BTS: Your aim is to move the animal-rights debate beyond the field of ethics and into political philosophy. Drawing insights from citizenship theory, Zoopolis proposes recognizing domesticated animals as full citizens of our communities, treating wild animals who live outside our communities as members of their own sovereign communities, and treating those "liminal" non-domesticated animals who live within the spaces of our communities as denizens with appropriate rights. This is an ambitious vision that would fundamentally transform our understanding of politics and how we think about our communal life. The initial reaction of many will be that this vision is wildly utopian and impracticable. And yet you claim that it actually stands a better chance of success than traditional animal-rights theory (ART). Could you explain? DONALDSON/KYMLICKA: As many others have noted, traditional ART often seems committed to a strange and unattractive view of "species apartheid," as Ralph Acampora once called it. For Francione (explicitly) and Regan (implicitly), we humans meet our obligations of justice to animals by cutting off all relations with them-we live in our world, and we "let them be" to live freely in their world, with as little interaction as possible. However, an effective animal-rights strategy cannot be based on this vision. For one thing, it fails to offer any guidance on many of the fundamental issues we face. Humans and nonhumans do not inhabit separate worlds, but inevitably share the same homes, cities, and territories. This is the case not just with domesticated animals, but also many kinds of wildlife (think raccoons, rats, crows, squirrels, etc.) who have adapted to human built environments. Every time we erect a building, a roadway, a fence, or a dam, we are having an impact on animals. If ART is to contribute to these debates, we need to think about what justice requires in conditions of coexistence , not
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