vine Sanctuary, we sort of, in our minds, kind of scaling up from that, that kind of community where various animals from different species have come together. They're making a new kind of community, right? They're figuring out, okay, how do we want to interact? How are we sharing food and deciding what kinds of spaces we need for sleeping at night and who gets them? And how do we incorporate newcomers to this community and all kinds of things that they are are making decisions about. And they're ha and they're figuring that out, right? That they're not just, I mean, they all come from very different circumstances. And different kinds of communities, but they are creating these new kinds of community. And we don't know what the direction of those might be, right? That's the whole point, is that is gradually enabling these animals to be part of this shared polity in a in a genuine sense. So what should this city look like so that I feel like I really fully belong there? It's certainly not going to be cut, carved up with all these roads with fast-moving cars that pose a lethal threat. And um, but but you know, we could run that experiment. There's probably many, many things um that's true.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 44:36

Yeah, and I think you rightly point out that there's many of these micro experiments currently happening in in cities, right? Like playing with a design, figuring out ways to have animals have more mobility and freedom. So this is an example of uh the domesticated animals having more legitimate steering rights, right?

Sue Donaldson 44:53

Yes, yep, absolutely. And so then if we think about well, what is what is the multi-species commons in relation to Kingston, then I think we're first of all, uh, so now we're thinking about all the animals who don't want to be with humans in restaurants or or going on on city buses with them or participating in various kinds of maybe social services of the city, um, and so on. So, again, going back to the idea of a place-based polity for the liminal animals there, what's really important is that they can lead their social lives the way they want to in this space. And that involves lots of coordination with the humans and domesticated animals about mobility, about access to resources, and so on. And so, first of all, if we think about that Kingston Commons geographically, it looks a little different than Kingston as a societal polity. The societal polity is really geographically, we could think of that as where humans and domesticated animals live, where their residences are, right? And that sort of gives you the boundaries of uh of a community. With the lintel animals, many of them are moving in and out of the city. So, key, a key mobility consideration is whether they can use the river systems and the lakes to and green corridors to get to move in and out of the city the way they need to do to live their life worlds. For example, in Kingston, there's a huge multi-lane highway at the north end of the city that is a major barrier for animals trying to move sort of into the adjacent countryside and so on. So, so first of all, geographically it looks a little bit different because the the if we think about the relevant community now, it includes all these all these animals who are moving through Kingston, but not necessarily always kind of residing in Kingston. And and then we're thinking about different sets of needs and concerns that the various members of that commons have uh and need to address together. And so like the squirrels, right? Yeah, so like the squirrels needing to get around Kingston, currently use like telegraph wires and so on.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 47:08

I've never seen that anywhere else. Other, I mean, I keep an eye open for it, but squirrels like the the speed and the dexterity they have of navigating Kingston above the ground, right? Like they're they're they've they've got their own highways. They've literally mobilized Kingston's infrastructure to their own purposes. Not always, I mean, I've also seen several of them being electrocuted as a result, right?

Sue Donaldson 47:29

No, that's exactly right. So A, that those, they have to use those. If if they don't, they get run over by cars, right? And and a lot of them do get run over cars. So they use what's there, but it's not far from ideal. Like the that's a it's a I mean, they're very dexterous, which is why they can actually use those wires to cross roads. But they, as you say, they get electrocuted, they fall, uh other things happen. And so what would a corridor that actually they would have a role in designing look like? And how would we go about doing that? Well, we might try out different, uh, you know, different kinds, like first we might observe where they actually want to go in the city, uh, and so how they get from a large green space where they nest to important water sources or to black walnut trees that are an important source of food. Then we might consider, okay, well, what would a safe, a safe corridor look like for them to move around the city? How do we imagine Kingston as it appears to the different squirrel communities, what they're trying to accomplish, what resources and mobility are important for them, and what might uh what might a proposal look like that actually addresses that?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 48:44

