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Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation

The Rise of the Eco-Ability Movement

by Anthony J. Nocella II (Volume editor) Judy Bentley (Volume editor) Janet M. Duncan (Volume editor)
©2012 Textbook XXIV, 260 Pages

Summary

This provocative and groundbreaking book is the first of its kind to propose the concept of Eco-ability: the intersectionality of the ecological world, persons with disabilities, and nonhuman animals. Rooted in disability studies and rights, environmentalism, and animal advocacy, this book calls for a social justice theory and movement that dismantles constructed «normalcy», ableism, speciesism, and ecological destruction while promoting mutual interdependence, collaboration, respect for difference, and inclusivity of our world. Eco-ability provides a positive, liberating, and empowering philosophy for educators and activists alike.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Foreword (Julie Andrzejewski)
  • Introduction: The Rise of Eco-Ability (Anthony J. Nocella II, Judy K. C. Bentley, and Janet M. Duncan)
  • Part I: Pedagogy
  • 1. Defining Eco-Ability: Social Justice and the Intersectionality of Disability, Nonhuman Animals, and Ecology (Anthony J. Nocella II)
  • 2. Human Disabilities, Nonhuman Animals, and Nature: Toxic Constructs and Transformative Technologies (Judy K. C. Bentley)
  • 3. Interdependence, Capability, and Competence as a Framework for Eco-Ability (Janet M. Duncan)
  • Part II: Identity Constructions
  • 4. Critical Perspectives on Disability Studies and Social Constructions of Environments: Commoditization and Its Effect on Society and Nature (Robin M. Smith and Jack P. Manno)
  • 5. Disney’s Little “Freak” Show of Animals in Nature: A Dis-Ability Pedagogical Perspective on the Disney Industrial Complex (Amber E. George)
  • 6. Transnational Feminism and Eco-Ability: Transgressing the Borders of Normalcy and Nation (Sarat Colling)
  • Part III: A Challenge to Oppressive Relationships
  • 7. Disableism Within Animal Advocacy and Environmentalism (A. J. Withers)
  • 8. Therapeutic Relationships Within the Biotic Community (Bill Lindquist and Anna Grimm)
  • 9. Institutional and Common Oppression of People with Disabilities, Nonhuman Species, and the Environment in Italy (Alessandro Arrigoni)
  • Part IV: Policy and Practice
  • 10. Shocking Into Submission: Suppressive Practices and Use of Behavior Modification on Nonhuman Animals, People with Disabilities, and the Environment (Deanna Adams and Kimberly Socha)
  • 11. Eco-Ability: Putting Theory into Action (Lynn Anderson, Vicki Wilkins, and Laurie Penney-McGee)
  • 12. Private, Public, or Compassionate: Animal Rights and Disability Rights Laws (Carrie Griffin Basas)
  • Part V: Inclusive World
  • 13. Infinite Ethics: An Inclusive Vision for a Diverse World (Norm Phelps)
  • 14. Developmental Disability, Animal Oppression, and the Environment (David Nibert)
  • 15. Eco-Ability Theory in Action: A Challenge to Ableism in the Environmental Movement (Anthony J. Nocella II)
  • Contributor Biographies
  • Index

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Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments are so important because it is impossible to be here or do anything on this planet without the support of others. We—Anthony, Judy, and Janet—would like to thank first and foremost Connie, Justin, and everyone at Peter Lang, especially Chris Myers, Bernadette Shade, and Stephen Mazur. We would also like to thank Julie Andrzejewski for writing a wonderful foreword to the book, and all the contributors of the book, Robin M. Smith, Jack P. Manno, Amber George, Sarat Colling, A. J. Withers, Bill Lindquist, Anna Grimm, Alessandro Arrigoni, Deanna Adams, Kimberly Socha, Lynn Anderson, Vicki Wilkins, Laurie Penney-McGee, Carrie Griffin Basas, Norm Phelps, and David Nibert, for if they were not involved, this book would not be possible. We would also like to thank, in no particular order, Zack Furness, Leslie James Pickering, Corey Lewis, Diane R. Wiener, Susan Thomas, Renee L. Wonser, David Pellow, Erica Meiners, John Alessio, and Jason Del Gandio, who have supported this book by reviewing it. We would finally like to thank our families and our many friends, colleagues, universities, centers, institutes, and organizations.

Judy K. C. Bentley: I would like to thank all the human and nonhuman animals it has been my great honor and privilege to know and live among, and in particular my son, Toby; my coeditors and colleagues, Anthony and Janet; a dog named Clyde; and my students at SUNY Cortland, all of whom give me faith and inspiration in the future of eco-ability, education, and social justice.

