Animal-free farming may use organic or non-organic farming techniques. However, most detailed discussions of animal-free agriculture currently focus on animal-free organic variants.
Industrial agriculture with synthetic fertilizers is animal-free. In the United States, few industrial farms use manure. Of all U.S. cropland, only 5% was manured in 2006.
Veganic farmers take measures such as refraining from making
large disturbances in the soil of the land and cultivating a variety of
plants in the ground. Farmers practice covering their soil to protect
its condition from the harsh sunlight as often as possible. This form of
farming "encompasses a respect for the animals, the environment, and
human health."
Some of the plant-based techniques used in veganic agriculture include mulch, compost, chipped branched wood, crop rotation and more.
History of animal-free agriculture
2006
The
World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species reports that
most of the world's threatened species are experiencing habitat loss as a
result of livestock production conducted through animal agriculture.
Center for Science in the Public Interest releases Six Arguments for
a Greener Diet that found that a plant-rich diet "leads to much less
food poisoning, water pollution, air pollution, global warming."
2016
Research
published in the journal Nature Communications finds that vegan diets
have the best land use and are the only way to feed the global
population by 2050.
The World Resources Institute published the report: Shifting Diets
for a Sustainable Food Future which showed that if people who consume
large amounts of meat and dairy changed to diets with more plant-based
meals could reduce agriculture's pressure on the environment.
2017
University
of Edinburgh researchers find that animal farming is the leading cause
of food waste as it is responsible for the most losses of all harvested
crops on Earth (40%) due to secondary consumption.
Forbes Magazine publishes a compilation of recent vegan and
plant-based business successes noting that vegan living is becoming more
a norm because of its positive impact on sustainability.
2018
Research
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences find
that a vegan shift would increase the US food supply by a third,
eliminating all of the losses due to food waste and feeding all
Americans as well as roughly 390,000,000 more.
A Harvard study found that shifting all beef production in the U.S.
to pastured, grass-fed systems would require 30% more cattle, increase
beef's methane emissions by 43%, and would require much more land than is available.
2019
A report
from the Humane Party determines that vegan-organic agriculture can be
4,198% more productive than animal-based agriculture in the amount of
food produced per acre.
Veganic farmer Will Bonsall told The Guardian that most vegetables are "very un-vegan” due to being grown using inputs of animal-based products.
Advantages of animal-free agriculture
Livestock in the United States produce 230,000 pounds of manure per second, and nitrogen from these wastes is converted into ammonia and nitrates
which leach into ground and surface water causing contamination of
wells, rivers and streams. Mature compost of plant-based origins, used
in animal-free agriculture, can reduce leaching of nitrate which leads
to an improvement in groundwater quality and counteracts the
eutrophication of surface waters.
Animal free agriculture has the potential to prevent illnesses like influenza
from spreading. Experts agree that most strains of the influenza virus
that infect human beings came from contact with other animals. Farm
animals on factory farms
may be genetically similar therefore making them more susceptible to
specific parasites. Infection among animals is more easily spread
because of their close proximity to one another. Animal-free agriculture does not contribute to the spread of influenza through animals.
History of factory farming
The United States
Emerging in the early twentieth century, rural farmers were unable to supply enough food to an increasing urban population. The 1902 Kosher Meat Boycott occurred as high prices and food shortages in the United States became more common. The beginning of World War I became another strain on farmer's stockpiles because of the creation of The United States Food Administration
headed by former president Herbert Hoover, campaigning for all
Americans to "voluntarily change their eating habits in order to have
enough food to feed our military and starving civilians in Europe."
As the United States continues to use factory farming as its main
mode of food production, growing consolidation and commercialization
enables control over the food system by the means of large industrial
operations. Investigations into animal farming saw an increase in
popularity in the late twentieth century. Exposes such as Upton Sinclair'sThe Jungle and animal rights organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) created movements toward reflection on animal's rights within agriculture and the food-industry.
South Asia
The
central government of India made reforms in agriculturally based
policies, reducing regulations on food prices, food sales and food
storage. Marches took place in states like Punjab and Haryana
as nearly over 300,000 farmers exercised their democratic rights to
protest these changes. The Indian government set intentions with their
policies as means to achieve economic stability amidst the uncertainty
brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their hopes to revitalize the agriculture sector through private
ownership There is an estimated 87% of Indian farmers considered as smallholders, or those who own 1.5 acres or less of land.
North Africa
Published by the Information & Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Cabinet, a poll showed that nearly 11 per cent of a population of 80-million people eat only less than two kilograms of meat per month, 30 percent eating four to six kgs of meat per month. The increasing demand for meat has influenced the growth of factory farming in this region.
In 2009, The Egyptian Chamber of Tourist Establishments (ECTE)
proposed a boycott of red meat on the 26th of April, just one of several
organizations angered by raised meat-prices. Some factory farms in
these areas are marketed to the population as "organic"
although there is not sufficient evidence to prove such practices.
Research suggests that nearly 10 percent of Egypt's land "used for
animal production has made future farming 'nearly impossible."
