9 - Justice for All? Expanding Questions and Spaces of (In)Justice through Multispecies Research, Teaching and Activism

Summary

A great swathe of the rapidly expanding fields of critical animal geographies and vegan geographies (Hodge et al, 2022) are driven by a desire to better articulate, conceptualize and respond to a range of complex themes and questions rooted in multispecies justice (MSJ). In contrast, when considering broader (inter)disciplinary ‘critical’ geographies narratives of social justice, the appeal for multispecies accounts of justice to come to the fore is still seen to be a deeply contentious and ‘radical’ or extreme position to take. Yet, if there is one thing that the ongoing crises and injustice evident within our world(s) might teach us – from climate catastrophe, species extinction and zoonotic diseases, to the normalized (racist, casteist, colonial, classist, capitalist) geographies of the meat, egg and dairy industries – it is that anthropocentric narratives of justice ‘for us’ are not fit for purpose. In this sense we stand in complete agreement with Celermajer et al's arguments as to why a MSJ politics is so important now, more so than ever:

An account of MSJ is required to rectify false assumptions and longstanding misconceptions in justice theory. Principal amongst these is the fictitious idea of human beings as individual, isolated, unattached and unencumbered, and the correlative presumption that more- than- human nature is mere passive background. Beyond rejecting the belief that humans alone merit ethical or political consideration, multispecies justice rejects three related ideas central to human exceptionalism: a) that humans are physically separate or separable from other species and non- human nature, b) that humans are unique from all other species because they possess minds (or consciousness) and agency and c) that humans are therefore more important than other species. (Celermajer et al, 2021: 120)

While acknowledging and welcoming a multispecies praxes that is diverse, contingent and ephemeral in nature, this chapter considers what ‘justice for all’ means in the context of our experiences across a variety of settings and roles: as ‘scholars’, as ‘activists’, as ‘parents’ and so on. One of the common threads that link these experiences together is the question of ‘How can we more justly share [and help shape] space?’