Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial: Averting Our Gaze - Paperback

by Kristian Bjørkdahl (Contribution by), José de Giorgio-Schoorl (Contribution by), Joe Gray (Contribution by)

The staggering rate of environmental pollution and animal abuse despite constant efforts to educate the public and raise awareness challenges the prevailing belief that the absence of serious action is a consequence of a poorly informed public. In recent decades alternative explanations of social and political inaction have emerged, including denialism. Challenging the information-deficit model, denialism proposes that people actively avoid unpleasant information that threatens their established worldviews, lifestyles, and identities. Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial: Averting Our Gaze analyzes how people avoid awareness of climate change, environmental pollution, animal abuse, and the animal industrial complex. The contributors examine the theory of denialism in regards to environmental pollution and animal abuse through a range of disciplines, including social psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural history and law.

Author Biography

Tomaz Grusovnik is associate professor of philosophy and senior research fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Primorska, and at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, Slovenia.
Reingard Spannring is a sociologist at the Institute for Educational Science, University of Innsbruck in Austria.
Karen Lykke Syse is a cultural historian and is associate professor at Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo in Norway.