Animal-free agriculture today
Vegan
France Interpro in collaboration with the Biocyclic Vegan Network
created an interactive map that lists all-vegan organic projects across
Europe. This list primarily includes agricultural operations but also
trading and processing companies, online shops, network organizations as
well as certification bodies that certify farms according to the
Biocyclic Vegan Standard.
There is a similar map in North America that conducts the same concept and locates vegan farms around North America.
The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver,
British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of
artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and
entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of
the information age."
Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements.
In English, Adbusters has bi-monthly American, Canadian, Australian, UK
and International editions of each issue. Adbusters's sister
organizations include Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire and Casseurs de Pub in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden and Culture Jammers in Japan.
History
Adbusters' first uncommercial
Adbusters was founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn
and Bill Schmalz, a duo of award-winning documentary filmmakers living
in Vancouver. Since the early 1980s, Lasn had been making films that
explored the spiritual and cultural lessons the West could learn from
the Japanese experience with capitalism.
In 1988, the British Columbia Council of Forest Industries,
the "voice" of the logging industry, was facing tremendous public
pressure from a growing environmentalist movement. The logging industry
fought back with a television ad campaign called "Forests Forever." It was an early example of greenwashing:
shots of happy children, workers and animals with a kindly, trustworthy
sounding narrator who assured the public that the logging industry was
protecting the forest.
Lasn and Shmalz, outraged by the use of the public airwaves to
deliver what they felt was deceptive anti-environmentalist propaganda,
responded by producing the "Talking Rainforest"
anti-ad in which an old-growth tree explains to a sapling that "a tree
farm is not a forest." But the duo proved to be unable to buy airtime on
the same stations that had aired the forest-industry ad. According to a former Adbusters employee, "The CBC's reaction to the
proposed television commercial created the real flash point for the
Media Foundation. It seemed that Lasn and Schmaltz's commercial was too
controversial to air on the CBC. An environmental message that
challenged the large forestry companies was considered 'advocacy
advertising' and was disallowed, even though the 'informational'
messages that glorified clearcutting were OK."
The foundation was born out of their belief that citizens do not
have the same access to the information flows as corporations. One of
the foundation's key campaigns continues to be the Media Carta,
a "movement to enshrine The Right to Communicate in the constitutions
of all free nations, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
The foundation notes that concern over the flow of information
goes beyond the desire to protect democratic transparency, freedom of
speech or the public's access to the airwaves. Although it supports
these causes, the foundation instead situates the battle of the mind at
the center of its political agenda. Fighting to counter pro-consumerist
advertising is done not as a means to an end, but as the end in itself.
This shift in emphasis is a crucial element of mental environmentalism.
Mental environmentalism
The subtitle of Adbusters magazine is "The Journal of the Mental Environment."
In a 1996 interview, Kalle Lasn explained the foundation's goal:
What we're trying to do is pioneer a new form of social
activism using all the power of the mass media to sell ideas, rather
than products. We're motivated by a kind of 'greenthink' that comes from
the environmental movement and isn't mired in the old ideology of the
left and right. Instead, we take the environmental ethic into the mental
ethic, trying to clean up the toxic areas of our minds.
You can't recycle and be a good environmental citizen, then watch four
hours of television and get consumption messages pumped at you.
Issues
Anti-advertising
Adbusters
describes itself as anti-advertising: it blames advertising for playing
a central role in creating and maintaining consumer culture. This
argument is based on the premise that the advertising industry goes to
great effort and expense to associate desire and identity with
commodities. Adbusters believes that advertising has unjustly
"colonized" public, discursive and psychic spaces, by appearing in
movies, sports and even schools, so as to permeate modern culture.
Adbusters's stated goals include combating the negative effects of
advertising and empowering its readers to regain control of culture,
encouraging them to ask "Are we consumers and citizens?"
Since Adbusters concludes that advertising conditions
people to look to external sources, to define their own personal
identities, the magazine advocates a "natural and authentic self apart
from the consumer society".
The magazine aims to provoke anti-consumerist feelings. By juxtaposing
text and images, the magazine attempts to create a means of raising
awareness and getting its message out to people that is both
aesthetically pleasing and entertaining.
Activism also takes many other forms such as corporate boycotts
and 'art as protest', often incorporating humor. This includes
billboard modifications, google bombing, flash mobs and fake parking tickets for SUVs.
A popular example of cultural jamming is the distortion of Tiger
Woods' smile into the form of the Nike swoosh, calling viewers to
question how they view Woods' persona as a product. Adbusters calls it
"trickle up" activism, and encourages its readers to do these activities
by honoring culture jamming work in the magazine. In the
September/October 2001 "Graphic Anarchy" issue, Adbusters were culture
jammed themselves in a manner of speaking: they hailed the work of Swiss
graphic designer Ernst Bettler as "one of the greatest design interventions on record", unaware that Bettler's story was an elaborate hoax.