←ix | x→

Janet Duncan: I would like to thank my friend and mentor, Peter Knoblock, and my dear friends, Sue and Bob Lehr. At SUNY Cortland, colleagues in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, the Inclusive Recreation Resource Center, and the Institute for Disability Studies were invaluable in providing critical analysis when needed. The student organizations, Cortland Animal Allies, and Meeting Advocacy with Disability, under the leadership of Ashley Mosgrove, were instrumental in helping others think about these issues on campus. The people in my personal life who kept the momentum going for the project, and who inspire me daily, are my husband, Robert Alexander, son Evan, and Wally. A special thanks to my father-in-law, Dr. Maurice Alexander, who was one of the original ecologists at SUNY ESF, “back in the day,” before it was cool and mainstream.

Anthony J. Nocella II: I would first like to thank my family, who always say they come last in every acknowledgment of mine. Next I would like to thank Janet and Judy for being amazing friends and coeditors of this great, important, critical book. I would also like to thank my advisors, Peter Castro, Richard Loder, Micere Mugo, Tucker Culbertson, Piers Beirne, Kishi Ducre, Barbara Applebaum, and Dalia Rodriguez at Syracuse University. I would also like to thank all of my friends and colleagues at SUNY Cortland and Le Moyne College for their support and care. I would like to thank everyone with Save the Kids in and outside the walls of detention facilities; everyone with the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, especially the board members, Susan Thomas, Carolyn Drew, Sarat Colling, Amber Gilewski, Stephanie Jenkins, Helena Pedersen, Les Mitchell, Colin Salter, Vasile Stanescu, Nicola Taylor, Richard Twine, Richard White, Felipe Andrusco, Kimberly Socha, and Dylan Powell; everyone with the Central New York Peace Studies Consortium, the Peace Studies Journal, the Journal for Critical Animal Studies, the Journal for Critical Urban Education, the Center for Excellence in Urban Teaching, the Institute for Hip Hop Knowledge, Hillbrook Youth Detention Facility, Hamline University, and of course the Hamline School of Education. Finally, my friends, in no particular order, Ernesto Aguilar, Josh Baker, Mecke Nagel, Donald Easton-Brooks, Matt Hernandez, Lara Drew, Laura Shields, Jay Grims, Alma Williams, Kevin Beacham, Naomi Taylor, Jean Strait, Rachel Endo, Frank Hernandez, Tessa Tiogress, Moses Jame, Stephanie Robinson, Taylor Andrew, Peter McLaren, Brian Trautman, Liat Ben-Moshe, Don Sawyer, Daniel Hodge, James Czarniak, Jackie Denero, Catherine Garrone, and Hasan Stephens. I would like to especially remember and thank my late best friend and roommate loved by many, Kevin Pieluszczak.

←x | xi→
 

Foreword

Julie Andrzejewski

Every day alternative, nonprofit press sites post urgent warnings from reputable and documentable sources about worsening conditions of various ecologies of the earth: the acidification of the oceans, the release of methane by the melting of permafrost, the massive vortices of plastic garbage expanding in many oceans, contaminated food created by genetically engineered plants, the toxic and radioactive legacy of contemporary warfare, and the list goes on. Similarly, every day alternative publications bring news of increasing inequalities, social injustices, and violence experienced by many of the world’s communities and peoples: aggressive wars of domination and exploitation, extreme poverty and desperation, global food and water shortages, systematic life advantages or disadvantages based on physical, cultural, or behavioral characteristics, and more. Much more irregularly, such sites expose systemic atrocities against other animals and life forms: the violence and abuse of factory farming, the emptying of the oceans by massive trawlers, the shocking and rapid mass extinction of species.

Very few of these crucial pieces of information are published in the corporate-owned press, where owners and directors are busy protecting the profits of the wealthy and their corporations. Because acts of censorship and heavily funded propaganda campaigns deny or raise doubts about such alarming developments, the damaging but profitable policies creating these conditions continue unchallenged by the mainstream, uninformed public. Even fewer articles and publications attempt to critically analyze how these trends, events, and policies ←xi | xii→are integrally related by underlying agendas and actions of the economic and political elites.

Fortunately, some activists and scholars are forging ahead to study, investigate, and act on the junctures of justice for humans, other animals, and the earth. Working at the frontiers of what at first may appear to be disparate movements of social and environmental justice, the authors of Earth, Animal and Disability Liberation: The Emergence of the Eco-Ability Movement spotlight the root causes of contemporary global subjugation and exploitation. The authors critically dissect disciplinary hegemonies that have created “versions of the truth” used to manufacture social conformity to constructed ideologies of what is “normal” and “natural.”

