Vasile Stănescu
Associate Professor, Chair
Vasile Stanescu is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication at Mercer University; he also serves as faculty in Women and Gender Studies. His work is based at the intersection of Critical animal studies, food studies, rhetorics of environmentalism, and climate change. Dr. Stanescu has researched locavorism, humane meat, “compassionate carnivores,” invasive species, the environmental effects of animal agriculture, attempts by animal agriculture to “greenwash” the industry, the work by Temple Grandin, and the still-emerging practice of in vitro meat. He has also worked on issues of intersectionality, or the way that critical animal studies can work in solidarity with other social justice issues, with a particular focus on issues related to gender, race, and colonialism.
Stanescu is co-senior editor of the Critical Animal Studies book series published by Rodopi/Brill, the co-founder of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS), and the former co-organizer of the Stanford Humanities Project. He is the author of publications in the American Behavioral Scientist, The Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, Liberazioni – Rivista di critica antispecista [Liberations-Anti-Specieist Criticisms], Journal fürkritische Tierstudien [The German Journal for Critical Animal Studies], The Journal of American Culture, Animal Studies Journal, and the Journal for Critical Animal Studies.
Stanescu’s research has been recognized by The Woods Institute for the Environment, Minding Animals International, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Culture and Animals Foundation, and the Institutul Cultural Român, [Institute for Romanian Culture] among others.
Vasile Stanescu is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication at Mercer University; he also serves as faculty in Women and Gender Studies. His work is based at the intersection of Critical animal studies, food studies, rhetorics of environmentalism, and climate change. Dr. Stanescu has researched locavorism, humane meat, “compassionate carnivores,” invasive species, the environmental effects of animal agriculture, attempts by animal agriculture to “greenwash” the industry, the work by Temple Grandin, and the still-emerging practice of in vitro meat. He has also worked on issues of intersectionality, or the way that critical animal studies can work in solidarity with other social justice issues, with a particular focus on issues related to gender, race, and colonialism.
Stanescu is co-senior editor of the Critical Animal Studies book series published by Rodopi/Brill, the co-founder of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS), and the former co-organizer of the Stanford Humanities Project. He is the author of publications in the American Behavioral Scientist, The Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, Liberazioni – Rivista di critica antispecista [Liberations-Anti-Specieist Criticisms], Journal fürkritische Tierstudien [The German Journal for Critical Animal Studies], The Journal of American Culture, Animal Studies Journal, and the Journal for Critical Animal Studies.
Stanescu’s research has been recognized by The Woods Institute for the Environment, Minding Animals International, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Culture and Animals Foundation, and the Institutul Cultural Român, [Institute for Romanian Culture] among others.
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Articles by Vasile Stănescu
Temple Grandin claims that her autism allows her to think like animals and, therefore, understand them in a way that neurotypical people cannot. Based on this belief, she advises multiple animal farms on what she believes the “best practices” for these farms would entail in terms of helping the animals. Furthermore, she claims that once these farms have implemented these practices, purchasing their meat represents a humane and ethical choice. In contrast, we argue that Grandin’s arguments enact a double-violence against both animals and autistic people. In the first place, Grandin obscures the violence against farmed animals since she informs the reader that the animals are, now, happy on even so-called “factory farms.” And, in the second place, in our current anthropocentric world, Grandin perpetuates devaluing stereotypes concerning non-neurotypical people who are rendered as “exotic” and “magical” in their ability to “understand” animals since they (and, supposedly, they alone) think as nonhuman animals do. However, we argue, neither other autistic people nor farmed animals need Grandin to “translate” for them at all.
