Political Science » Research » Per-Anders Svärd

Per-Anders Svärd

Ph.D. Candidate

E-mail: per-anders.svard@statsvet.su.se

Research interests

The working title of my dissertation project is The Political Dynamics of Speciesism. “Speciesism” refers to the failure to accord adequate concern and respect to nonhuman animals, and should be read as an analogy to other systems of arbitrary discrimination and oppression such as racism and sexism.

Over the last thirty years, speciesism has met heavy criticism from moral philosophers and the social movement for animal rights, and research fields such as “human-animal studies” have grown rapidly.

My dissertation aims to make a contribution to these debates by showing how the inferior moral status of nonhumans in modern societies is conditioned by certain discourses of the human-animal relationship which renders nonhumans vulnerable to human oppression. More specifically, I take an interest in the discursive construction of policy problems within the political area of “animal protection”, and how they serve to reproduce speciesist ideologies.

My other research interests include animal rights philosophy, critical animal studies, normative political philosophy, critical theory and post-Marxist discourse theory.

Publications

The Fantasy of Animal Welfare: A Lacanian Perspective on the Reproduction of Speciesism, in Ellefsen, R., Larsen, G. & Sollund, R. (Eds.), Eco-global Crimes: Contemporary and Future Challenges. London: Ashgate, 2012 (forthcoming).

Beyond Walfarist Morality: An Abolitionist Reply to Fetissenko, in Journal of Animal Ethics, 1.2, 2011.

Det är aldrig en jävel som frågar "varför då?": Om ideologikritikens psykologi och psykoanalysens ideologikritik. Fronesis, nr 36–37, 2011.

Fienden i fantasin: Psykoanalytiska bidrag till ideologikritiken. Fronesis, nr 36–37, 2011.

"I do not want to speak here of the educated classes...": The construction of animal cruelty in Swedish politics 1844-1858. NSfKs 52. forskerseminar. Økologisk og global kriminologi. Aktuell forskning. Nordisk Samarbejdsråd for Kriminologi, Reykjavik, 2010. 

Protecting the Animals? An Abolitionist Critique of Animal Welfarism and Green Speciesism, in R. Sollund (Ed.): Global Harms: Ecological Crime and Speciesism. New York: Nova, 2008.

Svärd, Per-Anders (2008): “Protecting the Animals? An Abolitionist Critique of Animal Welfarism and Green Ideology.” In: Ragnhild Sollund (Ed.): Global Harms: Ecological Crime and Speciesism. New York: Nova Publishers. 

Teaching

I teach political theory, discourse theory and poststructuralism at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University.