Media Carta
"Media
Carta" is a charter challenging the corporate control of the public
airwaves and means of communication. The goal is to "make the public
airwaves truly public, and not just a corporate domain." Over 30,000 people have signed the document voicing their desire to reclaim the public space.
On 13 September 2004, Adbusters filed a lawsuit against six major Canadian television broadcasters (including CanWest Global, Bell Globemedia, CHUM Ltd., and the CBC)
for refusing to air Adbusters videos in the television commercial spots
that Adbusters attempted to purchase. Most broadcasters refused the
commercials, fearing the ads would upset other advertisers as well as
violate business principles by "contaminating the purity of media
environments designed exclusively for communicating commercial
messages". The lawsuit claims that Adbusters' freedom of expression was unjustly limited by the refusals.
Adbusters believes the public deserves a right to be presented with
viewpoints that differ from the standard. Under Section 3 of the
Broadcasting Act, television is a public space allowing ordinary
citizens to possess the same rights as advertising agencies and
corporations to purchase 30 seconds of airtime from major broadcasters.
There has been talk that if Adbusters wins in Canadian court, they will
file similar lawsuits against major U.S. broadcasters that also refused
the advertisements. CNN is the only network that has allowed several of the foundation's commercials to run.
Legal action
On 3 April 2009, the British Columbia Court of Appeal unanimously overturned a BC Supreme Court
ruling that had dismissed the case in February 2008. The court granted
Adbusters the ability to sue the Canadian Broadcasting Company and
CanWest Global, the corporations that originally refused to air the
anti-car ad "Autosaurus". The ruling represents a victory for Adbusters,
but it is the first step of their intended goal, essentially opening
the door for future legal action against the media conglomerates. Kalle Lasn
declared the ruling a success and said, "After twenty years of legal
struggle, the courts have finally given us permission to take on the
media corporations and hold them up to public scrutiny."
Digital Detox Week
In April 2009, the foundation transformed TV Turnoff Week into Digital Detox Week,
encouraging citizens to spend seven days "unplugged" without any use of
electronic devices such as video game systems and computers.
One Flag
The "One Flag" competition encouraged readers to create a flag that symbolized "global citizenship", without using language or commonly known symbols.
Campaigns
Culture jamming
American Corporate Flag
Culture jamming is the primary means through which Adbusters challenges consumerism. The magazine was described by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in their book The Rebel Sell as "the flagship publication of the culture jamming movement." Culture jamming is heavily influenced by the Situationist International and the tactic of détournement.
The goal is to interrupt the normal consumerist experience in order to
reveal the underlying ideology of an advertisement, media message, or
consumer artifact. Adbusters believe large corporations control
mainstream media and the flow of information, and culture jamming aims
to challenge this as a form of protest. The term "jam" contains more
than one meaning, including improvising, by re-situating an image or
idea already in existence, and interrupting, by attempting to stop the
workings of a machine.
As already noted, the foundation's approach to culture jamming has its roots in the activities of the situationists and in particular their concept of détournement.
This involves the "turning around" of received messages so that they
communicate meanings at variance with their original intention.
Situationists argue that consumerism creates "a limitless
artificiality", blurring the lines of reality and detracting from the
essence of human experience. In the "culture jamming" context, détournement
means taking symbols, logos and slogans that are considered to be the
vehicles upon which the "dominant discourse" of "late capitalism" is
communicated and changing them – frequently in significant but minor
ways – to subvert the "monologue of the ruling order" [Debord].
The foundation's activism links grassroots efforts with
environmental and social concerns, hoping followers will "reconstruct
[their] self through nonconsumption strategies." The foundation is particularly well known for its culture jamming campaigns, and the magazine often features photographs of politically motivated billboard or advertisement vandalism sent in by readers. The campaigns attempt to remove people from the "isolated reality of consumer comforts".
Blackspot Shoes campaign
In 2004, the foundation began selling vegan, indie shoes. The name and logo are "open-source"; in other words, unencumbered by private trademarks.
Attached to each pair was a "Rethink the Cool" leaflet, inviting
wearers to join a movement, and two spots – one for drawing their own
logos and another on the toe for "kicking corporate ass."
There are three versions of the Blackspot Sneaker. The V1 is designed to resemble the Nike-owned ConverseChuck Taylor All-Stars (Nike bought Converse in 2003). There is also a V1 in "fiery red."
The V2 is designed by Canadian shoe designer John Fluevog. It is made from organic hemp and recycled car tires.
After an extensive search for anti-sweatshop manufacturers around the world, Adbusters found a small union shop in Portugal. The sale of more than twenty-five thousand pairs through an alternative distribution network is an example of Western consumer activism marketing.
Adbusters describes its goals vis-à-vis Blackspot as follows:
Blackspot shoes is our experiment
with grassroots capitalism. After spending many years railing against
the practices of megacorporations like McDonalds, Starbucks and Nike, we
wanted to prove that running an ethical, environmentally responsible
business is possible ... and that taking market share away from
megacorporations is better than whining about them.