Arguably, the single most categorical and effective statement on the environmental dangers of the raising of animals for human consumption was issued by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In 2006, the FAO produced a 391-page report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, concluding that animal farming presents a “major threat to the environment” with such “deep and wide-ranging” impacts that it should rank as a leading focus for environmental policy. The report concluded that “[t] he livestock sector is a major player [in climate change], responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport”(Steinfeld et al., 2006, p. xxi). Nor was the call for action at all hidden: As Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch, put it (FAO, 2006):“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation”. 1 Furthermore, the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, repeatedly suggested that people should decrease their consumption of meat in order to help offset climate change. As he stated (in Jowit, 2008):“In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity…. Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there”. The evidence caused Yvo de Boer, then executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to conclude “the best solution would be …
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002764219830462
Advocates for eating locally raised animals claim that their practice is helpful in protecting the environment. However, the opposite is true. As such, their references to “nature” have less to do with a scientific stable ecosystem and, instead, represent a call for a return to a “natural” order of human’s supposedly benevolent domain over other animals. Instead of a science-based environmental policy, local meat operates as a type of “postcommodity fetish.” It is because of the desire to escape the confines of consumerist culture, to return to romanticized idea of Edenic-purity, which underlies the desire to purchase “locally” produced animal products.
https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol7/iss2/7/
This article analyzes why milk has been chosen as a symbol of racial purity by the ‘alt-right’. Specifically, this article argues the alt-right's current use of claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity can be connected to similar arguments originally made during the19th century against colonialized populations and immigration groups. In the 19th century, colonizing populations classified colonized populations as ‘effeminate corn and rice eaters’ because of their supposed lack of consumption of meat and dairy. This article argues that a similar practice continues today. It also argues that there is a relationship between the dietary racism ideas popularized by the alt-right and similar ideas published in academic journals, taught in some college classrooms, and reproduced in mainstream publications such as The Economist and PBS. In conclusion, this article documents a pattern between an earlier time in which anxiety over falling wages and increasing domestic immigration focused on issues of meat and dairy consumption and current anxiety over stagnant wages, fears over immigration, and a reassertion of the consumption of milk and dairy as a proxy reassertion of white privilege.
Animal Oppression and Capitalism, Praeger. (2017): 209-228. Invited.
In 2008, Burger King began a new advertisement campaign entitled The Whopper Virgins, which purported to go to the “the most remote parts of the world” to discover people who “did not even have a word for hamburger”(Crispin, Porter & Bogusky 2008). The purpose for these travels was so that Burger King could conduct the “purest taste test in the world”(Ibid). The ads were filmed in Thailand, Greenland, and Romania. This ad campaign was one of the most successful in Burger King’s history, receiving multiple awards, significant web traffic, widespread media attention, and correlating with one of the largest stock price increase in the company’s history (Trosclair 2009; York 2009).
Temple Grandin claims that her autism allows her to think like animals and, therefore, understand them in a way that neurotypical people cannot. Based on this belief, she advises multiple animal farms on what she believes the “best practices” for these farms would entail in terms of helping the animals. Furthermore, she claims that once these farms have implemented these practices, purchasing their meat represents a humane and ethical choice. In contrast, we argue that Grandin’s arguments enact a double-violence against both animals and autistic people. In the first place, Grandin obscures the violence against farmed animals since she informs the reader that the animals are, now, happy on even so-called “factory farms.” And, in the second place, in our current anthropocentric world, Grandin perpetuates devaluing stereotypes concerning non-neurotypical people who are rendered as “exotic” and “magical” in their ability to “understand” animals since they (and, supposedly, they alone) think as nonhuman animals do. However, we argue, neither other autistic people nor farmed animals need Grandin to “translate” for them at all.
Arguably, the single most categorical and effective statement on the environmental dangers of the raising of animals for human consumption was issued by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In 2006, the FAO produced a 391-page report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, concluding that animal farming presents a “major threat to the environment” with such “deep and wide-ranging” impacts that it should rank as a leading focus for environmental policy. The report concluded that “[t] he livestock sector is a major player [in climate change], responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport”(Steinfeld et al., 2006, p. xxi). Nor was the call for action at all hidden: As Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch, put it (FAO, 2006):“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation”. 1 Furthermore, the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, repeatedly suggested that people should decrease their consumption of meat in order to help offset climate change. As he stated (in Jowit, 2008):“In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity…. Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there”. The evidence caused Yvo de Boer, then executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to conclude “the best solution would be …
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002764219830462
Advocates for eating locally raised animals claim that their practice is helpful in protecting the environment. However, the opposite is true. As such, their references to “nature” have less to do with a scientific stable ecosystem and, instead, represent a call for a return to a “natural” order of human’s supposedly benevolent domain over other animals. Instead of a science-based environmental policy, local meat operates as a type of “postcommodity fetish.” It is because of the desire to escape the confines of consumerist culture, to return to romanticized idea of Edenic-purity, which underlies the desire to purchase “locally” produced animal products.