Would these then be that so so okay, so you've got the agora and the commons, and you can almost imagine them being mapped onto one another, but they map onto whatever the idea, the imaginary of Kingston is, they map slightly differently onto they they bring up but different political imaginaries, right? Because they bring different groups into focus. And so we've got, let's just for uh ease, we've got the dogs in the agora and we've got the squirrels in the commons, right? And the dogs in the agora are making some proposals that they would like to go into restaurants and not be leashed so much. And the squirrels in the commons are making proposals that they would like to have safer uh mobility routes through the city. Okay, now those on the surface end up sounding quite similar, but you're saying that the dogs are making proposals about how society should function and the level at which they should be integrated into political decision making of Kingston as Kingston as a society and as a place, I suppose. Whereas the squirrels don't get much of a say in is this more a matter of safeguarding squirrels? They they're they're they're here and they need to be protected. Um how how are those two then different to one another if both of them are making proposals? Um, like what's the what's the other than one being a liminal animal and the other being a domesticated animal, what's the what's the difference there?

Will Kymlicka 50:06

So um the idea of the commons, so we spent we spend quite a bit of time uh discussing the the I the concept of the commons and why we think it's a really important concept uh for thinking about our um our relations with liminal animals, but that it's important to also understand that the commons is quite a thin conception of political community. I it's not it doesn't have the same aspirations. So with societal polities, the goal is uh uh when when when the dogs and the humans are exercising their steering rights about a societal polity, we're we're imagining uh it's that's the vehicle for the exer for the pursuit of people's you know broadest political ambitions about how to w engage in world building. That societal politics is the vehicle by which members try to really reshape the world in in the image that they want of the future they kind of want to lead. When it comes to the commons, we need to start from the assumption that there are uh fundamentally that that the the that the denizens of the commons have fundamentally different and often competing conceptions of the world they want to live in.

Sue Donaldson 51:39

I was just gonna add as sort of some concrete examples again. If we think about the agora, this the societal polity that we share with domesticated animals, um, questions that we might be asking, like from the ground up, well, what what does uh social, what does social systems look like in the city? Like what is the what is the health care system? And if you were doing that, you know, from the ground up with animals as part of the discussion, what would a kind of one health concept say? We would be involved in each other's in those kinds of care relations of taking care of health, taking care of our food supply together, and so on. And so, what, yeah, how would we design those systems with domesticated animals from the ground up? Or how would we create new kinds of, like you mentioned the dog parks earlier? How would we reimagine with animals, domesticated animals from the ground up, what uh what our world of interaction would look like, new kinds of places and objects for for us to play together or to create together and to, yeah, just to design a city together that reflects the kind of community we want to be. So these are very sort of much more positively focused kind of visions of a shared world. But I don't think it would be appropriate to be asking those questions in relation to liminal animals. I think largely, you know, their care, they have their own care networks, they have, they have their own knowledge and ways of organizing their food systems, they have their own projects, and it and we're not trying to integrate all of those projects.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 53:20

You're not trying to get squirrels into the coffee shops. Squirrels have no interest in being in the coffee shops, and I would um, I mean, I guess. Okay, so I I've this is really, really, really, really interesting. Okay, so you've got then becomes a question of resources, right? So what where are the expectations lying when it comes to sustaining the agora and sustaining the commons? Because if we are building a society, an agora together, then that will mean that we need to think about how our resources are being used, and those resources are not exclusively for humans, even now, right? Like which humans get which resources how is deeply political and how those are distributed is is a bone of contention. But we're saying, well, animals are also, like you say, there's questions of health care and there's questions of mobility needs of different animals that have been part of our societies for thousands of years and they're deserving of more. Really, they're deserving of more of the resources that we have as a society. End of story. But now let's say we do notice that the squirrels are struggling, and now Kingston says, well, how on earth, why must our citizens put money towards their their own community? They have no interest in our future. Why should we um I mean, yes, I respect that they do their own, they do politics by themselves, they've got their own politics, we respect that. But why is there any onus on, let's say, the government of Kingston? Oh, am I

Paying The Costs Of Justice

Claudia Hirtenfelder 54:40

just making a mistake here by bringing politics back to main governance structures? What's the onus on the city to respond to their needs?