These pages unveil previously unexamined facets of the life- and earth-threatening consequences of the insidious activities of advanced industrial capitalism and the links between the commoditization and domination of people with disabilities, nonhuman animals, and non-sentient life. In Earth, Animal and Disability Liberation: The Emergence of the Eco-Ability Movement the authors challenge layers of concealed “hierarchies of worth” in the human/other animal, ability/disability, “civilization”/nature, uniformity/diversity binaries. They expose and connect manipulative endeavors to dominate, control, and profit, such as the Project Fishbowl, behavior modification, eugenics, the promotion of “meat”-eating, counterinsurgency programs, vivisection, free-trade agreements, shock treatments, monocultures, and more. They demonstrate how the causes of these severe problems and the activism needed to reverse and alleviate them (where possible) are, in fact, not disparate but intimately and fundamentally joined.

Earth, Animal and Disability Liberation: The Emergence of the Eco-Ability Movement is the first book to excavate and scrutinize the intersections of these crucial issues, along with important connections to race, class, and gender. This ovular work will help forge the basis for innovative activism when nonelite humans take the initiative to generate profound changes in human thinking, institutions, actions, and lifestyles.

←xii | xiii→

The Rise of Eco-Ability

Anthony J. Nocella II, Judy K. C. Bentley, and Janet M. Duncan

A positive and proactive field of scholarship would truly embrace differing abilities and a theory of ability; hence the notion of developing ability studies and doing away with the concept of disability or dis-ability makes the most sense. To understand one’s ability or dis-ability, we must also see the similarities and how the two are directly related. One has abilities because of one’s particular physical and/or intellectual capabilities, technological assistance, or society’s respect for a particular inclusion of a group. When a group is not accepted, or an individual is unable to utilize (access) something such as a computer, it is external factors in the environment that lead them to become “disabled.” Where ecology meets ability, human and nonhuman animals and nature are seen as truly diverse and interdependent—not equal, but different—in the most liberating sense of the word.

Ecology Meets Ability

Eco-ability interrogates normalcy, ableism, and civilization, in the manner of ecofeminism (Gaard, 1993), critical scholarship on eco-racism (Bullard, 1993), and eco-colonialism (Best & Nocella, 2006), which are social manifestations of oppression and domination, rooted in patriarchy, racism, and colonization. Similar to the field of eco-feminism that rose out of the feminist and deep ecology movements in the early 1970s and critiqued patriarchal domination of nature, ←xiii | xiv→nonhuman animals, and women (Warren & Erkal, 1997), eco-ability arose out of the animal advocacy, environmental, and disability rights movements, to challenge domination of normalcy, competition, and individualism. Eco-ability challenges ableism and normalcy within the environmental movement. Eco-ability advocates for a new understanding of nature as diverse and interdependent, with each part, regardless of size, function, or impact, having a valued role to play. Life is not about the survival of the fittest, as if one were the only resident of an island, or a social Darwinian notion of competition, where there is a winner and a loser. Rather, we must recognize how the bio-community promotes a win-win situation instead of the win-lose relationship with other species. In contrast, humans have for centuries disregarded nature as a force to honor, support, and value, resulting in the destruction of countless species and biomes. Eco-ability is derived from the concept that the survival of humans, nonhuman animals, and the biosphere as interdependent forces is of greater importance.

When a natural disaster or massive oil spill by a corporation (such as British Petroleum) in the Gulf Coast off the United States wipes one species off this planet, that extinction and event affect us all. The theory of eco-ability employs the concept of the web of life, which stresses that all are unique with differing abilities (e.g., flying, walking, swimming, slithering, and jumping). Interrelationships, interconnectedness, and interdependence must be respected and valued. Respect means understanding and valuing the needs of another being or element because it liberates, frees, and completes one’s self. Respect is greatly different from tolerance, or acceptance, which arise from places of domination. Tolerance is the act of not wanting someone in a specific place but managing to act in a way that does not physically force the person out of that place (by trying to fire them, beat them, or verbally insult them). Acceptance is too often an act of approving of someone’s presence or existence, while having ownership and domination over the place.

In contrast, within an eco-ability perspective, respect is mutual for all parties involved, and not simply for the Other that is being referred to. We must respect all for their value toward the larger bio-community and strive for global inclusion. The term, global inclusion has taken on new meanings as part of a lexicon for global trade, international development, and, in many ways, is co-opted by transnational corporations as part of doing business. Here, global inclusion is a critical theory that is more of a process and a perspective than a state of being, one that is continuously challenging the notion of community and the barriers, borders, and boundaries we construct. These barriers, borders, and boundaries foster a devaluing and exclusionary relationship to others, found, for example, in the many urban parks, apartments, schools, and public transportation vehicles that do not allow dogs and other nonhuman animals. Hence, when we employ universal design toward a school, park, or company to challenge ableism and speciesism, we must ←xiv | xv→welcome plants and nonhuman animals. The Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University defines universal design as, “the idea that all new environments and products, to the greatest extent possible, should be usable by everyone regardless of their age, ability, or circumstance” (2010, para. 1).