Reception
Heath and Potter's The Rebel Sell,
which is critical of Adbusters, claimed that the blackspot shoe's
existence proves that "no rational person could possibly believe that
there is any tension between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' culture."
In the June 2008 cover story of BusinessWeek Small Business Magazine,
the Blackspot campaign was among three profiled in a piece focusing on
"antipreneurs." Two advertising executives were asked to review the
campaign for the article's "Ask the Experts" sidebar. Brian Martin of Brand Connections and Dave Weaver of TM Advertising both gave the campaign favorable reviews.
Martin noted that Blackspot was effectively telling consumers,
"We know we are marketing to you, and you are as good as we are at this,
and your opinion matters," while Weaver stated that "This is not a call
to sales of the shoe so much as it is a call to participate in the
community of Adbusters by buying the shoe."
Occupy Wall Street
In mid-2011, Adbusters Foundation proposed a peaceful occupation of
Wall Street to protest corporate influence on democracy, a growing
disparity in wealth, and the absence of legal repercussions behind the
recent global financial crisis. They sought to combine the symbolic location of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square with the consensus decision making of the 2011 Spanish protests. Adbusters' senior editor Micah White said they had suggested the protest via their email list and it "was spontaneously taken up by all the people of the world."
Adbusters' website said that from their "one simple demand—a
presidential commission to separate money from politics" they would
"start setting the agenda for a new America." They promoted the protest with a poster featuring a dancer atop Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull. On 13 July 2011 it was the staff at the magazine that created the #OCCUPYWALLSTREET hashtag on Twitter.
While the movement was started by Adbusters, the group does not control the movement, and it has since grown worldwide.
Criticisms
Commercial style
The
foundation has been criticized for having a style and form that are too
similar to the media and commercial product that Adbusters attack, that
its high gloss design makes the magazine too expensive, and that a
style over substance approach is used to mask sub-par content.
Heath and Potter posit that the more alternative or subversive
the foundation feels, the more appealing the Blackspot sneaker will
become to the mainstream market. They believe consumers seek exclusivity
and social distinction and have argued that the mainstream market seeks
the very same brand of individuality that the foundation promotes; thus
they see the foundation as promoting capitalist values.
The Blackspot Shoes campaign has stirred heated debate, as
Adbusters admits to using the same marketing technique which it
denounces other companies for using by originally purchasing much
advertising space for the shoe.
Legal issues
Adbusters
launched a legal challenge in 1995. A second in 2004 was against CBC,
CTV, CanWest and CHUM, for refusing to air anti-consumerism commercials,
therefore infringing on the staff's freedom of speech.
In one case, a CHUM representative is quoted as saying the ads "were so
blatantly against television and that is our entire core business. You
know we can't be selling our airtime and then telling people to turn
their TVs off."
Antisemitism
In March 2004, Adbusters was accused of antisemitism after running an article titled "Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?" The article compiled a list of neoconservative supporters within the Bush Administration
and marked the names of those it perceived as Jewish with a black dot.
It questioned why, given Israel's role, the political implications of
this Jewish neoconservative influence on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East were not a subject of debate.
In October 2010, Shopper's Drug Mart pulled Adbusters off of its shelves after a photo montage comparing the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw ghetto was featured in an article critiquing Israel's embargo of Gaza. The Canadian Jewish Congress rallied to have the magazine blacklisted from bookstores, accusing Adbusters of trivializing the Holocaust and of antisemitism. In response Adbusters argued that the charge of antisemitism was being used to silence what it considered legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.
Ineffective activism
Some critics claim that culture jamming does little to incite real difference.
Others declare the movement an easy way for upper- and middle-class
citizens to feel empowered by engaging in activism that bears no
personal cost, such as the campaign "Buy Nothing Day". These critics express a need for "resistance against the causes of capitalist exploitation, not its symptoms".
Awards
In 1999, Adbusters won the award for National Magazine of the Year in Canada.
Karl Marx, considered by many as one of the founding fathers of anti-capitalist thought
Socialism advocates public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.
A theory or policy of social organisation which aims at or
advocates the ownership and democratic control of the means of
production, by workers or the community as a whole, and their
administration or distribution in the interests of all.
Socialists argue for a worker cooperative/community economy, or the commanding heights of the economy,
with democratic control by the people over the state, although there
have been some undemocratic philosophies. "State" or "worker
cooperative" ownership is in fundamental opposition to "private"
ownership of means of production,
which is a defining feature of capitalism. Most socialists argue that
capitalism unfairly concentrates power, wealth and profit, among a small
segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation.
Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities
that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out
that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that
exist only to generate sufficient demand for products to be sold at a
profit (such as high-pressure advertisement); thereby creating rather
than satisfying economic demand.
Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity,
such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when
their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the
commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need; they argue
that making money, or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand.
Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to
inaccessible economic decisions that result in immoral production,
unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis
of overproduction.
According to socialists, private property in the means of production
becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralized, socialized
institutions based on private appropriation of revenue (but based on
cooperative work and internal planning in allocation of inputs) until
the role of the capitalist becomes redundant. With no need for capital accumulation
and a class of owners, private property in the means of production is
perceived as being an outdated form of economic organization that should
be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialized assets. Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy.
