Animal welfare chauvinism in Brexit Britain: a genealogy of care and control

Abstract

This paper uses the deployment of animal welfare as an issue during the ‘Brexit’ referendum as a lens through which to explore the mutual shaping of discourses about care for animals in Britain and the British nation, or the nationalism of animal welfare. Adopting a genealogical outlook, it uses one political advertisement in particular—paid for by the official Vote Leave campaign—as a focalising image and means of opening up the issues, leading to an empirical emphasis on the issue of live animal export as it has mediated ideas about Europe and British identity. Introducing the idea of ‘animal welfare chauvinism’, the paper suggests that animal welfare messages in the context of this constitutional debate were products of chauvinistic and caring impulses which are mutually constitutive and crystallised through discourses formed in relation to contingent historical struggles. Analytically, stress is placed on the constructive role of situated and repeated discursive exchanges, occurring between animal advocates and other national political elites, within which ‘care for animals’ as a national ideal is forged. In this light, the article concludes with reflections on the stakes of entering into an already existing conversation on the ‘national culture of care’ for animals in Britain.