Will Kymlicka 54:48

I mean, there's there's a lot, there's a lot uh in that question. So one one aspect of that question is I mean, it's absolutely true that the model that we're proposing requires uh humans to share more with animals and to restrain our you know, uh the the the that humans have tended to be uh just uh have these voracious appetites to take over land, to take over resources in ways that are are devastating for for many animals on the planet. So in the very final chapter of the book, we we confront the question is it realistic to ask or expect humans to bear the costs involved in justice for for animals? And b both in relation to domesticated animals, so giving up on on factory farming and and uh but also in relation to the liminal animals or wild animals, we need to restrain our our tendencies to to take over their territories or to govern in ways that ignore their interests and impose costs on them. What we try to argue in that final chapter is that many of these costs So we just first of all, we just acknowledge that there's going to be that this this involves costs for humans. But on the one hand, we argue that many of these costs are transitional. It's it's gonna be like that that it that it's gonna be an adjustment to move towards the image that we uh suggest. But that once uh we get through a kind of transition phase, people will just there's there's all sorts of ways in which the image that we suggest about uh being denizens of of place-based polities and and and citizens of of animal corresponds, that these these uh offer all sorts of opportunities for humans to lead good lives. That we're not we're not uh condemning people to uh we we think uh we actually think that humans would live you know that that that there's uh you know all sorts of exciting possibilities for for ways of living together justly with animals that would be enriching and uh fun and exciting and not just deprivation. So that's part of our answer. But the other part of the answer is that the the status quo is totally unsustainable. I mean, everyone knows this.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 57:36

And so uh I like that you call it utopic, that sticking to the status quo is actually the the yeah, anyway.

Will Kymlicka 57:44

Yeah, is the fantasy fantasy, that's what you said, yeah. And so uh and and that that's both environmentally, uh in terms of uh there's also economic costs, there's psychological cost, that that in order to try to cling to this existing animal industrial complex, we're imposing all sorts of burdens on ourselves and on the world and on our politics. And so I I our hope in that final chapter is that when you when you when you really think seriously about how much, what a price we're paying to desperately cling to the status quo, and then you think about all the exciting opportunities for new forms of flourishing that would emerge, that we hope that that people will find it inspiring and motivating, and not just that they you know dread it as just as just deprivation or denial.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 58:38

Yeah, I mean, uh to sum it up, something's gotta change, right? Something's gotta something's gotta change. And um, yeah, and I think like you say, there are many arguments. Once you start to just put aside the economic demands and the demands to make profits and to sustain property and asset relations, you start to say, well, I think many of us would benefit from moving slower and being having better senses of community both with humans and um with other animals. So I have three other questions that I'd like to get to before we go to your um before we go to your your quotes. The one is sorry to bring us back to the commons again, but it was something that nagged at me a little bit while reading the book, and that was I know that you've spoken about a multi-species commons before in reference to the sanctuaries, right? But yet the idea of the commons in the book seemed different. And I just wanted to maybe, because that wasn't something that you really addressed in the book. And I don't know if that's something you want to speak to here, that maybe you're you're bringing in some kind of concept confusion, because uh it seems to me, based on what you've just said here, that what's happening in the sanctuaries is probably closer to an agora than a commons. They're both nodding, they're both nodding ferociously at me. Yeah.

Sue Donaldson 59:54

You're absolutely right. So when we used the um multispecies commons in a in a so that was a in a paper in relation to vine sanctuary, uh that was, yeah, before we had sort of fully developed this distinction between societal and place-based polities. Um and we were sort of, it was it's kind of actually fudged in that because vine sanctuary, again, is both. It's it's an Agora and a multispecies community as we would describe it. One one is the community of the rescued formerly farmed animals and their relationships with the humans there, which are much denser, involve a lot more sort of, you know, rules about interaction, a lot more care practices, a lot, all of that kind of thing. But it also is very much a multi-, you know, a um, you know, what we would call a multi-species commons because there's many liminal animals uh who come in and out of the sanctuary, um, and the important part of sanctuary life understood as a commons. So, yes, that's very confusing. Uh, and you are exactly right. And so now what we uh we we're trying to use multi-species commons as this political relationship that happens in a place-based polity, agora as this political relationship that unfolds in a societal-based um polity.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:01:20

Okay. That's really helpful. You almost need like a catch-all for all of them, I guess that's the the the politics for it. But I mean, it's always useful to pry them apart because different relationships are happening. And that so the second question I had then is fine. We've spent a lot of time now speaking about domesticated animals doing politics with humans and possibly eventually leaving humans or going off to do politics on their own. That's up to them. We've got liminal animals that are doing politics for themselves, but sometimes we're having to navigate relationships with humans in shared

Wild Animals And Treaty Diplomacy

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:01:50

spaces, for example. But I realize that we haven't really touched on wild animals here, right? So wild animals is the third kind of big group of animals that you speak about. And this brings in a different spatial imaginary and a political imaginary. Uh so I thought maybe we could just spend a spot of time talking about that without losing, you know, I don't want to lose sight of wild animals are an important part of your the project as well.

