Despite growing academic interest in the human–animal relationship, little research has been directed toward the political regulation of animal treatment. Even less attention has been accorded to the emergence of the long dominant paradigm in this policy area, namely, the ideology of animal welfare. This book attempts to address this gap by chronicling the early history of animal politics in Sweden with the aim of producing a critical, deconstructive genealogy of animal cruelty and animal welfare. The study ranges from the first political debates about animal cruelty in 1844 to the institution of Sweden’s first comprehensive animal protection act in 1944. Taking a post-Marxist and psychoanalytically informed approach to discourse analysis, the study focuses on how the “problem” of animal cruelty was articulated in the parliamentary debates and government documents throughout the period: What was the problem of animal (mis)treatment represented to be? What kinds of animal (ab)use were rendered uncontroversial? What kind of affective investments and ideological fantasies underpinned these discursive constructions, and how did the problematizations change over time? The book contains six empirical chapters that deal with the most important legal revisions in the period as well as the parallel debates about animal experimentation and slaughter. Two major discursive regimes—an early “anti-cruelty regime” and a later “animal welfare regime”—are identified in the material, and the transition between them is theorized in terms of discursive antagonism and dislocation. Focusing on the conflict between competing discursive logics, the study charts a century of ideological struggles through which our modern attitudes toward animals were born. The book also offers a critical reinterpretation of the success story of animal welfare. Against the assumption that modern animal welfarism progressively grew out of the preceding anti-cruelty regime, the central claim of this book is that the “welfarist turn” that took place in the 1930s and 1940s also functioned to re-entrench society’s speciesist values and de-problematize the exploitation of animals for human purposes.

Solidaritet med djur är en av hörnstenarna i Miljöpartiets gröna ideologi och partiet uppfattas ofta som mer djurvänligt än andra riksdagspartier. Den här uppsatsen analyserar hur partiets djursyn artikuleras utifrån tre diskurser: djurskydd, ekologism och djurrätt. Uppsatsen har också ett kritiskt djurrättsligt perspektiv och intresserar sig för vilka möjligheter och hinder för djurens frigörelse som finns i partiets djurpolitik. Slutsatsen är att djurskyddsdiskursen är dominerande i Miljöpartiet men att partiet problematiserar dagens djurskyddslagstiftning och vill se ett ”verkligt djurskydd”. Det finns också en tendens till att djurskyddsdiskursen i kombination med den ekologiska diskursen håller tillbaka djurrättsdiskursen som är i det närmaste osynlig. I en avslutande reflektion föreslås att djurrättsrörelsen ska bli tydligare i sin kritik mot Miljöpartiets och samtidens intresse för närproducerat, kravmärkt och ekologiskt kött, samt att ekologismens djursyn behöver utmanas i högre grad. / Animal solidarity constitutes one of the cornerstones of the Green Party's ideology, and the party is often perceived as more animal friendly than other parties in the Swedish parliament. This thesis analyzes how the Green Party's perspective on animals are articulated through three discourses: animal welfare, ecology, and animal rights. Furthermore, the thesis utilizes a critical perspective and tries to discern opportunities and obstacles for animal liberation within the party's animal politics. The conclusion is that the animal welfare discourse is the dominating perspective within the Green Party, but also that the party problematizes the current animal welfare in their strive for "real animal welfare". There is also a tendency for the animal welfare discourse, combined with the ecology discourse, to obscure the animal rights discourse, the latter being more or less invisible. In a final reflection it is suggested that the animal rights movement should be more explicit regarding its criticism against the Green Party's and the contemporary's interest in local produce, KRAV-labeling, and organic meat, as well as the need to challenge the animal views of ecology to a greater extent.