Shaming or Inviting Shame? Ethical Considerations on Mobilizing Shame in Animal Advocacy

This is an in-person event.

Mobilizing shame is not only a prominent practice among human rights organizations but also a powerful – if contested – tool of animal advocacy. Although shame can be mobilized in qualitatively different ways, ethical critiques of shaming have paid insufficient attention to this heterogeneity, thereby obscuring important differences in the ethical justifiability of its various forms. In this talk, drawing on case studies from animal activism, Thomas Kainberger proposes a heuristic distinction among three modes of mobilizing shame: shaming, naming and shaming, and invitations to shame. Building on the concept of invitations to shame – which has thus far received little attention in discussions on shame and shaming – and applying it to animal advocacy, he argues that such invitations are more ethically defensible than their counterparts. Both shaming and naming and shaming function as disciplinary practices: they impose judgement and seek compliance through social pressure, thereby raising not…