[Review] Penny Johnson. Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine. Melville House Publishing, 2019.

Animal Studies Journal 2021 10(1): [Review] Penny Johnson. Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine. Melville House Publishing, 2019

Ecofeminism and animal advocacy in Australia: Productive Encounters for an Integrative Ethics and Politics

The paper considers how ecological feminist philosophies can enrich the animal advocacy movement and its liberatory politics and ethics. Building on existing literature, I argue that ecofeminist theories can help deepen our thinking about our relationship with animals and the more-than-human world; about our intersectional struggle to end oppression; and about putting this into practice, especially in relation to food. I focus on the work of Australian philosopher and feminist Val Plumwood to work through these issues. I examine Plumwood’s critique of dualism and anthropocentrism and how it reflects a particular Australian vision of nature. Her take on animal Others also challenges the way humans hyperseparate themselves from nonhuman animals, background, homogenise and instrumentalise them through the ‘the abstractly quantitative and commodified concept of meat’ (Plumwood, Environmental Culture 156). In this perspective, veganism emerges as an essential step on a long journey towards building ethical relationships with nonhuman others. However, as animal advocates, we cannot presume that veganism is sufficient in and of itself because the exploitation and commodification of nonhuman animals is just one expression (albeit large-scale and with very significant consequences) of dualistic and oppressive ideologies used to justify the brutal domination of nature. Following Plumwood, I argue that we need to challenge deeply our systems of knowledge and the logical features of dualisms to face animal exploitation and the current ecocide, and to inform our approach to social change and activism. This somewhat differs from popular analyses within critical animal studies that focus on the political economy of the animal-industrial complex and target capitalism in their fight for animal liberation. Yet, the choice between addressing ideologies and structures of oppression (including economic ones) seems to be a false one, so I propose to rethink veganism along both these lines to ground it in a more ecological way, embracing the more-than-human world at large, but also in a more political way

Veganwashing Israel\u27s Dirty Laundry? Animal Politics and Nationalism in Palestine-Israel

In popular media and public discourse, Israel has been referred to as \u27the first vegan nation\u27 and the \u27global centre for veganism\u27 because of the mainstreaming of veganism in the country in the 2010s. The article examines this triumphalist rhetoric and argues that animal welfare and veganism have been enrolled as a device to narrate the Israeli nation within terms of Jewish Israeli sovereignty. The contemporary cultural politics of veganism in Israel circulate and reinforce national myths of exceptionalism tethered to a Zionist exclusionary ideology, including claims to unique victimhood, pioneering achievements and moral rectitude, which further entrench Jewish Israeli belonging and Palestinian unbelonging. Indeed, Israeli institutions have co-opted an image of \u27vegan/animal-friendliness\u27 as makers of the nation\u27s modernity and morality. Yet, drawing on fieldwork with Jewish Israeli activists, the paper argues that both the deliberate practices of veganwashing and its well-intentioned critiques overlook the nuances and ambivalences of Israeli animal politics. The paper also highlights that critiques of veganwashing do not go far enough to show how it is negotiated by Palestinian animal advocates. It suggests that focus on veganwashing as the primary debate of settler-colonial injustice and animal politics has paradoxically rendered them inaudible, and calls instead for a politics of listening

That’s the beauty of it, it’s very simple!’ Animal rights and settler colonialism in Palestine–Israel

This article examines the contemporary animal rights movement in Palestine–Israel and compares Jewish Israeli activism to Palestinian activism to illuminate the ways in which the settler colonial context shapes animal politics. The article argues that human– animal relationships constitute a significant dimension through which settler colonialism is expressed, engaged with, and resisted. As such, drawing on ethnographic material, it explores how different approaches to animal activism can obscure or reveal the racial and colonial relations they are bound up with. It considers how Jewish Israelis frame animal rights in non-intersectional ways, as a simple, single-issue movement that can be abstracted from human politics and power relations, while the Palestinian Animal League in the occupied West Bank weaves animal activism with the decolonial struggle for Palestinian self-determination in an intersectional spirit. The article hence suggests that, to a great extent, animal politics follows the patterns set up by the settler colonial regime, with the type of advocacy on behalf of animals being shaped by the sides taken within the settler state. Instances that trouble and complicate this settler/native binary are explored as well as the possibilities of coalitional politics