The traditional field of special education developed in response to fixing, curing, and rehabilitating people with disabilities, at a time when little, if any, care was provided to people and their families. At the time, this “service” was helpful as a first stage toward tolerance in society. Still, this treatment was ableist in focus: if you can endure physical therapy you might be able to walk; if you practice penmanship long enough you can write; if you can learn self-help skills you might be able to live independently.

In the early 1970s Wolf Wolfensberger (1972) proposed a theory of “normalization,” suggesting that people with disabilities should lead as normal a life as possible, with assistance from caregivers. This theory evolved, too, with a recognition that in order for people to lead normal lives, they also had to play socially valued roles in society. This thinking removed people with disabilities from a charity model toward an acceptance in society. With school mainstreaming efforts, followed by school integration of students with disabilities, and now inclusive education, the field of special education has evolved toward inclusive practices.

The field of disability studies developed from the sociological examination of people with disabilities in society, which had been based on the concept of deviance in sociological studies. Early on, Bogdan and Taylor (1987) challenged this notion of deviance, once accepted as a truth, and posited the corollary: people with disabilities are accepted in their communities, with many examples of love, compassion, and inclusion.

Still, the field of disability studies evolves, in keeping with academic fields such as critical theory, feminism, environmentalism, and animal rights. Scholarship in disability studies today focuses on the power relationships in society between and among people with disabilities, the struggles for acceptance, self-advocacy, and finding a place within society. As in all fields of study, there are several points of view and perspectives to appreciate. In this book, eco-ability stresses the socially valued roles people with disabilities play, and, further, that society needs to embrace difference in ability as a continuum of the human condition.

One of the few arguments made to discuss the complex connections between the two (ecology and people with disabilities) was during a panel Dr. Nocella coorganized with Dr. Judy K. C. Bentley at the Peace Studies Conference hosted by the Central New York Peace Studies Consortium in 2007, at SUNY Cortland. In one of the papers presented on the panel, “Disability Studies and the Social Construction of Environments,” Dr. Robin M. Smith and Dr. Jack P. Manno stressed that disability, as well as the environment, is a social constructions developed ←xv | xvi→through relationships, noting: “These relationships are institutional, cultural, and interpersonal social structures” (Smith & Manno, 2008, p. 2). They went on to write, citing Manno (2000):

The social construct “environment” is defined through a web of socio-economic relationships that privileges commodities over relationships, where a tree is regarded far more as timber and paper pulp than as oxygen producer, shelter for beings, builder of soil or the many other roles it plays in a complex set of ecosystem relationships (Manno, 2000). (Smith & Manno, 2008, p. 3)

Rather than being recognized as members of a large and complex eco-community, domesticated animals such as cows, monkeys, and horses are viewed by human society as mere resources to be exploited for profit. This is promoted in the ideological interests of capital, according to which people are either producers or consumers.

Capitalists and Marxists view people with disabilities as limited consumers (as a purchasing power group) and producers, never able to be useful enough to be part of the serious means of production. On the contrary, people with disabilities are significant consumers of medicine, technology, and goods. Just as green anarchists view people with disabilities as a liability to a self-sustaining community, capitalists devalue the role of these individuals as consumers. While important in the relationship of consumer and producer, this notion also needs critique because much of the medicine produced is tested on nonhuman animals, and the production of it causes a great amount of pollution, not to mention pain. Further, the medicine that is produced often has adverse effects and is highly addictive, causing the user to become dependent.

Details

Pages
XXIV, 260
Year
2012
ISBN (PDF)
9781636670836
ISBN (ePUB)
9781636670843
ISBN (Softcover)
9781433115066
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433115073
DOI
10.3726/b20594
Language
English
Publication date
2022 (December)
Keywords
speciesism environmentalism collaboration
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2012. XXIV, 260 pp.

Biographical notes

Anthony J. Nocella II (Volume editor) Judy Bentley (Volume editor) Janet M. Duncan (Volume editor)

Anthony J. Nocella II, PhD, is Visiting Professor in the School of Education at Hamline University, and co-founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies. Judy K. C. Bentley, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Foundations and Social Advocacy at the State University of New York and founding Editor-In-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Social Advocacy and Systems Change. Janet M. Duncan, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Foundations and Social Advocacy at the State University of New York. She is widely published on international human rights and disability studies.

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