CultureShift Book Club: Zoopolis

Please RSVP here: bit.ly/ffacshift5

Join FFAC’s CultureShift Book Club! Meetings will take place on the first Tuesday of each month, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. PT. We’ll be discussing a variety of books and long-form articles that explore speciesism, racism, sexism, materialism, and their interconnections. Everyone is welcome!

This month we are reading selections from Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka.

Donaldson and Kymlicka argue that different types of animals stand in different relationships to human political communities. Domesticated animals should be seen as full members of human-animal mixed communities, participating in the cooperative project of shared citizenship. Wilderness animals, by contrast, form their own sovereign communities entitled to protection against colonization, invasion, domination and other threats to self-determination. 'Liminal' animals who are wild but live in the midst of human settlement (such as crows or raccoons) should be seen as "denizens," resident of our societies, but not fully included in rights and responsibilities of citizenship. To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights.

We will only be reading the 15-page introduction to this book, and will share these pages with you when you register for this event.