Actually existing intersectionality: The place-based and embodied politics of animal and human rights activism

Critiques of intersectionality as an additive and simplistic model of understanding identity politics has led to calls for renewed concepts that better grasp the complexity and potential of shared struggle. In this article, we contend that the experiences of activists attempting to practice an intersectional human and animal rights politics are a crucial yet overlooked resource in the development of such conceptual imaginaries and ethical practice. Drawing on an historical case study conducted with activists involved in the 1990s anarchist collective ‘One Struggle’ in Israel/Palestine, we argue that an ethic of shared human and animal rights struggle cannot be separated from place-based and embodied politics. We show that activists cultivating intersectional politics in practice must negotiate affective forces of discomfort, alienation and exhaustion that wear down and constrain the potential for intersectional coalitions and joint struggles. These affects are generated through state disincentives, violence the cultural politics of nationalism and incommensurable differences. In this context, intersectional politics are a precarious achievement, dependent on the capacities of activists to continue to compromise and negotiate affectively charged encounters in everyday settings. To better capture the precarious, contingent and provisional nature of animal and human rights activism, we therefore propose the concept of ‘actually existing intersectionality’, illustrating how intersectionality is retheorised via emplaced, embodied activist practices. In so doing we make visible the work through which intersectional politics coheres through negotiation by actors in particular places and times

“Lived the Pandemic Twice”: A Scoping Review of the Unequal Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Asylum Seekers and Undocumented Migrants

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is widening pre-pandemic health, social, and economic inequalities between refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers and the general population. This global scoping review examined the impact of the pandemic on community-based asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Methods: We conducted a systematic search of peer-reviewed articles in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest Central. We applied Katikireddi’s framework of understanding and addressing inequalities to examine the differential impact of the pandemic across exposure, vulnerability to infection, disease consequences, social consequences, effectiveness of control measures, and adverse consequences of control measures. Results: We included 32 articles in the review. The analysis showed that asylum seekers and undocumented migrants experienced greater exposure to the COVID-19 virus and higher infection rates. They also experienced differential social consequences in the form of job loss and lost and/or reduced work hours. The effectiveness of pandemic response measures on asylum seekers and undocumented migrants was also affected by pre-pandemic social and economic marginalisation, exclusion from pandemic-induced policy measures, lack of appropriate pandemic communication, and variable trust in governments and authority. Pandemic control measures had greater adverse consequences on asylum seekers and undocumented migrants than the general population, with the majority of studies included in this review reporting worsened mental health and social isolation conditions and reduced access to health care. Conclusions: Asylum seekers and undocumented migrants experienced a disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across the six thematic areas of comparison. Policies that reduce exposure and vulnerability to the infection, grant equitable access to health and social care, and build capacities and resilience, are critical to enable asylum seekers and undocumented migrants to cope with and recover from pre-pandemic and pandemic-induced inequalities

Building momentum: Scaling up change in community organizations

Addressing calls in Sustainable HCI to scale up our work in HCI targeting sustainability, and the current knowledge gap of how to do this practically, we here present a qualitative study of 10 sustainability-oriented community organizations that are working to scale up their change making. They are all loosely connected to a local Transition network, meaning that they are aiming at transforming current practices in society, through local and practical action, to meet challenges related to climate change. We wanted to know how they try to scale up their change making, and what role ICT plays in enabling scaling up. The study contributes new insights about three stages of scaling up, in which ICT plays different roles. We conclude with implications for HCI for how to support community organizations in scaling up, while keeping values important for working toward a more resilient society