Will Kymlicka 1:02:14

So we distinguish, I mean, just for kind of as a heuristic, these two different types of non-domesticated animals, liminal animals and what we sometimes call truly wild animals or wilderness animals. And the distinction is based on uh the the level of entanglement with humans and uh human settlement. So if the these non-domesticated animals are living in areas of human settlement, we call them liminal animals. But if they live on their own territory, away from humans, and uh if they typically try to avoid contact with humans, then we call them wild animals, or truly wild animals, or wilderness animals. But the point is that they're living on their own habitat, their own territory, which has not yet at least been colonized by by humans. And so in relation to those, so our you know, one thing we claim is that there are still such animals. That there are some of our some of the people in in animal studies argue that humans have have so completely colonized the earth that there's no longer useful to think about there being such things as wild animal territories. But we just think that's wrong. There are still places of the world uh that should be seen as as belonging to the animals that live there and that have not yet been colonized by humans. So then the question is, how do we how do we enable their right to politics? And our suggestion is, on the one hand, so they form their own social groups, pods, herds, flocks, and so on, um, and they have rights to govern themselves through their own societal polities, and they also form their own kind of multi-species collectives. So there's lots of different species of wild animals in these wild animal territories, but that's basically all politics they do on their own. And then the question is what's their relationship to humans? And here our suggestion is that we might uh that we we should think of our relations with them as international relations. And you know, one of the traditions of of international relations is diplomacy. And there's been a lot of work recently about uh the why it might be useful to think of our relations with wild animals as a form of diplomacy. Um so we're not trying to integrate them into our society. Uh uh they they are separate and self-governing societies with with whom we can enter into some kind of diplomatic relations. And so uh one version of that idea uh has emerged, uh can be found in in some strands of indigenous uh thought, particularly some some of the indigenous traditions here in in North America, which which have uh uh a long tradition of thinking about having treaties with wild animal societies. So they might have a a deer treaty or a buffalo treaty uh or various kinds of fish treaties. So the um uh the this idea so we could so this is sometimes the idea of treaty diplomacy, the the that one tries to think about good relations with wild animals by thinking about what would be the terms of a of treaty diplomacy. And that's a treaty i i that would need to be continually renewed and and updated, particularly given you know things like climate change. But um so our Our suggestion is to think about our relations with wild animals in the form of treaty diplomacy, and then to think about how uh that can be injected into existing political structures. So what what would be the spaces uh in the inter in the in the international system, what would be the spaces to inject ideas and practices of treaty diplomacy? And so we we look at ideas of feder what's federalism and of interstitial federalism is is a way of trying to identify spaces and places within the structure of international law and international politics to inject ideas of treaty diplomacy. We also look at some um practices of conservation and how we think of various kinds of conservation models that often involve setting aside designating territories as conservation lands, how that could be strengthened by thinking of it through a form of treaty diplomacy that guarantees wild animals' right to politics. Uh, we also look at the rights of nature movement. Um and so all of these are so what we try to do in that chapter is identify a series of developments that we think are actually already taking place, that imp that we are what we argue is they implicitly gesture in the direction of a right to politics for wild animals. We think there are movements afoot. People recognize that if we're, you know, that if we're going to avoid the this massive extinction of all the wild animals on the planet, we need we need to somehow affirm wild animals' right to politics. And there are these movements like rights of nature, like conservation, that we think kind of gesture in that direction. And we try to show how a more explicit commitment to the idea of self-government rights for wild animals and and how uh ideas of treaty diplomacy can help make those more effective.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:08:03