Early socialists (Utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticized capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of society, and for not utilising available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.
Anarchism and libertarian socialism
Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves."
For the influential German individualist anarchist philosopher Max Stirner, "private property
is a spook" which "lives by the grace of law" and it "becomes 'mine'
only by effect of the law". In other words, private property exists
purely "through the protection of the State, through the State's grace."
Recognising its need for state protection, Stirner argued that "[i]t
need not make any difference to the 'good citizens' who protects them
and their principles, whether an absolute King or a constitutional one, a
republic, if only they are protected. And what is their principle,
whose protector they always 'love'? Not that of labour", rather it is
"interest-bearing possession ... labouring capital, therefore ... labour
certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labour of
capital and of the—subject labourers." French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land
interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any
form of coercion
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth
in the hands of the few. The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada saw:
capitalism
[as] an effect of government; the disappearance of government means
capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously...That which we call
capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within
which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or
badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task,
since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as
Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of
consciousness, is against the State.
Within anarchism there emerged a critique of wage slavery, which refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term wage slavery has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification,
with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between
labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low
wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy. Libertarian socialists
believe if freedom is valued, then society must work towards a system
in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with
political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified
authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation, and popular autonomy in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx
elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context
of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal
use, Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines, while later American anarchist Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves."
Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was
incompatible with human liberty. "The only demand that property
recognizes," she wrote in Anarchism and Other Essays, "is its own
gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the
power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to
outrage, to degrade."
She also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers, "turning the
producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision
than his master of steel and iron."
Noam Chomsky
contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery
and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it
is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom.
He holds that workers should own and control their workplace.
Many libertarian socialists argue that large-scale voluntary
associations should manage industrial manufacture, while workers retain
rights to the individual products of their labor. As such, they see a distinction between the concepts of "private property" and "personal possession".
Whereas "private property" grants an individual exclusive control over a
thing whether it is in use or not, and regardless of its productive
capacity, "possession" grants no rights to things that are not in use.
In addition to individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker's "big four" monopolies (land, money, tariffs, and patents), Kevin Carson argues that the state
has also transferred wealth to the wealthy by subsidizing
organizational centralization, in the form of transportation and
communication subsidies. He believes that Tucker overlooked this issue
due to Tucker's focus on individual market transactions, whereas Carson
also focuses on organizational issues. Carson holds that "capitalism,
arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of
the Middle Ages, was founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier feudal
conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual
state intervention to protect its system of privilege without which its
survival is unimaginable." Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar libertarianism", a phrase that describes the use of a free market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy", which Karl Marx
described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly
apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the
ideas which contain the contradictions [existing in economic life]."
If we have chosen the position in
life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us
down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall
experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will
belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at
work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.
— Karl Marx, 1835
Karl Marx
saw capitalism as a historical stage, once progressive but which would
eventually stagnate due to internal contradictions and would eventually
be followed by socialism. Marx claimed that capitalism was nothing more
than a necessary stepping stone for the progression of man, which would
then face a political revolution before embracing the classless society. Marxists define capital
as "a social, economic relation" between people (rather than between
people and things). In this sense they seek to abolish capital. They
believe that private ownership of the means of production enriches
capitalists (owners of capital) at the expense of workers ("the rich get
richer, and the poor get poorer"). In brief, they argue that the owners
of the means of production do not work and therefore exploit
the workerforce. In Karl Marx's view, the capitalists would eventually
accumulate more and more capital, impoverishing the working class, and
creating the social conditions for a revolution that would overthrow the
institutions of capitalism. Private ownership over the means of
production and distribution is seen as a dependency of non-owning
classes on the ruling class, and ultimately a source of restriction of
human freedom.
Barter
Barter is a system of exchange where goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is distinguishable from gift economies in many ways; one of them is that the reciprocal exchange is immediate and not delayed in time. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral
(i.e., mediated through barter organizations) and, in most developed
countries, usually only exists parallel to monetary systems to a very
limited extent. Barter, as a replacement for money as the method of
exchange, is used in times of monetary crisis, such as when the currency
may be either unstable (e.g., hyperinflation or deflationary spiral) or simply unavailable for conducting commerce.
Bartering could be considered a social starting point towards an
anti-capitalist system, by negating the need for a medium of exchange.
Wage slavery
Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person.
The term wage slavery has been used to criticize exploitation of labour and social stratification,
with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between
labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low
wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management,
fulfilling job choices, and leisure in an economy. The criticism of
social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound
by the pressures of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their "species character" not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma and statusdiminution.
It has been argued by some centre-left and left leaning activists that
the economy of the contemporary United States constitutes a softer form
of wage slavery, in which conditions are not grinding, but nonetheless
not conducive to individual economic progress.
Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology, is the application of the principles of biology to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and other animals.
