The Limits of Species Advocacy

Abstract

Boyer offers an innovative analysis of the relationship between species protection and the different ways we are able to become emotionally responsive and morally committed to animals in politics. Using the politicalization of polar bear advocacy as an illustration, this chapter draws attention to how species advocacy comes to be transposed onto politics through habitat protection or other intermediary political goals not exclusive to species protection. The chapter reveals species advocacy as existing through single, sometimes competing incarnations of advocacy. By referring to literature that discusses anthropocentrism, altruism, and the representation of animals, Boyer is able to uncover the psycho-social conditions that underlie and guide much of todays popularized species advocacy -- ultimately leading us to ask the troubling question of whether it is our attachment towards species and the manner in which it becomes articulated in politics, which poses the greatest threat to species protection.