Yeah. So so in essence, I mean it's almost the imaginary of out there, which obviously has its own problematics, because to have that idea of wild animals out there, you can think that, you know, they're somewhere else doing something else and of no concern, but they are of concern because these lands are diminishing. And to I mean, you've got more animals that were once, to use your words, completely and truly wild, increasingly becoming liminal because there is just no other land out there anymore, right? So they're they're entering or switching from perhaps wild to liminal, even though that's not necessarily they're not synanthropic in the way, let's say, a raccoon or a squirrel is, they just simply don't have other options. But there is, so you've got the agora, you've got the commons, and you've got a kind of idea of out there and trying to create more out there and respecting um it's not a very, it's not a very elegant word. And and the idea of trying to, I guess, uh safeguard. I'm trying to use your words here again, but like to say that theirs their space is theirs and they have a right to determine how it functions. Uh and maybe to bring another example. So we had the the dogs and the squirrels in Kingston, and as you were talking, I couldn't help but think about koalas in in uh Australia, right? So koalas in Australia rely on blue gum forests. And um, I had uh Danielle Claude on the show like two years ago, and she's her book, in effect, spoke about how they're very picky eaters. All they eat are the eucalyptus, right? And they're also quite individual in many ways, but they leave loads of scent markings on trees, and in this way they navigate their own politics amongst one another and their own social relations. But because eucalyptus forests are increasingly fragmented, being made smaller, being uh more uh further apart and spread out, uh, not only because of human actions, but also because of increasing levels of uh forest fires, et cetera, there is a rise of koalas in cities, right? So now you're starting to have city officials having to respond and think about how you can respond to koalas. It points to me that a political move that would be useful for Australia, Australia as Australia, but also as an international relationship with koalas would be the preservation of those eucalyptus, right? Instead of trying to now respond to or only respond to the fact that the abnormals are moving into their city, it's to see that movement of them into the city as an international crisis, right? Like as a there is a there is a crisis happening where there is uh a lack of land. Um, and I know that's not an example from your book. I'm just kind of running with koalas at the moment.

Sue Donaldson 1:10:35

No, that's that's a really nice example though, because I think it so it's a yes, it's a really good illustration of why projects to not just conserve existing eucalyptus forests, but to uh bridge, bridge them, to build corridors between them, to just try and preserve and extend that as a viable world in which koalas can be engaging in politics uh there on their own terms. But politics on their own terms might might change for koalas or might change for some koalas. So so it's not either or, right? So we've already, humans have already created the situation where some koalas are moving uh into cities, and so now we have some liminal populations of koalas. And who knows if that if those um even if the eucalyptus forests were allowed to regrow and reconnect, would those koalas choose to go back? Or would some of them decide that they actually, you know, uh they like city life, they form new kinds of koala communities and communities, yeah. Exactly. So we want it's not, yeah, it's not like these are models that everybody has to fit into. They're starting points for thinking about relationships, and those relationships are open, and the whole point is that animals be self-determining in those relationships, right? And so again, it could go in so many different directions.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:12:05

But it's amazing because it raises the question of is just a simple relocation? Because that's often how animals who are displaced are treated. Well, we'll replace this and we'll just we'll just pick them up and we'll put them back there, which is a denial of their politics, their culture, et cetera. So uh, I mean, I really appreciate throughout your work that you're not speaking at a species level, which I know there's a tendency to want to conflate, but the the talk of groups or flocks or communities, and that you can blend between, right? Like you mentioned bears earlier. One could imagine circus bears that are not fitting in that wild animal category, but are probably more akin to liminal, possibly even dipping a bit into domesticated animals, even though they haven't been bred over generations because they are reliant on and have had no choice in the matter, right? So I think the model, when you try to suspend a little bit the kind of conflation of species and of our imaginations of wild, domesticated and liminal, they become really fruitful. Okay, I know that we are very fast

Indigenous Rights And Shared Ground

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:13:00

approaching. I had one final question about just um I think a contribution that your book really makes, and that's I think sometimes we try to avoid talking about because it's tricky terrain, is your discussion about indigenous knowledges. So I just wanted to maybe touch on that well, indigenous knowledges and indigenous land movements, to say that oftentimes kind of animal rights is pitted against indigenous movements in in a way that's perhaps not helpful. And from, you know, both there's a whole bunch going on. And I haven't really even figured out how to talk about it myself. But I was really convinced in your book uh how you're saying that in many ways the claims and the discussions you're having about politics with animals would be an important discussion to also have uh in thinking about colonization. Yeah, I just wanted to open it up there as a final kind of thought on why you think bringing these into the same frame is important.

