An Academic Virtual Conference
Rome, 9-11 June 2021. Free online event
https://www.veganismparadigmshift.com
The conference gathers researches working in different disciplines to discuss the possibility of a radical change – social, economic, legal, environmental and, underlying all these, conceptual and ethical – in the relationship between humans and other animals.
The question in the title refers to the possibilities, as well as the challenges, of radically re-configuring ways of thinking of and living with animals, in opposition to a dominant framework in which animals are taken primarily as resources for human benefit.
The conference takes place over three days, in four panels divided thematically to mark key areas of enquiry related to this re-thinking and restructuring. Thus, the conference aims at combining the theoretical foundations of the problem with its practical aspects. Finally and importantly, the concept of ‘vegan’ used here is intended more broadly than what is common in public and academic debates, and still as very much open-ended. Veganism is understood as embracing the re-thinking of the human-animal relationship away from exploitation, in all of the forms which this relationship may take, without taking for granted the exclusion of any beneficial interaction with other animals, and in a way that is as holistic as possible.