Authors
Núria Almiron
Publication date
2016
Journal
The Political Economy of Communication
Volume
4
Issue
2
Description
This article argues that the political economy of communication is ready and ethically obliged to expand its moral vision beyond human life, as other disciplines of the social sciences and humanities have already done. Such an expanded moral vision does not mean pushing human suffering to the background, but rather realizing that humans only form part of the planet, and are not above it. Not assigning individuals of other species the same moral consideration we do human beings has no ethical grounding and is actually deeply entangled with our own suffering within capitalist societies–it being particularly connected with human inequality, power relations, and economic interests. Decentering humanity to embrace a truly egalitarian view is the next natural step in a field driven by moral values and concerned with the inequality triggered by power relations. To make this step forward, this article considers the tenets of critical animal studies (CAS), an emerging interdisciplinary field which embraces traditional critical political economy concerns, including hegemonic power and oppression, from a non-anthropocentric moral stance.
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