Professor Robert Garner

Head of Department

Professor

BA (Salford), MA, PhD (Manchester), FRSA, AcSS

Contact Details

• Tel: +44 (0)116 252 5346
• Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5082
• Email: rwg2@leicester.ac.uk  

Research Interests

The focus of my principal research interest is the political representation of non-human interests, where non-human interests are taken to include those of non-human animals and other non-sentient parts of nature. This is an area of study that fits into the broader subject area of environmental politics.

Themes I have explored are:

• the documentation of the neglect or dismissal of the concept of animal rights in the liberal tradition of political thought. 
• a defence of animal rights from within the liberal tradition, invoking approaches based on rights, utilitarianism and contractarianism. 
• the difficulties of protecting the interests of animals from within the liberal tradition: focusing on the costs, for liberal societies, of adopting animal rights; the impact of liberal neutrality as regards the good society; and the protection of human autonomy. 
• the relationship between animal protection and other political traditions, including Marxism, feminism, ecology and communitarianism.

Current Research

I am currently engagaed in a project, initially facilitated by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, on the relationship between theories of justice and the protection of animals. The book I am currently writing, to be published by Oxford University Press, seeks to consider the value of considering the treatment of animals within the prism of justice rather than what I take to be the broader arena of ethics and morality. It is also the first work that attempts to apply both ideal and nonideal theory to animal ethics and, in particular, to develop a viable nonideal theory of justice for animals. 

  PhD Supervision

I am willing to supervise projects on environmental politics, broadly conceived, animal rights, pressure groups and social movements, and political ideologies.

Teaching

I teach political theory and environmental politics.

Most Recent Publications

Books

A Theory of Justice for Animals (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

Environmental Politics: The Age of Climate Change (3rd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? (Columbia University Press, 2010.

Introduction to Politics (co-authored, Oxford University Press, 2009: second edition to be published in the Spring of 2012. A Canadian version of the book is also in preparation.

Animal Ethics (Polity Press, 2005)

The Political Theory of Animal Rights (Manchester University Press, 2005)

Animals, Politics and Morality (2nd edn, Manchester University Press, 2004)

Book Chapters

• 'Conserving Wildlife' in M. Smith (ed.), Thinking Through the Environment: A Reader (Routledge, 2000), pp. 166-177

Recent Journal Articles

• Much Ado About Nothing?: Barry, Justice and Animals’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (forthcoming).

• ‘New Literature, Same Response: Rawls, Justice and Animals’, Res Publica (forthcoming)
• ‘Animal Welfare, Ethics and the Work of the International Whaling Commission’, Journal Of Global Ethics, 7, 3, 2011, pp. 279-90
• ‘In Defence of Sentiency: A Response to Cochrane’s Liberty  Thesis’, Political Studies, 59, 1, 2011, pp. 175-87.
• ‘Animals, Ethics and Public Policy’, Political Quarterly, 81, 1, 2010, pp.123-30.
• ‘The Politics of Animal Rights’, British Politics, 3, 2008, pp. 110-19.
• 'Animals. Politics and Justice: Rawlsian Liberalism and the Plight of Non-humans', Environmental Politics (2003)
• ‘Political Ideologies and the Moral Status of Animals’, Journal of Political Ideologies (2003)
• 'Political Ideology and the Legal Status of Animals' Animal Law (2002)
  'Political Theory, Animal Rights and the Liberal Tradition' Contemporary Politics (2002)
• Contributor to 'The Legal Status of Nonhuman Animals', Transcript of round table on Animals and the Law organized by the New York Bar Association held in New York City on September 25 1999, Animal Law (Vol. 8, 2002)
• 'Environmental Policy' in J. Fisher, D. Denver and J. Benyon (eds), Central Debates in British Politics (Pearson, 2002)
• 'The Scope of Green Realism' (2000) Contemporary Politics, 6, 2, pp. 185-190
• Contributions to J. Barry and E. Gene Frankland (eds), International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics (Routledge, 2001)