Will Kymlicka 1:13:56

Yeah, so there is in you know, the background is there is this uh tense, conflicted relationship um between uh animal rights advocacy and indigenous rights. It got off on the wrong foot many, many years ago, and particularly in the Canadian context for a variety of somewhat uh accidental reasons. The the the first real kind of animal rights campaign in Canada was against the the the uh seals, uh the seal hunt, and and that I mean um uh which which had which had a uh a connection with indigenous rights that people hadn't thought through and and it it was just an unfortunate, it was just unfortunate that that's that that's set in motion a kind of tense relationships. But against that background, we think the idea of animal politics and the idea that animals have a right to politics is actually uh a potential source of clear compatibility and synergy with many indigenous views. So I it's absolutely clear. I mean, there's lots of many different indigenous traditions for thinking about about animals and and uh human relations with animals, but on virtually all of them that I've heard read about, they take as just given that animals have a right to politics. And so it's a it's a sh it's a kind of surprising idea for those who are trained in the Western tradition, but for many indigenous peoples, if you ask if animals have a right to politics, they'd say, of course. What that's just self-evident. And so and as I said, we we uh and so not surprisingly it it since since uh many indigenous societies and cultures have have started from an assumption that animals have a right to politics, uh th they have thought through there are concepts uh available in those traditions that that we can learn from. And so we we take this idea of treaty diplomacy as as an example that it's the kind of thing that one would expect where societies have, for millennia, thought about animals having a right to politics, then it's likely that they they have good ideas for for how we how we can conceptualize it. And then we also argue that indigenous struggles to reclaim self-government rights and land rights and land back movements are interesting and important contexts for thinking about uh animals' right to politics. And so, for example, there uh as part of uh Indigenous land claims, there are efforts for Indigenous peoples to have a greater say in the governing of national parks. So many national parks were built, were were built by dispossessing Indigenous peoples and then calling it a national park, and Indigenous peoples rightly are re- reclaiming uh authority in relation to those national parks. And so we suggest that this like what we see here is an interesting and evolving, this is these are interesting contexts in which ideas of conservation are like these national parks are sites for evolving ideas of conservation, they're sites for evolving ideas of indigenous self-determination, but they're also uh sites for, we suggest, for evolving ideas about animals' right to politics. And that, you know, rather than starting from the assumption that these are fundamentally irreconciled, like they all there's tensions between all of these. That the animal rights agenda is not exactly equivalent to the conservation agenda, which is not exactly equivalent to indigenous land backing, but there are openings here, and people, a lot of people are interested in exploring ways of trying to see synergies as well as conflicts between these. Um, and so too with the rights of nature. And yeah, so that's we we try to in in the in the the chapter on wild animals highlight how how there we can see some interesting convergences uh uh in these projects.

Sue Donaldson 1:18:05

And also, sorry, I just wanted to add there that it's important for so for animal rights, people who say start with a kind of foundational idea of a right to life and uh a right not to be harmed and so on, that it's important that they not simply reject or stay out of these conversations about uh decolonization, about conservation, and so on, because that share that premise isn't shared across those groups and it and it isn't. But we can we can still be part of a conversation that is focused, as Will said, more at this level of well, what does a right to politics look like? And and what dimensions of that can we have reach maybe some compromises or agreements about, even though some of our, you know, we're coming from very different places and some of our foundational premises might be look quite different.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:18:59

It's also doing politics, I suppose. Like it's it's it's not a zero-sum game of this is right and that is wrong. And that's what makes, I guess, conversations about political philosophy very different. Conversations about moral philosophy is we have to navigate these tensions and and find productive means of doing so. Thank you so much. I think we've touched a lot of what's happened and moved in your book. And I know we didn't get into the capacity contract and into minimal animal, which you use as the foundation of what you are pushing back against, but I think you've shown throughout the conversation here today that uh it's an embrace of animals at the maximum, right? Would you say the maximal animal? Animals are complex, depends on the animal, depends where you're looking, um, but so are humans. And we have to appreciate that complexity and take it seriously and find ways to legitimize, I suppose, these relations. Um so thank you so much for your work. I've got a feeling it's gonna have ripple effects and a lot of people are gonna have things to say. Uh so thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh, why don't we switch to your your quotes now? I don't know if you have a shared quote or one each.

