Transcript Liminal Animals

Liminal Animals
Creation of Animal Denizenship
By
Shannon Hart Jason Etter
Tina Huynh
Abigail Whitacre
Avery Stefan
Rebecca Moore
Zain Meghani
What Are
Liminal Animals
• Animals that live in
proximity to humans but
are not domesticated or
wild
• Largely ignored by Animal
Rights Theorists
• Often seen as alien or
invaders
• Extermination and
Domestication are
unrealistic
• Denizenship is a possible
option
•
Give up certain responsibilities in
order to coexist
Need for a Denizenship Model
 Some liminal animals have no other place to go
 Humans need to limit the introduction of new liminal animals
 Barriers for migration
 Reduce incentives
 Use active disincentives
 Need to accept that liminal animals belong
 Denizenship is necessary because Co-Citizenship is unfeasible
 Important to note that they benefit from human environments
not human interaction
Diversity Amongst
Liminal Animals
 4 Main categories of Liminal animals
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Opportunists
Niche
Introduced Exotics
Feral
 Animals from different categories benefit in different
ways from human proximity
 Animals of related species exist as wild, domesticated,
and liminal animals
 Not all animals in urban environments are liminal
OPPORTUNISTS
 Highly adaptive species, learn to survive in fast
changing human-built environments
 Some exist in the wild, but most are found in
urban environments
 Ex. White-tailed deer, mallard ducks, liminal foxes,
opossums
 Non-specific dependence
 Often viewed as “nuisance species” or potential threats
 They belong here/have every right to remain here
 Synanthropic opportunists
 House sparrows & mice
 Don’t have options in the wild
NICHE SPECIALISTS
 Less flexible species than opportunists
 Have adapted to human environments over time
 Ex. Wild animals who live in regions with long-standing
traditional agriculture
 Cannot readily leave their environment or adapt
to rapid change
 Suppressed population growth
 Suffering of individuals
 Rarely the targets of extermination
efforts
 Vulnerable to negligence and
inadvertent harm
Ferals
 Domesticated animals and their descendants who escaped human
control
 Some may benefit from returning to domestication, but many
species have adapted to their environment and have become a
liminal species
 Some cities respond to ferals negatively by attempting mass
extermination, while others respond positively and provide
shelters, food, and health care
 Some species are considered invasive and detrimental to the
ecosystem, but that’s not often the case; many species can impact
the ecosystem positively or neutrally
 Some species are helpful to humans by controlling pest
populations
Introduced Exotics
 Non-native animals introduced to the environment on
purpose or on accident
 Many people see all non-native species as invasive and
detrimental to the ecosystem (and thus believe in a massextermination or some other method of control)
 However, many introduced species can have a neutral
role in the ecosystem (thrive but do not outcompete, or
outcompete but does not impact ecosystem) or a positive
role (interbreeding and increasing diversity in native
species)
Denizenship in Human
Political Communities
 Animals
 Domesticated – bred to be a part of human society
 Wild – keep distance from humans
 Liminal – live amongst us but with limited human
interaction
 Humans
 Co-Citizens – live and participate fully in society
 Foreigners – everyone else
 Denizens – live amongst us but not as co-citizens
Opt-out Denizenship: Rights and the
Amish
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“Modern democratic states are based on social ethos of participation and
cooperation of affiliation (pg 231).”
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Amish – view large society as worldly and corrupt and choose to “opt-out” of
citizenship but continue to live in the U.S. (pg 231)
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Do not contribute to:
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Jury Duty
Military Service
Public Pensions
Government Education programs
Taxes
Benefits that are not received:
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Voting
Political Candidacy
Public Courts
Welfare and Pension Programs
Problems?
 Freeloading off the government
 Sheer numbers
 Exit options
 Vulnerability of individual citizens
Migrant Denizenship
 Migration across international borders
 Migrants may have no religious or cultural objections
to the ethos of modern citizenship, but may not want to
enact their citizenship in their current country of
residence
 May continue to see themselves as citizens of their
country of origin even after living abroad for extended
periods, and so may seek only denizenship rather than
citizenship
Migrant Denizens in the
Contemporary World
 Illegal migrants in search of work
 State-sanctioned migrant workers
 Should countries admit permanent immigrants? Or,
would this be ineffective and unfair in cases?
 The denizenship solution: weaker than citizenship,
but not unfair or oppressive
Limitations
 To be denizens, migrants must be more than merely
temporary foreign visitors
 Different from traditional immigrants with the
expectation and promise of full citizenship
 Migrant Denizens are long-term residents but not
citizens
How Migrant Denizenship
Works
 Division of labor between states
 “On this model, migrants are not ‘perceived as helpless
second-class citizens’, but rather as people ‘whose
equality of status is secured not by their full inclusion
within the host society but by the recognition of their
special position and the public awareness of their
contingent and temporary relation to that society
(Ottonelli and Torresi forthcoming).” p.237
 For illegal immigrants (vs. authorized migrant workers),
states can use barriers and disincentives to keep them
out, but once they are in they must be accommodated as
seen appropriate: either with full citizenship or
denizenship, depending on their level of integration
Three Clusters of Issues
1.
Security of Residence
-rights increase over time while living within an area
(p. 239)
2.
Reciprocity of denizenship
A. part-time or temporary residents (p. 240)
B. a weakened form of affiliation (p. 240)
3. Anti-stigma safeguards
-states have special responsibility to protect vulnerable
denizens (p. 240)
Defining the Terms of
Animal Denizenship
 Exclusion and invisibility, “out of place” (p. 240)
 In or out choice (p. 240)
1. Secure residency- right to residency, over time acquire
right to stay (p. 241)
2. Fair terms of reciprocity- weaker relationship than full
citizens (p. 241)
-subject to predator prey relations (p. 242)
-humans differ from animals within this
aspect
because animals are not protected from killing or
starvation (p. 243)
Defining the Terms of
Animal Denizenship Cont.
-they do not want to be citizens
-future of denizens unpredictable (p. 243)
-we try to control the population of these
animals
by limiting food sources and nesting sites (p. 246)
3.
Anti-stigma- treated as outcasts and become isolated (p.
248)
-protection backed up by law (p. 248)
-looks at annoyance instead of benefits of
coexistence (p. 249)
Conclusion
 “We must devise strategies for coexistence which
recognize animals’ rights as well as our own.”
 “If we operate on the idea that adaptive animals are
illegal aliens […] we are going to fail.”
Conclusion
 Liminal animals cannot be full citizens because they
cannot contribute to society
 Treating them as denizens mean we should give
“reasonable accommodation of their interests in the way
we develop the human-built environment”
 At the same time, we have the right to limit increases in
liminal animal populations (e.g. Dog keeping geese off
golf course)
Objections
 If we give liminal animals rights, how do we uphold
those rights? (e.g. Can Animals Sue? article)
 Human legal denizenship comes from negotiation,
but we cannot negotiate with animals.