History
Behavioral
neuroscience as a scientific discipline emerged from a variety of
scientific and philosophical traditions in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In philosophy, people like René Descartes proposed physical models to explain animal as well as human behavior. Descartes suggested that the pineal gland,
a midline unpaired structure in the brain of many organisms, was the
point of contact between mind and body. Descartes also elaborated on a
theory in which the pneumatics of bodily fluids could explain reflexes and other motor behavior. This theory was inspired by moving statues in a garden in Paris.
Electrical stimulation and lesions can also show the affect of motor
behavior of humans. They can record the electrical activity of actions,
hormones, chemicals and effects drugs have in the body system all which
affect ones daily behavior.
William James
Other philosophers also helped give birth to psychology. One of the earliest textbooks in the new field, The Principles of Psychology by William James, argues that the scientific study of psychology should be grounded in an understanding of biology.
The emergence of psychology and behavioral neuroscience as legitimate
sciences can be traced from the emergence of physiology from anatomy, particularly neuroanatomy.
Physiologists conducted experiments on living organisms, a practice
that was distrusted by the dominant anatomists of the 18th and 19th
centuries. The influential work of Claude Bernard, Charles Bell, and William Harvey helped to convince the scientific community that reliable data could be obtained from living subjects.
Even before the 18th and 19th century, behavioral neuroscience was beginning to take form as far back as 1700 B.C.
The question that seems to continually arise is: what is the connection
between the mind and body? The debate is formally referred to as the mind-body problem. There are two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind–body problem; monism and dualism. Plato and Aristotle
are two of several philosophers who participated in this debate. Plato
believed that the brain was where all mental thought and processes
happened. In contrast, Aristotle believed the brain served the purpose of cooling down the emotions derived from the heart. The mind-body problem was a stepping stone toward attempting to understand the connection between the mind and body.
Another debate arose about localization of function or functional specialization versus equipotentiality
which played a significant role in the development in behavioral
neuroscience. As a result of localization of function research, many
famous people found within psychology have come to various different
conclusions. Wilder Penfield was able to develop a map of the cerebral cortex through studying epileptic patients along with Rassmussen.
Research on localization of function has led behavioral neuroscientists
to a better understanding of which parts of the brain control behavior.
This is best exemplified through the case study of Phineas Gage.
The term "psychobiology" has been used in a variety of contexts,
emphasizing the importance of biology, which is the discipline that
studies organic, neural and cellular modifications in behavior,
plasticity in neuroscience, and biological diseases in all aspects, in
addition, biology focuses and analyzes behavior and all the subjects it
is concerned about, from a scientific point of view. In this context,
psychology helps as a complementary, but important discipline in the
neurobiological sciences. The role of psychology in this questions is
that of a social tool that backs up the main or strongest biological
science. The term "psychobiology" was first used in its modern sense
by Knight Dunlap in his book An Outline of Psychobiology (1914). Dunlap also was the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Psychobiology.
In the announcement of that journal, Dunlap writes that the journal
will publish research "...bearing on the interconnection of mental and
physiological functions", which describes the field of behavioral
neuroscience even in its modern sense.
Relationship to other fields of psychology and biology
In
many cases, humans may serve as experimental subjects in behavioral
neuroscience experiments; however, a great deal of the experimental
literature in behavioral neuroscience comes from the study of non-human
species, most frequently rats, mice, and monkeys. As a result, a
critical assumption in behavioral neuroscience is that organisms share
biological and behavioral similarities, enough to permit extrapolations
across species. This allies behavioral neuroscience closely with comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology. Behavioral neuroscience also has paradigmatic and methodological similarities to neuropsychology,
which relies heavily on the study of the behavior of humans with
nervous system dysfunction (i.e., a non-experimentally based biological
manipulation).
Synonyms for behavioral neuroscience include biopsychology, biological psychology, and psychobiology. Physiological psychology is a subfield of behavioral neuroscience, with an appropriately narrower definition.
Research methods
The distinguishing characteristic of a behavioral neuroscience experiment is that either the independent variable of the experiment is biological, or some dependent variable is biological. In other words, the nervous system
of the organism under study is permanently or temporarily altered, or
some aspect of the nervous system is measured (usually to be related to a
behavioral variable).
Disabling or decreasing neural function
The part of the picture emphasized shows the lesion in the brain. This type of lesion can be removed through surgery.
Surgical lesions – Neural tissue is destroyed by removing it surgically.
Electrolytic lesions – Neural tissue is destroyed through the application of electrical shock trauma.
Chemical lesions – Neural tissue is destroyed by the infusion of a neurotoxin.
Temporary lesions – Neural tissue is temporarily disabled by cooling or by the use of anesthetics such as tetrodotoxin.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
– A new technique usually used with human subjects in which a magnetic
coil applied to the scalp causes unsystematic electrical activity in
nearby cortical neurons which can be experimentally analyzed as a
functional lesion.
