Sentientism 178: "A commitment to solidarity and a stubborn commitment to hope" - Defending Animals Author - Kendra Coulter - Sentientism
Kendra is a professor at Huron University and a fellow of the OxfordCentre for Animal Ethics. She is a leading expert on animals and work, animal protection organizations and policy, and gender equity. Kendra has led multiple research projects enriching our understanding of human-animal work and animals’ own forms of labour in important new directions including through development of the concepts of humane jobs, interspecies solidarity, and ecosocial reproduction.
Kendra's latest book is Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. She is the author of dozens of scholarly articles, book chapters, and public reports, as well as the path-making Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. She is the co-editor of Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? Kendra has also published more than sixty columns including for The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Salon, Ottawa Citizen, Winnipeg Free Press, Edmonton Journal, The Conversation, iPolitics, and National Observer. Her work has so far been translated into French, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, German, and Bahasa Indonesia.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Clips!
01:17 Welcome
- 3 previous guests did blurbs for Kendra's new book: Ziya Tong, Marc Bekoff, Jeff Sebo
03:02 Kendra's Intro
- "I'm not related to Ann Coulter... we have slightly different worldviews" :)
- "The primary purpose of my life is to improve and save animals' lives"
- "Cultivating empathy and compassion"
- Discriminatory "isms" and proactive, agitational, generative "isms"
- "Foregrounding sentient beings is a very powerful mobilising way of thinking about the positives... trying to find unity and common cause"
- JW: "Just rejecting the negative isms isn't quite enough... we also some sort of positive stance about what we do care about... who should matter."
- "We need to critique the problems... we also simultaneously need to be developing and proposing alternatives and solutions"
05:55 What's Real?
- Riding horses before walking, "learning how to be kind to animals"
- Raised by left-wing atheists
- "To this day I maintain a very progressive worldview... however... I have become less ideological"
- "Crucial to have an ethical core... but that the process of inquiry... evidence gathering and analysis... is absolutely essential"
- Dialogue with groups who have different views "while recognising that certain worldviews are antithetical to justice and equity for humans and other beings"
- Field research "experiencing things with your body... being out engaging... not reclining into the ivory tower"
- Amplifying and communicating with broad audiences "Public intellectual is one of the best compliments you can give someone... your ideas matter... using ideas to inspire action"
- Open mindedness based on evidence and data "but never losing those core commitments... equity... solidarity... justice"
15:11 What Matters?
26:36 Who Matters?
49:10 A Better World?
01:02:04 Follow Kendra
- https://twitter.com/DrKendraCoulter
- https://huronatwestern.ca/profiles/faculty/kendra-coulter-phd/ - https://www.instagram.com/gifted.horse/
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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