Animal Liberators

by Sperling, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780520061989
• ISBN10: 0520061985
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1988-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

What has inspired such diverse groups as holistic health advocates, radical ecologists, and feminists to join forces in the recent passionate protests against animal experimentation? Small antivivisection groups have always existed in the United States, but the strength of the new animal rights movement, which began to develop during the late 1970s, has no parallel in modern history. Susan Sperling's brilliant investigation leads her to compare the movement today with the powerful antivivisectionist movement in Victorian Great Britain. She exposes the tensions and anxieties about technology which underlie these protests. Antivivisectionists in both periods have perceived scientific and medical technologies as manipulative, invasive, and exploitative, overwhelming human lives as well as those of animals. Animal Liberatorsexamines the important links between past and present animal rights movements and the movements for radical feminism, ecology, and holistic health. The book also explores changing ideas of animals in modern culture. In the decades since the 1960s our interest as a society in studies of animals has been manifested in a wide scholarly and popular literature. The complex social behavior of apes, dolphins, and other mammals is now part of the popular imagination of our culture. The great popularity of these accounts of animal behavior has created an image of animals on the border of humanity, and that image fuels antivivisection sentiment. The author has conducted probing interviews with many of the architects of the contemporary animal rights movement, revealing aspects not widely understood. Biomedical scientists, animal lovers, and a concerned public will find important implications for public policy in this thoughtful book.