Abstract:
This paper is an innovative addition to the ongoing debate about human-animal relations. It
approaches the topic from the perspective of political economy rather than moral philosophy
and seeks to provide an explanatory framework combining commodification of animals and
death in the global economy. While acknowledging the importance of the ongoing debate
about animal rights, it seeks to shift the focus of analysis of industries which create value
through the killing of animals toward one based on the Foucauldian notions of power as
biopolitics and governance. In order to reconceptualise the relations of power which exist
between human business interests and animal life, it introduces the notion that animals killed
for meat, by-products, or research purposes are treated as necrocommodities; that is,
commodities whose value is created as a direct result of death. By challenging the prevalent
notions of speciesist hierarchisation and property rights, it seeks to cast a new light on the
tangible power relations which exist between humans and animal species which are hunted or
fished for profit. In doing so, this paper challenges the notion that the economy is amoral.
Instead, it presents a preliminary picture of an economy rooted in inter-species power
relations which is necessarily subject to a moral critique. The case study of the International
Whaling Commission (IWC) and ongoing "scientific" whaling is used to elucidate and introduce
the concept of necroeconomics, but the main goal is to present an analytical framework that
has a bearing on wider moral and structural issues in the international animal and animal
product industry. Moreover, it situates animal-human relations within broader problems of
modernity, thereby broadening its scope and calling for more academic focus on the place of
animals in the modern political economy and its attendant circuits of power.
