Introduction: What’s the value of multispecies justice?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Justice is commonly thought (within European-based thought at least) to be the preserve of humans, and critical scholarship and advocacy has sought to ensure all humans are subjects of justice. But some scholars and activists argue that harms inflicted on animals and the environment can also be seen not simply as alarming or ‘inhumane’ but as injustices (see the comprehensive review of multispecies justice in Environmental Politics). Prompted by the gravity of human-inflicted maltreatment of nonhuman animals, and vegetative and elemental matter, and breaking through the human-nonhuman dichotomy of European systems and thought, the articles in this symposium ask: What would justice across the human and natural world look like and entail if all beings are subjects?