A social process in analises: towards a new animal protection law in Portugal

7 de Outubro de 2015 – FCSH/UNL

HUMAN AND NONHUMAN ANIMALS: LIBERATION, HISTORY AND CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES International conference 6 and 7 October 2015, Instituto de História Contemporânea, New University of Lisbon Organization: Will Boisseau (Loughborough University), Diogo Duarte (New University of Lisbon)

Henrique Chaves Mestrando em Sociologia – FCSH/NOVA A social process in analises: towards a new animal protection law in Portugal1

It is known that social movements attempt to shape the reality where they are inserted with their ideologies. Such attempt is given through various ways, such as: public manifests, petitions and other actions of public awareness. These actions look to gather a vaster role of individuals to their cause, that is (i.e.), more individuals who start to share the same ideology and practices, but at the same time, not abstaining of making it's political pressure to the organs of decision so that these may enable - through mecanisms of their own domain - an improvement of reality according to the ideals that these social movements defend. Their interests end up almost always coliding with interests from other social layors. The role of the State in this type of conflicts is of a mediator, searching to give answers to both "sides" in the way that the involved ones may benefit in equal share. This present work search to observe such logics. In 2014 (two thousand fourteen), the portuguese movement for animal's rights had a precise victory: the misleading acts against pets where penalized by the portuguese law, decreting these as crimes in the legal framework. This draf-law was featured by ANIMAL (Associação Nortenha de Intervenção Animal) through a public petition that had this very same title: "For a new law towards protection of animals". Using this social fenomenon as base of analysis, I tried to deeply figure the dynamics that are correlated with this same process.

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Um obrigado muito especial a Pedro Miguel e a Maria Sacadura Simões pela gentiliza na tradução da comunicação.

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This process is characterized of pullbacks and pushforwards. The petition that was launched by the ANIMAL association to receive the signatures had certain purposes that went beyond the simple protection of pets (as examples: it was conceived to ban animals from circus acts and the abolishment of bullfights). Having around 40.000 (forty thousand) signatures and the strong support of many artists, intelectuals and mediatic characters in general, it only showed the strong awareness that people had before the petition was delivered in the parliament. But already inside parliament doors, this same petition was subject of multiple transformations, modifications and distortions. It is in the encounter of motley narratives, beyond metanarratives, that these type of social movements are better framed, such as the goals that are reclaimed by the same. I do believe that it's in Giddens' observation regarding the reflexive look towards modernity and Harvey's perspective in overturning that the basis of the economic system have changed - (i.e.) this is, that we still live under a social stratification based in different classes - that we find the arguments that disprove the possibility of speaking in a new historical Era. The social movements are a product of Modernity, as they are motors of social reflexivity, and they seek, through a teleological metanarrative, in Giddens' words (1990), to surpass capitalism and start a new social-historic period. Could the animalistic movement be a fruit of this reflexivity? It is possible to say that it is, thus human reflexivity goes way beyond metanarratives, as Giddens shows. It cares about the damaging effects of human action in the second half of the the twentieth century (for instance, the Holocaust and Chernobyl). Our reflexion has extended to new spheres of thought; what used to be a concern of a certain elite (for example, environmental issues) is now massified due to the growth of the middle class. We can hypothetically say that the animalistic movement came from that context, that is, the proximity between the concerns of the environmental issues and the animalistic issues lead (léd) to an influence from the first towards the second. In my opinion, the authors that discuss post-modernity are not wrong when they say that individual subjectivities gives place to a colective subjectivity inside a classes structure, and it's in these individual subjectivities that the new interests prevail. It's also important to mention that these new social movements are responsible for the colision between societal groups that belong to the same social class in a marxist perspecive -, but this colision makes us think directlyover the weber's question of status. Social actors defending it's privileges and distintive characteristics of the groups in which they are inserted - as an example: the bulfight's maniacs, that by uniting themselves to an association of their interest (Protoiro) promote their own

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interests and search the strengthening of their dogmas, while the association tries to fight the legitimacy of the struggle for the animal rights. The petition that was in here analysed tried - as it's main goal - to phrase the ending of the previleges of status of various social groups, for example, of those individuals that are directly conected to bulfights and circus shows. But, when analyzing the process of formulation of this very same draft-law, we may realize that the first two proposals made from the portuguese socialist party and the socialdemocratic party already denounced the interest in conceiving few "victories" to the animalistic cause in comparison to everything that the Protoiro tried to postulate. The State, this is, the parties involved, acted as facilitators of this conflict: from one associative movement such as ANIMAL against multiple others, organized or not, but that, in their point of view - State - would be wrong in their own beliefs and acts because they might jeopardize thepleasure and welbeing of animals. Political parties search to avoid the aggravation of the conflict, and also search to act on what is more socially consensual, i.e. (this is), towards pets, avoiding therefore the discussion regarding bulfights, circus and horse rides, etc. And even at the end of this process, we have a safeguard from the Social-Democrate Center Party (CDS-PP)in avoiding that this new legislation might be used against the interest that come out from the pet's sphere to other types of using animals to the benefit of humans. In the end, the approved document from the Socialist Party and the Social-Democrate party with an altertion from the Social-Democrate Center Party it's approved in the parliament and we have, in a practicl matter, only a criminalization of abbusive animal treatment and the expnsion of the associations power in order to work in the sense of the current approved legislation. In this cenario, an element that points out it's that the visual effects of this new legislation is, in conclusion, anthropocentric and not the other way around "animalcentric" -, as it was it's primarily goal. Defending pets's rights, that usuall are under te guard of an human individual, ends to be in defense of human property. In practical terms and hipothetically, with this new legislation, if and individual treats badly an animal that belongs to another human, he may be criminally penalized. This is the important conclusion of my analyses: we see that even the animalistic movements that defend post-materialistic values, in specific terms, they attain results that grasp materialistic values. Despite the empirical analyses hasn't been deeply made in methodological terms (resting the majority of the documents in the under-signed petitions, of the draft-laws,

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parliament discussions and the newspaper articles), it as essencial to gather som of the concusions here made. We can see that as association, who is framed inside the social movements logics, correlating several variables pointes by Tilly (2009), are nowadays, in between analytical terms both in modernity as well as in post-modernity.