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2 Theoretical Criminology 283 (1998)
Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement

handle is hein.journals/thcr2 and id is 265 raw text is: Book Reviews 283 Gary L. Francione Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. xii + 269 pp. $60 (hbk), $23 (pbk). ISBN 1 56639 460 0 (hbk), 1 56639 461 9 (pbk). * Reviewed by Barbara Noske, York University, Canada Originally coming from continental Europe I am struck time and again by the way the North American public deploys the terms animal rights and animal rightist. Any person sticking up for animals as individuals, or even for animals as representatives of a particular species, is immediately labeled as an advocate of animal rights. In Rain Without Thunder Gary Francione, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic, provides a badly needed and long overdue analysis of what animal rights is and is not and-in his view-should and should not be. He does this by tracing the history of different organizations and groups- those addressing the way society treats and looks upon animals-and partic- ularly contrasts the position taken by animal welfarists with that of animal rightists. Until the 1970s the animal welfare view prevailed in that people generally agreed that animals could be used as means for human ends-in agriculture, research labs, entertainment, hunting, trapping-as long as safe- guards and regulations had been built in to ensure 'humane treatment'. The current legal system sees animals as property and denies them personhood. As property they cannot be anything but means to an end: a human end. Animal welfarists do not contest this: their emphasis has traditionally been on regula- tion rather than on abolition of institutionalized animal exploitation. The late 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of a more radical animal rights movement which retained the traditional concern for animals as sentient beings, but in addition to that stated that animals, like humans, are ends in themselves. Having established the fundamental difference in outlook between tradi- tional animal welfare and humane societies, on the one hand, and animal rights, on the other, Francione then highlights another difference, namely, between the theory of animal rights and its realization in the social phenom- enon called the animal rights movement. He shows convincingly that many self-proclaimed animal rightists, though embracing the long-term goal of abolishing animal exploitation, go along with welfarist reforms in the context of short-term strategy. Many animal advocates believe that such reforms can gradually lead to the ultimate goal of abolition. There are also people in the movement who regard rights theory as 'utopian' and as incapable of providing concrete normative guidance to day-to-day practice. Francione detects this position especially in the large, national animal advocacy groups such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), PSYETA, Animals' Agenda, etc. He calls such people 'new welfarists' whose rights-language is for the most part from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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