Introduction
Violence against animals is often explained through individual anger, lack of conscience, or exceptional behavior. However, such acts cannot be understood solely through individual characteristics. Attitudes that harm animals are closely linked to social structures, learned values, and behaviors that are considered normal within a given context. This article addresses violence against animals not through isolated incidents, but within a historical, social, and psychological framework.
A Brief Framework On Violence
Violence has appeared in different forms throughout human history and is closely associated with the need to establish power, control, and boundaries. It can be defined as the harmful use of power directed toward an individual or a living being.
In contemporary societies, violence is not limited to physical harm. Ignoring, devaluing, and denying also constitute quieter forms of violence. This perspective is essential for understanding why many practices directed at animals are not recognized as violent.
The Historical Transformation Of The Human–Animal Relationship
The relationship between humans and animals has not remained constant. In hunter-gatherer societies, animals are part of the natural living environment, and survival depends on a direct relationship with nature.
With the transition to settled life, animals are domesticated and integrated more deeply into human life. However, the shift from agricultural production to industrial society significantly alters this relationship. As human dependence on nature decreases, humans increasingly position themselves above other living beings, while animals are evaluated primarily through production, efficiency, and utility. In this process, animals are reduced from living beings to objects that are owned, used, or managed.
The Normalization Of Violence In Everyday Life
In modern life, many practices that harm animals are not defined as violence. Interventions justified by aesthetics, care, or tradition are often normalized. Yet these practices involve direct control over the animal’s body.
Here, the animal is positioned not as a subject but as a being over which decisions are made. Practices justified through aesthetics or habit are often normalized and become embedded in everyday life.
Social And Psychological Background: Power, Perception, And Desensitization
Interpreting violence against animals solely as individual immorality narrows the understanding of human behavior. Such actions gain meaning when examined together with learned norms, perceptions, empathy boundaries, and responsibility assessments. From a social psychological perspective, behaviors toward animals are associated with social learning, conformity to norms, and diffusion of responsibility.
A human-centered worldview is not only cultural but also psychologically internalized. Through socialization, individuals develop implicit classifications of which lives are considered valuable. When animals are defined primarily through function or benefit, empathic engagement becomes more difficult.
Desensitization plays a key role in this process. Repeated exposure to harmful behaviors toward animals dulls emotional responses. Unchallenged acts of violence in public spaces redefine what is considered normal.
Diffusion of responsibility further sustains this pattern. Beliefs such as “everyone does this” or “my behavior will not change anything” reduce moral questioning. This mechanism is particularly influential for children. Children learn not only attitudes toward animals but toward all forms of violence and power largely through observation. In contexts where harmful behavior is normalized or goes unanswered, empathy boundaries are reshaped.
Violence From A Psychoanalytic Perspective: Freud And Fromm
Psychoanalytic theory approaches violence through the inner world of the individual. Freud argues that human behavior is shaped by the tension between life-preserving and destructive tendencies, with aggression existing as a potential within human nature.
Fromm, however, rejects the inevitability of destructiveness. He suggests that destructive tendencies intensify under social conditions that restrict love, productivity, and meaning. From this perspective, violence is not merely an individual impulse but a phenomenon reinforced by social structures. Violence against animals can therefore be understood as a distorted reflection of the human relationship with life itself.
The Social Meaning Of Violence Against Animals
Violence against animals is not a problem confined to animals alone; it reflects a hierarchical worldview in which life is unevenly valued. Whenever humans can easily disregard a living being they perceive as inferior, empathy weakens and violence becomes invisible. This has broader social implications. In environments where power is unchecked and the harmed are devalued, violence can extend into other areas of social life. For this reason, violence against animals can be considered an early indicator of social fragmentation.
Conclusion
Violence against animals cannot be reduced solely to individual morality or social structures in isolation. It emerges through the interaction between the individual’s psychological processes and the social environment. Attitudes toward animals are shaped by learned norms, value systems, and repeated everyday practices.
Psychologically, violence against animals is closely related to desensitization, empathy, and perceptions of responsibility. In contexts where violence is normalized, harmful behavior becomes perceived as ordinary. Sociologically, such violence reflects a hierarchical worldview that prioritizes power, utility, and control.
Thus, violence against animals serves as a significant indicator of how individuals relate to power, responsibility, and the suffering of others. Transforming this relationship requires not only protecting animals but fostering a more sensitive, responsible, and egalitarian social order.
References
Hatunoğlu, Y., Avcı, M. A., Hatunoğlu, A., & Avcı, R. (2018). An examination of recent mistreatment of animals within the context of animal rights through religious, magical, psychological, and sociological dimensions. Journal of Academic Social Research, 6(84), 519–526.
Karakaya, A., Çakmakkaya, B. Y., & Yılmaz Balkan, Y. (2020). An evaluation of violence against animals. Near East Journal of Social Sciences, 2(6).*