Synthetic ligand injection
– A receptor activated solely by a synthetic ligand (RASSL) or Designer
Receptor Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD), permits
spatial and temporal control of G protein signaling in vivo. These systems utilize G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) engineered to respond exclusively to synthetic small molecules ligands, like clozapine N-oxide (CNO), and not to their natural ligand(s). RASSL's represent a GPCR-based chemogenetic
tool. These synthetic ligands upon activation can decrease neural
function by G-protein activation. This can with Potassium attenuating
neural activity.
Psychopharmacological manipulations – A chemical receptor antagonist induces neural activity by interfering with neurotransmission.
Antagonists can be delivered systemically (such as by intravenous
injection) or locally (intracerebrally) during a surgical procedure into
the ventricles or into specific brain structures. For example, NMDAantagonistAP5 has been shown to inhibit the initiation of long term potentiation
of excitatory synaptic transmission (in rodent fear conditioning) which
is believed to be a vital mechanism in learning and memory.
Optogenetic
inhibition – A light activated inhibitory protein is expressed in cells
of interest. Powerful millisecond timescale neuronal inhibition is
instigated upon stimulation by the appropriate frequency of light
delivered via fiber optics or implanted LEDs in the case of vertebrates, or via external illumination for small, sufficiently translucent invertebrates. Bacterial Halorhodopsins or Proton pumps
are the two classes of proteins used for inhibitory optogenetics,
achieving inhibition by increasing cytoplasmic levels of halides (Cl− ) or decreasing the cytoplasmic concentration of protons, respectively.
Enhancing neural function
Electrical
stimulation – A classic method in which neural activity is enhanced by
application of a small electric current (too small to cause significant
cell death).
Psychopharmacological manipulations – A chemical receptor agonist facilitates neural activity by enhancing or replacing endogenous neurotransmitters.
Agonists can be delivered systemically (such as by intravenous
injection) or locally (intracerebrally) during a surgical procedure.
Synthetic Ligand Injection – Likewise, Gq-DREADDs can be
used to modulate cellular function by innervation of brain regions such
as Hippocampus. This innervation results in the amplification of
γ-rhythms, which increases motor activity.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation – In some cases (for example, studies of motor cortex), this technique can be analyzed as having a stimulatory effect (rather than as a functional lesion).
Optogenetic excitation – A light activated excitatory protein is expressed in select cells. Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a light activated cation channel, was the first bacterial opsin shown to excite neurons in response to light, though a number of new excitatory optogenetic tools have now been generated by improving and imparting novel properties to ChR2.
Measuring neural activity
PET
brain scans can show chemical differences in the brain between addicts
and non-addicts. You can see the normal images in the top row come from
non addict while people who have addicting disorders have scans that
look more abnormal.
PET
- Positron Emission Tomography detects particles called photons using a
3-D nuclear medicine examination. These particles are emitted by
injections of radioisotopes such as fluorine. PET imaging reveal the
pathological processes which predict anatomic changes making it
important for detecting, diagnosing and characterising many pathologies
Electroencephalography – Or EEG; and the derivative technique of event-related potentials,
in which scalp electrodes monitor the average activity of neurons in
the cortex (again, used most frequently with human subjects). This
technique uses different types of electrodes for recording systems such
as needle electrodes and saline-based electrodes. EEG allows for the
investigation of mental disorders, sleep disorders and physiology. It
can monitor brain development and cognitive engagement.
Functional neuroanatomy – A more complex counterpart of phrenology. The expression of some anatomical marker is taken to reflect neural activity. For example, the expression of immediate early genes is thought to be caused by vigorous neural activity. Likewise, the injection of 2-deoxyglucose
prior to some behavioral task can be followed by anatomical
localization of that chemical; it is taken up by neurons that are
electrically active.
MEG
– Magnetoencephalography shows the functioning of the human brain
through the measurement of electromagnetic activity. Measuring the
magnetic fields created by the electric current flowing within the
neurons identifies brain activity associated with various human
functions in real time, with millimeter spatial accuracy. Clinicians
can noninvasively obtain data to help them assess neurological disorders
and plan surgical treatments.
Genetic techniques
QTL mapping – The influence of a gene in some behavior can be statistically inferred by studying inbred strains of some species, most commonly mice. The recent sequencing of the genome of many species, most notably mice, has facilitated this technique.
Selective breeding – Organisms, often mice, may be bred selectively among inbred strains to create a recombinant congenic strain. This might be done to isolate an experimentally interesting stretch of DNA
derived from one strain on the background genome of another strain to
allow stronger inferences about the role of that stretch of DNA.
Genetic engineering – The genome may also be experimentally-manipulated; for example, knockout mice
can be engineered to lack a particular gene, or a gene may be expressed
in a strain which does not normally do so (the 'transgenic'). Advanced
techniques may also permit the expression or suppression of a gene to
occur by injection of some regulating chemical.
Other research methods
Computational models - Using a computer to formulate real-world problems to develop solutions.
Although this method is often focused in computer science, it has begun
to move towards other areas of study. For example, psychology is one of
these areas. Computational models allow researchers in psychology to
enhance their understanding of the functions and developments in nervous
systems. Examples of methods include the modelling of neurons, networks
and brain systems and theoretical analysis.