https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol7/iss2/7/
This article analyzes why milk has been chosen as a symbol of racial purity by the ‘alt-right’. Specifically, this article argues the alt-right's current use of claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity can be connected to similar arguments originally made during the19th century against colonialized populations and immigration groups. In the 19th century, colonizing populations classified colonized populations as ‘effeminate corn and rice eaters’ because of their supposed lack of consumption of meat and dairy. This article argues that a similar practice continues today. It also argues that there is a relationship between the dietary racism ideas popularized by the alt-right and similar ideas published in academic journals, taught in some college classrooms, and reproduced in mainstream publications such as The Economist and PBS. In conclusion, this article documents a pattern between an earlier time in which anxiety over falling wages and increasing domestic immigration focused on issues of meat and dairy consumption and current anxiety over stagnant wages, fears over immigration, and a reassertion of the consumption of milk and dairy as a proxy reassertion of white privilege.
Animal Oppression and Capitalism, Praeger. (2017): 209-228. Invited.
In 2008, Burger King began a new advertisement campaign entitled The Whopper Virgins, which purported to go to the “the most remote parts of the world” to discover people who “did not even have a word for hamburger”(Crispin, Porter & Bogusky 2008). The purpose for these travels was so that Burger King could conduct the “purest taste test in the world”(Ibid). The ads were filmed in Thailand, Greenland, and Romania. This ad campaign was one of the most successful in Burger King’s history, receiving multiple awards, significant web traffic, widespread media attention, and correlating with one of the largest stock price increase in the company’s history (Trosclair 2009; York 2009).
About 1 out of 10 Americans identify as either vegetarian or vegan (between 8 to 13 percent).
This percent is consistent across several different studies
This percent is growing (with higher percentages for those under 50.)
It is inaccurate to believe that a large number of people falsely claim to be vegetarian (although some people who are transitioning to a vegetarian diet and some pescetarians may claim to be vegetarian).
However, half the people who strictly follow a vegetarian or vegan diet may choose not to identify with the labels. This is, in part, because of a fear of negative stigma around the labels “vegetarian” or “vegan.”
The failure of studies and the media to accurately report the number of vegetarians and vegans may harm the animal rights movement. Likewise, inaccurate stereotypes of vegans (including by animal rights activists themselves), may also be harmful.
Therefore, as activists, we should strive to let people know the comparatively high rates of people transitioning to a vegetarian and vegan diet and combat those suggesting inaccurate stereotypes of vegetarians and vegans.
Vasile Stanescu | Birds of a Feather: Animal Liberation, Veganism and Social Justice
This presentation argues that animal liberation and veganism should be rethought. In particular, I argue that veganism should be rethought of as neither a diet nor an individual lifestyle choice, but instead, a principled action grounded in animal liberation and social justice. Furthermore, I argue that, far from “voting with our dollars” veganism should be rethought in terms of anti-capitalism and anti-consumerism. Moreover, I argue that animal rights and critical animal scholars should focus on developing solidarity with other social justice movements including Black Lives Matter, disability communities, gender-based movements, and others.
In addition, while admitting their partial value, I question a fetishization of new consumer options (for example, Burger King’s decision to sell the “Impossible Burger”) as the main path forward for animal liberation. In contrast, I argue that a correct understanding of veganism would fight against oppression against all animals—including human ones—and instead seek out solidarity with the wider social justice community. In other words, the future of animal liberation is not of consumerism, but of revolution.