Sue Donaldson 1:20:00

Uh yeah, no, I think we'll we have one quote. Let me first say, Claudia,

Holding Environments And Animal Agency

Sue Donaldson 1:20:05

I'm really glad that you started the conversation the way you did. You know, you said rather than starting at the front end of the book, sort of to start. And I I and I really appreciate the conversation that emerged from that because Yeah, but it's it's nice because sometimes, yeah, it's hard to get beyond the first, the first part of the book. So, yeah, so thank you. And um, yeah, the quote we've chosen is from a, it's actually a an older article from 1999 by Jim Cheney and Anthony Weston. And this is a quote that we use in the introduction to the book. And it's from an article of theirs called Environmental Uh Ethics as Environmental Etiquette. And it sort of gets to the ideas that we have about uh, you know, what is the holding environment, first of all, for animal politics to happen, and how do we create that openness uh for animals to reveal, you know, how they want to live with us, if they do, um, what kinds of worlds they want to create uh with us or or not with us. So the they're concerned that a lot of thinking about animals starts from needing to know, you know, making determinations about animal characteristics and capacities. And once we have that pinned down, then we know the correct way to treat them. Um and instead they're suggesting a very different starting place. So, anyway, so here's the quote. Uh so the old idea is that you know we must first know what animals are capable of, and then decide on that basis whether and how we are to consider them ethically. On the alternative view, we will have no idea of what other animals are actually capable of. We will not readily understand them until we already have approached them ethically. That is, until we have offered them the space and time, the occasion and the acknowledgement necessary to enter into relationships uh with us. Ethics must come first. But don't you want to say politics must come first?

Will Kymlicka 1:21:55

I think their ethics there is politics, but so yeah, I I think you should reread that sentence about offering like what it the the um they they it's true they describe it as ethics, but what they say is that uh we need to offer so uh do you have those?

Sue Donaldson 1:22:18

Yep. On the alternative view, we will have no idea of what other animals are actually capable of. We will not readily understand them until we already have approached them ethically, that is, until we have offered them the space and time, the occasion, and the acknowledgement necessary to enter into relationships.

Will Kymlicka 1:22:37

Yeah, so so space, time, and opportunity and acknowledgement, like those we think are political uh that that that if you ask, what would it mean to ensure that animals have the space? What is it to ensure that they have the time, that they'd have the acknowledgement? These are not things that an individual a private individual can can do on their own. Uh uh it's that uh one way to think about that quote, or the way we think about that quote, is that it's calling on society uh uh calling on us collectively to ask what would be the conditions. What so what we're calling the holding so our interpretation of that quote is we're we're not gonna know what animals are capable of until we create the holding environment in which they can express themselves. And that's that is uh uh that's a deeply political uh on our point.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:23:42

And politics and ethics are obviously connected. I was just taking a a stab, but I mean this is I mean, yeah, this is what you speak about at the end of your book. I think in you guys are very uh you're not presupposing anything. You're saying that this is a space. We haven't done this really, like and we've done it in very minimal ways. If you want to talk about minimal anything, the interactions here have been minimal, relatively superficial, and they haven't been ambitious. And there is a lot of scope to be ambitious and to experiment with this. And maybe it's high time that we we get a little bit more um experimental with our resources and with our time and with our space. Uh, and I think that that's a very political thing in and of itself. Um, holding environment does sound a bit static, though, doesn't it? I mean, the the person you're relying on for holding environments is it's a pretty dynamic concept, I'm assuming, right? I I did go and read um Honeek's work after engaging with your stuff, and I love the idea of public things, but I didn't get to like holding environments, is it it's a dynamic concept, right? It's not as though, because as a geographer, I'm thinking about like a container. He has a holding environment, and I put the things in it and it will do fine. Uh it's it's how do you create the conditions for the good to happen, I suppose.

