Richard Twine

Reader in Sociology & Co-Director of CfHAS Department of History, Geography & Social Sciences Edge Hill University - UK. Richard Twine is a sociologist whose work contributes to social theory, critical animal studies, environmental sociology, science and technology studies, and the sociology of food, with a particular focus on human–animal relations and the political economy of the animal-industrial complex. His research examines how institutionalised forms of animal exploitation are embedded within wider structures of capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism, and how these relations shape both human subjectivity and socio-ecological futures. Across more than 25 years of scholarship, Twine has played a significant role in establishing critical animal studies as a sociologically grounded and intersectional field, helping to bring questions of nonhuman animal exploitation into wider debates about power, inequality and environmental crisis. Twine’s early, doctoral work, influenced by ecofeminist ethics and philosophy centred around theorising embodiment as a grounding for intersectional politics. At Lancaster University he developed a sociological and bioethical analysis of biotechnology and genomics, examining how scientific innovation reconfigures animal bodies as sites of technological intervention and capital accumulation. His 2010 monograph Animals as Biotechnology – Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies provided the first book-length sociological analysis of animal genomics and biotechnology, demonstrating how technological developments intensify the instrumentalisation of nonhuman life while simultaneously destabilising nature–culture dualism. This work contributed to posthumanist sociology by analysing how animal bodies become key sites through which modern societies negotiate questions of progress, control and ethical responsibility. The posthumanist questioning of what it means to be human vis-à-vis our relations with other species has animated Twine’s work throughout his career. He has been especially critical of the way essentialisms of gender/masculinity and the human stabilise oppressive relationships. What we do, and what we allow others to do, to other species, partly defines us as a species, but is not fixed. A central conceptual contribution of Twine’s research has been the elaboration of the ‘animal-industrial complex’ as a sociological framework linking economic structures, scientific practices and cultural norms that together sustain large-scale violence toward animals. Building on earlier formulations of the concept, Twine has demonstrated how the animal-industrial complex can function both as a theoretical lens and as a methodological orientation for analysing institutionalised exploitation across agriculture, biotechnology and academic knowledge production. His co-edited collection The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre helped consolidate the field’s intellectual identity and articulated its commitment to analysing animal oppression in relation to intersecting systems of domination. Twine has also made a sustained contribution to gender studies. Beginning with early work on ecofeminism, embodiment, dualism and feminist bioethics, his scholarship has explored how gendered power relations shape the cultural meanings of meat consumption, care and ethical responsibility toward other species. His work revisits ecofeminist insights through the lens of intersectionality, analysing how masculinities, affect and cultural norms contribute to environmentally harmful practices and resistance to dietary change. His concept of the ‘vegan killjoy’, inspired by feminist critiques of happiness and normativity, highlights how everyday ethical practices can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about animal consumption and expose the social regulation of dissent. His concept of ‘intersectional disgust’ explores the tensions between ecofeminism and feminism, questioning the latter’s uncritical faithfulness to anthropocentrism. More recent research written since his 2014 move to Edge Hill University has focused on climate change, eco-masculinities, climate denialism from the animal science community and the role of food practices and sustainability transitions in reshaping human–animal relations. Drawing on practice theory, Twine has analysed veganism as a socially embedded practice shaped by infrastructures, institutions and collective norms. This has contributed to better understandings of vegan transition. His work demonstrates how everyday consumption practices can become sites of ethical and political transformation and how vegan transitions intersect with broader debates about climate justice. In his 2024 book The Climate Crisis and Other Animals, the first to specifically consider the crisis through a sociological lens of human-animal relations, he argues that the marginalisation of nonhuman animals within climate discourse reflects disciplinary blind spots within sociology and society more broadly, limiting the transformative potential of environmental policy. For Twine, responses to the climate crisis have largely protected capitalism and its shaping of dominant understandings of the human from critical reflection. Across his publications, Twine has developed an intersectional account of veganism that situates animal exploitation within wider critiques of capitalism, patriarchy and colonial histories. His most recent work continues to explore how emerging forms of ethical subjectivity challenge dominant constructions of the human and open possibilities for multispecies justice. Collectively, his scholarship advances sociological understanding of how relations between humans and other animals are socially organised, politically contested and central to addressing contemporary ecological crises. Twine is one of a group of scholars that have pushed the boundaries of Sociology (and the social sciences and humanities more broadly) away from entrenched anthropocentrism in order to consider both the multispecies ontology of the social and the normative and sociological mechanisms that perpetuate a status quo that violently exploits nonhuman animals. As supposedly the critical and reflexive discipline par excellence, Sociology and sociologists still have far to travel in this direction, as do the societies in which they sit. Why take this path? For Twine, this is about producing better, post-dualistic critical social science, it is about not turning away from the many ways in which nonhuman animals are exploited. It is also about acknowledging what we share with other animals, creating (and progressing to) non-violent societies and, because of the role of human-animal relations in the overlapping climate and biodiversity crises, addressing some of the most pressing issues of our times. These crises are a crisis in, and of, human-animal relations (a demonstration of what happens when we thoroughly instrumentalise nature) and it is not credible to think we can address these crises without a radical transformation of how we value and treat other species. In contributing internationally to the interdisciplinary field of critical animal studies, Twine’s work has extended beyond his core home within Sociology, having published also in Philosophy, Law, Psychology, Health, Environmental Science, Dietetics, Criminology and Bioethics. He has been Co-Director of the Centre for Human-Animal Studies (CfHAS) at Edge Hill University since 2014. Twine describes the overarching thematic interests of his work as contesting the naturalisation of hierarchies and identities, unpicking and transcending intersecting relations of power, and exploring how to theoretically and practically prefigure alternative spaces, futures and ways of being which can engender the creation of just, equal societies, inclusive of the flourishing of nonhuman animals. Ultimately the values which underpin his work are curiosity, awe, compassion, empathy, care and justice. <<.. back

