Justice for all

This chapter seeks to articulate a theoretical approach that reconciles the human and non-human, and underlines the reality that sustainable relationships between them can only be achieved by the provision of justice for all. It suggests that a concern for the non-human should be encompassed by anthropologists for reasons that are ethical, practical, and intellectual. First, the notion of justice is fundamentally concerned with equalising relations between those who have power and those who do not. Second, humans, other species, and the material world are bound together in communal processes of production and reproduction that are interdependent, such that disruption for any of the participants has potentially major impacts on the others. A short-term focus on immediate human interests has longer-term detrimental effects on humans and non-humans alike. Third, the dualistic vision of Culture and Nature, which underpins the putatively separate categories of 'social' and 'environmental', is theoretically inadequate, and theory is manifested in practice.