Sue Donaldson 1:24:59

Absolutely. It's dynamic. So individuals come to be who they are in a in a holding environment with others, and part of what they are together is shaping and changing their holding environment together, right? So um very dynamic.

Will Kymlicka 1:25:14

Yeah, so so it's important, it may be useful to the the concept is that the the concept of the holding environment is not that the environment constrains us or boxes us in, uh, but rather that there are various features of our surroundings that are the bearers and holders of our subjectivity. And so uh the the the thought is that no one, human or or non-human, is capable of we're not self-sufficient, we're not we don't hold everything of value inside our brains, that um we continually rely on the social environment and the and the material environment to remind us who we are, to be, as I say, to be the bearers and holders of our identities and agencies and affiliations. And so, yeah, this is deeply dynamic, but it it's it's it's about it's affirming almost, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:26:33

It's it's it's a it's a way of and it's not something that's necessarily conscious. I think you you you highlight that in the beginning, like how you move through the street, the extent to which you feel safe or unsafe, the the ways in which you be or are and understand yourself and others is part of this this environment, right? Uh and I guess a holding environment is one concept, a kind of conceptual move to try and bring that together. Well, thank you so much, both of you, for your work, for all of this. Uh, it's a lot to take in, but it's really awesome. And I'm I've already got like five million ideas. So as always, um thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh of course, everyone's asking you what's next. So this is um, you know, after Zoopolis, and you've dropped this. Um, are you going to continue working on some of

Future Work And Closing Thanks

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:27:20

these ideas or is there a change of pace or focus? Uh what's your what's your what's your plan, guys? What's your plan?

Sue Donaldson 1:27:29

Uh-huh. We're not quite sure. I mean, I think we for a long time we had the idea that there would be a follow-up to Zoopolis, but I don't think at this point that we're thinking, like, I think this is Yeah, that we've we've tried to give it our best shot here. And um, I I don't see that, you know, we we have a kind of clear sort of follow-up agenda. Obviously, there's lots, as you say, like there's actually quite a bit going on in the book. It's fairly dense. Like we might pull out different threads of that and and try and explore them a little more carefully. But uh yeah, no. No animal book plans at this stage.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:28:04

Well, I'm sure people will be chewing on this for a while, so I think that's totally fine. And um Will, how about you?

Will Kymlicka 1:28:11

We hope that the book will inspire people to develop, to challenge, to refine, to modify, and that this conversation will continue. And I mean I I I I I sort of hope that it'll continue both in a uh at a more conceptual level, but how do we how do we make these ideas of a right to politics and holding environments and denizenship and commons and agree? You know, I I hope people will find these theoretical ideas fertile and and will continue development, but also we've been quite pleasantly surprised uh about the number of people who have been inspired by our work to actually try some experiments on the ground in various ways, um including in the arts, and in planning and in uh education. Um and so we you know uh if if that continues, we'd obviously be thrilled to be if there are ways that we can contribute to to uh experiments and actually trying to implement these ideas. So we you know there they're we we are part of a a range of networks that are that are uh continuing to work on these issues and we're we're keen to to participate. We just haven't decided on the exact modality.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:29:34

I think if you were to stop today, people would be like, that's fine. Like you guys have done uh so much and you've created communities and and spaces. I know, like, I mean, I'm very thankful for you personally, as someone who I've gotten to know and play pool against, Will. Um but uh yeah, thank you for everything you've done, for mobilizing people and communities of people to think about these ideas, but also for putting in the time and and for yeah, living in line with the things you say. So um I'm thankful to know you and I appreciate you being on the show. And uh thank you so much for giving me so much of your time today. Thank you, Claudia. This is lots of fun.

Will Kymlicka 1:30:11

Thanks.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:30:16

Thank you to Sue Donaldson and Will Kimlika for being amazing guests and for you know creating the book, but also for sharing so generously with her thoughts and ideas in this episode here today. Thank you also to Rebecca Shen, Christian Lentz, and Harry DeBond, who do some work behind the scenes at the Animal Turn. And of course, thank you to Animals and Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics Apple for sponsoring this podcast. This episode was hosted and produced by myself. This is The Animal Turn with me, Torre Matelba.

Siobhan O'Sullivan 1:31:07

For more great iRull podcasts, visit irallpod.com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.