Reader in Sociology & Co-Director of CfHAS
Department of History, Geography & Social Sciences
Edge Hill University - UK.

Richard Twine is a sociologist whose work contributes to social theory, critical animal studies, environmental sociology, science and technology studies, and the sociology of food, with a particular focus on human–animal relations and the political economy of the animal-industrial complex. His research examines how institutionalised forms of animal exploitation are embedded within wider structures of capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism, and how these relations shape both human subjectivity and socio-ecological futures. Across more than 25 years of scholarship, Twine has played a significant role in establishing critical animal studies as a sociologically grounded and intersectional field, helping to bring questions of nonhuman animal exploitation into wider debates about power, inequality and environmental crisis.

Twine’s early, doctoral work, influenced by ecofeminist ethics and philosophy centred around theorising embodiment as a grounding for intersectional politics. At Lancaster University he developed a sociological and bioethical analysis of biotechnology and genomics, examining how scientific innovation reconfigures animal bodies as sites of technological intervention and capital accumulation. His 2010 monograph Animals as Biotechnology – Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies provided the first book-length sociological analysis of animal genomics and biotechnology, demonstrating how technological developments intensify the instrumentalisation of nonhuman life while simultaneously destabilising nature–culture dualism. This work contributed to posthumanist sociology by analysing how animal bodies become key sites through which modern societies negotiate questions of progress, control and ethical responsibility. The posthumanist questioning of what it means to be human vis-à-vis our relations with other species has animated Twine’s work throughout his career. He has been especially critical of the way essentialisms of gender/masculinity and the human stabilise oppressive relationships. What we do, and what we allow others to do, to other species, partly defines us as a species, but is not fixed.

A central conceptual contribution of Twine’s research has been the elaboration of the ‘animal-industrial complex’ as a sociological framework linking economic structures, scientific practices and cultural norms that together sustain large-scale violence toward animals. Building on earlier formulations of the concept, Twine has demonstrated how the animal-industrial complex can function both as a theoretical lens and as a methodological orientation for analysing institutionalised exploitation across agriculture, biotechnology and academic knowledge production. His co-edited collection The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre helped consolidate the field’s intellectual identity and articulated its commitment to analysing animal oppression in relation to intersecting systems of domination.

