동물 옹호의 논의와 실천을 통해 본 동물권 담론의 사회적 의미

This paper tries to understand the social context of animal rights discourse. For thiswork, I try to explore the background and the legal, theoretical, political discussion ofanimal rights agenda today. Animals have been excluded from our moral community so that their interests are notconsidered through Speciesism based on difference between ‘superior human’ and ‘inferioranimals’. So that they have been used on a large scale in the inhumane treatment only forthe convenience of human beings. But at the same time, Growing public interest in the animal rights and treatment resultsin the social changes such as the activation of the animal advocacy movement and gradualimprovement of related laws. When the concept of human rights was made in 18th century, it meant just the right ofwhite men. After that, there have been political actions to end oppression towards variousmarginal groups such as the colored, disabled, women, LGBT etc. Although all of them havebeen only for ‘humans’ so far, the boundaries of the social and political discussions aboutdiscrimination, dominance and rights are recently being pushed back over humans. Animalrights advocates perceive animals as a ‘minority’ who becomes the object of discriminationand dominance based on power-relations. From the perspective, animals can be understood as‘the most marginalized’ minority group with the lowest social status and voice.