A Question of Citizenship

Despite achieving broad acceptance of the moral case for treating animals fairly, the animal rights movement has reached an impasse concerning legal rights for animals. Zoopolis proposes a new approach to addressing this failure: integrating animal interests into human society via political institutions and practices. Zoopolis’s central theory that humans owe animals citizenship rights in a shared human-animal society, but that acceptance of responsibilities by animals also is required, has merit for the advancement (and acceptance) of animal rights discourse. But its anthropocentric approach, which itself exerts power over animals, necessitating suppression and policing of animals’ natural behavior, is problematic.