Twine has also made a sustained contribution to gender studies. Beginning with early work on ecofeminism, embodiment, dualism and feminist bioethics, his scholarship has explored how gendered power relations shape the cultural meanings of meat consumption, care and ethical responsibility toward other species. His work revisits ecofeminist insights through the lens of intersectionality, analysing how masculinities, affect and cultural norms contribute to environmentally harmful practices and resistance to dietary change. His concept of the ‘vegan killjoy’, inspired by feminist critiques of happiness and normativity, highlights how everyday ethical practices can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about animal consumption and expose the social regulation of dissent. His concept of ‘intersectional disgust’ explores the tensions between ecofeminism and feminism, questioning the latter’s uncritical faithfulness to anthropocentrism.

More recent research written since his 2014 move to Edge Hill University has focused on climate change, eco-masculinities, climate denialism from the animal science community and the role of food practices and sustainability transitions in reshaping human–animal relations. Drawing on practice theory, Twine has analysed veganism as a socially embedded practice shaped by infrastructures, institutions and collective norms. This has contributed to better understandings of vegan transition. His work demonstrates how everyday consumption practices can become sites of ethical and political transformation and how vegan transitions intersect with broader debates about climate justice.

In his 2024 book The Climate Crisis and Other Animals, the first to specifically consider the crisis through a sociological lens of human-animal relations, he argues that the marginalisation of nonhuman animals within climate discourse reflects disciplinary blind spots within sociology and society more broadly, limiting the transformative potential of environmental policy. For Twine, responses to the climate crisis have largely protected capitalism and its shaping of dominant understandings of the human from critical reflection.

Across his publications, Twine has developed an intersectional account of veganism that situates animal exploitation within wider critiques of capitalism, patriarchy and colonial histories. His most recent work continues to explore how emerging forms of ethical subjectivity challenge dominant constructions of the human and open possibilities for multispecies justice. Collectively, his scholarship advances sociological understanding of how relations between humans and other animals are socially organised, politically contested and central to addressing contemporary ecological crises.

Twine is one of a group of scholars that have pushed the boundaries of Sociology (and the social sciences and humanities more broadly) away from entrenched anthropocentrism in order to consider both the multispecies ontology of the social and the normative and sociological mechanisms that perpetuate a status quo that violently exploits nonhuman animals. As supposedly the critical and reflexive discipline par excellence, Sociology and sociologists still have far to travel in this direction, as do the societies in which they sit. Why take this path? For Twine, this is about producing better, post-dualistic critical social science, it is about not turning away from the many ways in which nonhuman animals are exploited. It is also about acknowledging what we share with other animals, creating (and progressing to) non-violent societies and, because of the role of human-animal relations in the overlapping climate and biodiversity crises, addressing some of the most pressing issues of our times. These crises are a crisis in, and of, human-animal relations (a demonstration of what happens when we thoroughly instrumentalise nature) and it is not credible to think we can address these crises without a radical transformation of how we value and treat other species.

In contributing internationally to the interdisciplinary field of critical animal studies, Twine’s work has extended beyond his core home within Sociology, having published also in Philosophy, Law, Psychology, Health, Environmental Science, Dietetics, Criminology and Bioethics. He has been Co-Director of the Centre for Human-Animal Studies (CfHAS) at Edge Hill University since 2014.

Twine describes the overarching thematic interests of his work as contesting the naturalisation of hierarchies and identities, unpicking and transcending intersecting relations of power, and exploring how to theoretically and practically prefigure alternative spaces, futures and ways of being which can engender the creation of just, equal societies, inclusive of the flourishing of nonhuman animals. Ultimately the values which underpin his work are curiosity, awe, compassion, empathy, care and justice.