A.F.A.R.
Wednesday June 10th, 2020 with Carolyn
This week, the sociologists Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart will discuss the way nonhuman animals are depicted in children's stories, and how this often reinforces (but sometimes challenges) the exploitation of animals.

This week on Always for Animal Rights, I am pleased to present my recent interview with the vegan sociologists Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart. Kate and Matthew are the authors of the 2014 book, Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood. They have also written many academic articles about human-nonhuman relations, such as "The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood", published in 2009 (https://www.academia.edu/320020/The_Conceptual_Separation_of_Food_and_Animals_in_Childhood). In this interview, Kate and Matthew discuss the following topics: *their conceptual map that illustrates how humans categorize nonhuman animals, not according to the animals' innate characteristics, but according to how humans want to exploit them; *how popular films and stories for children reinforce (and occasionally challenge) speciesism; *how the animal toys provided to children by fast-food companies are designed in a way that prevents children from "making the connection" between the dead animals in the fast-food bag and the living animals who the child might care about; and *how vegan children's books challenge dominant speciesist narratives in society.