•  17
    Black Agrarianism and the Foundations of Black Environmental Thought
    Environmental Ethics 26 (3): 267-286. 2004.
    Beginning with the nineteenth-century critiques of slave agriculture, African American writers have been centrally concerned with their relationship to the American landscape. Drawing on and responding to the dominant ideology of democratic agrarianism, nineteenth-century black writers developed an agrarian critique of slavery and racial oppression. This black agrarianism focuses on property rights, the status of labor, and the exploitation of workers, exploring how racial oppression can prevent…Read more
  •  31
  •  82
    Black agrarianism and the foundations of Black environmental thought
    Environmental Ethics 26 (3): 267-286. 2004.
    Beginning with the nineteenth-century critiques of slave agriculture, African American writers have been centrally concerned with their relationship to the American landscape. Drawing on and responding to the dominant ideology of democratic agrarianism, nineteenth-century black writers developed an agrarian critique of slavery and racial oppression. This black agrarianism focuses on property rights, the status of labor, and the exploitation of workers, exploring how racial oppression can prevent…Read more
  •  123
    Books in Review: Redeeming Democracy in America (review)
    Political Theory 40 (1): 123-127. 2012.
  •  62
    A pluralist–expressivist critique of the pet trade
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 22 (3): 241-256. 2009.
    Elizabeth Anderson’s “pluralist–expressivist” value theory, an alternative to the understanding of value and rationality underlying the “rational actor” model of human behavior, provides rich resources for addressing questions of environmental and animal ethics. It is particularly well-suited to help us think about the ethics of commodification, as I demonstrate in this critique of the pet trade. I argue that Anderson’s approach identifies the proper grounds for criticizing the commodification o…Read more
  •  115
    Animals and the Social Contract: A Reply to Nussbaum
    Environmental Ethics 30 (2): 195-207. 2008.
    In The Frontiers of Justice, Martha Nussbaum argues that social contract theory cannot accommodate political duties to animals because it requires the parties to the contract to enjoy rough physical and mental equality. Her interpretation of the social contract tradi­tion is unpersuasive; social contract theory requires only that the parties be equally free and deserving of moral consideration. Moreover, social contract theory is superior to her capabilities approach in that it allows us to limi…Read more
  •  34
    What is Africa to Me?: Wilderness in Black Thought from 1860 to 1930
    Environmental Ethics 27 (3): 279-297. 2005.
    The concept of wilderness found in the black American intellectual tradition poses a provocative alternative to the preservationist concept. For black writers, the wilderness is not radically separate from human society but has an important historical and social dimension. Nor is it merely a feature of the external landscape; there is also a wilderness within, a vital energy that derives from and connects one to the external wilderness. Wilderness is the origin and foundation of culture; preserv…Read more
  •  45
    What is Africa to Me?
    Environmental Ethics 27 (3): 279-297. 2005.
    The concept of wilderness found in the black American intellectual tradition poses a provocative alternative to the preservationist concept. For black writers, the wilderness is not radically separate from human society but has an important historical and social dimension. Nor is it merely a feature of the external landscape; there is also a wilderness within, a vital energy that derives from and connects one to the external wilderness. Wilderness is the origin and foundation of culture; preserv…Read more
  •  34
    To Love the Wind and Rain (review)
    Environmental Ethics 29 (3): 317-318. 2007.
  •  1
    To Love the Wind and Rain (review)
    Environmental Ethics 29 (3): 317-318. 2007.
  •  18
    Natural Subjects: Nature and Political Community
    Environmental Values 15 (3). 2006.
    Environmental political theory poses new challenges to our received political concepts and values. Increasingly, we are reconceptualising nature as a subject rather than solely an object of politics. On one front, we are being challenged to think of natural entities as subjects of justice – as bearers of rights or interests that the political system should accommodate. On a second front, we are being challenged to see nature as a subject of power, constructed and ordered through scientific and p…Read more
  •  48
    Governing Animals explores the role of the liberal state in protecting animal welfare. Examining liberal concepts such as the social contract, property rights, and representation, Kimberly K. Smith argues that liberalism properly understood can recognize the moral status and social meaning of animals and provides guidance in fashioning animal policy