Computational methods have a wide variety of roles including clarifying
experiments, hypothesis testing and generating new insights. These
techniques play an increasing role in the advancement of biological
psychology.
Limitations and advantages
Different
manipulations have advantages and limitations. Neural tissue destroyed
as a primary consequence of a surgery, electric shock or neurotoxin can
confound the results so that the physical trauma masks changes in the
fundamental neurophysiological processes of interest.
For example, when using an electrolytic probe to create a purposeful
lesion in a distinct region of the rat brain, surrounding tissue can be
affected: so, a change in behavior exhibited by the experimental group
post-surgery is to some degree a result of damage to surrounding neural
tissue, rather than by a lesion of a distinct brain region. Most genetic manipulation techniques are also considered permanent.
Temporary lesions can be achieved with advanced in genetic
manipulations, for example, certain genes can now be switched on and off
with diet.
Pharmacological manipulations also allow blocking of certain
neurotransmitters temporarily as the function returns to its previous
state after the drug has been metabolized.
Topic areas
In
general, behavioral neuroscientists study similar themes and issues as
academic psychologists, though limited by the need to use nonhuman
animals. As a result, the bulk of literature in behavioral neuroscience
deals with mental processes and behaviors that are shared across
different animal models such as:
Sensation and perception
Motivated behavior (hunger, thirst, sex)
Control of movement
Learning and memory
Sleep and biological rhythms
Emotion
However, with increasing technical sophistication and with the
development of more precise noninvasive methods that can be applied to
human subjects, behavioral neuroscientists are beginning to contribute
to other classical topic areas of psychology, philosophy, and
linguistics, such as:
Language
Reasoning and decision making
Consciousness
Behavioral neuroscience has also had a strong history of contributing
to the understanding of medical disorders, including those that fall
under the purview of clinical psychology and biological psychopathology (also known as abnormal psychology). Although animal models
do not exist for all mental illnesses, the field has contributed
important therapeutic data on a variety of conditions, including:
Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs the sufferer's motor skills and speech.
Huntington's disease,
a rare inherited neurological disorder whose most obvious symptoms are
abnormal body movements and a lack of coordination. It also affects a
number of mental abilities and some aspects of personality.
Alzheimer's disease,
a neurodegenerative disease that, in its most common form, is found in
people over the age of 65 and is characterized by progressive cognitive
deterioration, together with declining activities of daily living and by
neuropsychiatric symptoms or behavioral changes.
Clinical depression,
a common psychiatric disorder, characterized by a persistent lowering
of mood, loss of interest in usual activities and diminished ability to
experience pleasure.
Schizophrenia,
a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized
by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly
manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions
or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social
or occupational dysfunction.
Autism,
a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and
communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, all
starting before a child is three years old.
Anxiety,
a physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional,
and behavioral components. These components combine to create the
feelings that are typically recognized as fear, apprehension, or worry.
Lesions
– A classic method in which a brain-region of interest is naturally or
intentionally destroyed to observe any resulting changes such as
degraded or enhanced performance on some behavioral measure. Lesions can
be placed with relatively high accuracy "Thanks to a variety of brain
'atlases' which provide a map of brain regions in 3-dimensional "stereotactic coordinates.
Optical
techniques – Optical methods for recording neuronal activity rely on
methods that modify the optical properties of neurons in response to the
cellular events associated with action potentials or neurotransmitter
release.
Voltage sensitive dyes
(VSDs) were among the earliest method for optically detecting neuronal
activity. VSDs commonly changed their fluorescent properties in response
to a voltage change across the neuron's membrane, rendering membrane
sub-threshold and supra-threshold (action potentials) electrical
activity detectable. Genetically encoded voltage sensitive fluorescent proteins have also been developed.
Calcium imaging relies on dyes or genetically encoded proteins that fluoresce upon binding to the calcium that is transiently present during an action potential.
Synapto-pHluorin is a technique that relies on a fusion protein
that combines a synaptic vesicle membrane protein and a pH sensitive
fluorescent protein. Upon synaptic vesicle release, the chimeric protein
is exposed to the higher pH of the synaptic cleft, causing a measurable
change in fluorescence.
Single-unit recording
– A method whereby an electrode is introduced into the brain of a
living animal to detect electrical activity that is generated by the
neurons adjacent to the electrode tip. Normally this is performed with
sedated animals but sometimes it is performed on awake animals engaged
in a behavioral event, such as a thirsty rat whisking a particular
sandpaper grade previously paired with water in order to measure the
corresponding patterns of neuronal firing at the decision point.
Multielectrode recording – The use of a bundle of fine electrodes to
record the simultaneous activity of up to hundreds of neurons.
fMRI
– Functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique most frequently
applied on human subjects, in which changes in cerebral blood flow can
be detected in an MRI
apparatus and are taken to indicate relative activity of larger scale
brain regions (i.e., on the order of hundreds of thousands of neurons).
