Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodiversity should be guided by compassion for all sentient beings. Critics argue that there are 3 core reasons harming animals is acceptable in conservation programs: the primary purpose of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans. We used argument analysis to clarify the values and logics underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. We found that objections to compassionate conservation are expressions of human exceptionalism, the view that humans are of a categorically separate and higher moral status than all other species. In contrast, compassionate conservationists believe that conservation should expand its moral community by recognizing all sentient beings as persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies the individual is owed respect and should not be treated merely as a means to other ends. On scientific and ethical grounds, there are good reasons to extend personhood to sentient animals, particularly in conservation. The moral exclusion or subordination of members of other species legitimates the ongoing manipulation and exploitation of the living worlds, the very reason conservation was needed in the first place. Embracing compassion can help dismantle human exceptionalism, recognize nonhuman personhood, and navigate a more expansive moral space. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13494 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This article shows that employment of temporality in nativist discourse is not limited to just the past. The perception of “threat,” central to nativism, does not only inform historical claims made by nostalgic nativists, but also refers to the present and to the future in which this threat is to be overcome. After defining nativism, the article focuses on nostalgic invocations of the national past. To what (imagined) times do nativists refer when they speak about the “good old days”? What exactly is perceived as attractive about those days? The next section deals with the dystopian and utopian invocations of the future. We focus on the two most influential representatives of the Dutch radical right: Partij voor de Vrijheid and Forum voor Democratie. By analyzing the nativist entanglements of past, present, and the future, this article enriches our understanding of temporality in the dominant debates about national belonging.
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Jan Willem Duyvendak and Josip Kesic, with Timothy Stacey, explore how nativist logics have infiltrated liberal settings and discourses, primarily in the Netherlands as well as other countries with strong liberal traditions like the US and France. They deconstruct and explain the underlying logic of nativist narratives and show how they are emerging in the discourses of secularism (a religious nativism that problematizes Islam and Muslims), racism (a racial nativism that problematizes black anti-racism), populism (a populist nativism that problematizes elites), and left-wing politics (a left nativism that nativists themselves as a threat to national culture). By moving systematically through these key iterations of nativism, the authors show how liberal ideas themselves are becoming tools for claiming that some people do not belong to the nation. This book illuminates the resurgence of the figure of the "native," who claims the country at the expense of those perceived as foreign.