Recently, these stakes were raised again when the UN determined that the world has only fourteen years to act to prevent catastrophic effects due to climate change. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity estimates as high as 150 species go extinct each day; the UN determined animal agriculture represents the single largest cause of habit loss, species extinction, and biodiversity loss.
Most importantly, exponentially more animals are killed, in worse conditions, every year: My first publication in critical animal studies, entitled “Green Eggs and Ham: The Myth of Sustainable Meat and The Danger of the Local” was published in 2010; at that time, the world raised and killed approximately 60 billion land animals each year. Today it is 80 billion; the UN estimates by 2050, the number will exceed 120 billion. The world is on fire.‘The response by many, including both advocates for animal agriculture and animal rights, has been three main strategies:
Attempts to move toward local, humane, and free-range animal farming based on, in part, a belief that such moves will positively affect the environment
The rise of so-called “in vitro” meat which, like claims about humane meat, will also offset the environmental effects of animal agriculture
Market based moves to sell new meat substitutes, such as Burger King’s decision to sell the Impossible Whopper.
‘However, in reality none of these proposed solutions will work. Indeed, most – if not all – will in reality make the environmental effects of animal agriculture worse. Instead, I argue, we need a social justice based approach to animal advocacy, based on directly confronting speciesism and anthropocentrism, that seeks to build solidarity between animal rights and other social justice movements to affect broad-based change. We are running out of time. To paraphrase the famous maxim attributed to Marx: As scholars, we no longer possess the luxury to only understand the world; we have to change it.’
"Do you have questions about lab-grown meat? Wondering if it's really as sustainable and great for animals as great as many proponents claim? Will it solve the ethical and environmental problems with our current food system and factory farming?
Today Dr. Vasile Stanescu joins me to take a holistic deep dive into the benefits and downside of lab-grown meat (AKA in vitro meat, cell-based meat, cultured meat, or clean meat) and who this novel technology will really benefit!
We cover:
- what lab meat is/how its made
- what proponents claim this miracle product can do
- Will it help end animal exploitation and factory farming?
- Fetal bovine serum and animal inputs
- the sustainability of lab meat
- The validity of using the free market/technology to solve moral issues in society
- What do we really need to end speciesism?
- Corporate control of our food supply"
This episode is brought to you by the Australasian Animal Studies Association and the Animal Publics book series with Sydney University Press.
https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/553/48549.html
This week, I am pleased to present my second interview with the Critical Animal Studies scholar Vasile Stanescu (https://mercer.academia.edu/VasileStanescu).
In this interview, Vasile explains what Critical Animal Studies is, and he challenges us to reconsider our use of the term "nonhuman animal". He also speaks about how speciesism is connected to other forms of oppression, why animal rights activists should be opposed to capitalism, how the animal agriculture industry is funding disinformation about the effects of animal agriculture on climate change, and why there is no such thing as humane or sustainable animal agriculture. Additionally, he points out that animal rights activists should work with (and not against!) other social justice movements. It's a fascinating interview!
During the discussion, Vasile spoke about his academic journal article titled "'White Power Milk’: Milk, Dietary Racism, and the ‘Alt-Right'" (https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1373&context=asj), and his open letter to Peter Singer (https://animalliberationcurrents.com/an-open-letter-to-peter-singer/), both of which you can read for free online. He also mentioned the Animals & Society Institute video in which he explains what Critical Animal Studies is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5w073Pv5po.
This week's episode features an interview with the professors Vasile Stanescu, PhD, and John Sanbonmatsu, PhD, who explain why animal advocates should not promote lab-grown "meat" (a.k.a. animal flesh).
In 2019, John and Vasile participated in a debate in which they pointed out that lab "meat" harms animals directly and serves to further entrench animal exploitation in our culture. This is what we discuss on this week's show.
This is a very important topic that animal advocates need to be aware of. I hope you'll tune in!
You can learn more about this issue at CleanMeat-Hoax.com. You can also read Vasile's blog post (which he mentioned in the interview) in which he makes the case that vegan advocacy is, and has been, effective.
You may also wish to read my blog post in which I argue that vegan advocacy is the most essential part of the animal rights movement.