Tagline: "Expanding our sense of self to save the world in which we live." With The Human Animal Earthling Identity, communication professor Carrie P. Freeman asks us to reconsider the devastating division we have created between the human and animal conditions, leading to mass exploitation, injustice, and extinction. As a remedy, Freeman believes all social movements should collectively foster a cultural shift in human identity away from an egoistic anthropocentrism (human-centered outlook) and toward a universal altruism (species-centered ethic), so people may begin to see themselves more broadly as "human animal earthlings."
To formulate the basis for this identity shift, Freeman examines overlapping values (supporting life, fairness, responsibility, and unity) that are common in global rights declarations and in the current campaign messages of sixteen international social movement organizations that work on human/civil rights, nonhuman animal protection, and/or environmental issues, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, CARE, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the World Wildlife Fund, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Rainforest Action Network, and Greenpeace. She also interviews the leaders of these advocacy groups and other activists to gain their insights on how human and nonhuman protection causes can become allies by engaging common opponents and activating shared values and goals on issues such as the climate crisis, forced labor and captivity, extinction, pollution, inequality, destructive farming and fishing, and threats to democracy.
Freeman's analysis of activist discourse considers ethical ideologies on behalf of social justice, animal rights, and environmentalism, using animal rights' respect for sentient individuals as a bridge connecting human rights to a more holistic valuing of species and ecological systems. Ultimately, Freeman uses her findings to recommend a set of universal values around which all social movements' campaign messages can collectively cultivate respectful relations between "human animal earthlings," fellow sentient beings, and the natural world we share.
The Human Animal Earthling's slogan would be "Share the planet. Support Life. Take Care. Play Fair."
This book by UGA Press is applicable to a scholarly audience or anyone interested in fostering positive social change. Find out more at the author's book website humananimalearthlings.com
CARRIE P. FREEMAN, PhD is an associate professor of communication at Georgia State University and the author of Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights, as well as over 20 academic journal articles and book chapters on topics such as critical media studies, strategic communication for social change, environmental communication, media ethics, and critical animal studies. An activist-scholar, Dr. Freeman has run grassroots animal rights and veg groups and is the co-author of the animalsandmedia.org media guidelines and co-hosts the "In Tune to Nature" radio podcast.
