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# Conclusion

In this course you have read about how the animal turn is stimulating social scientists’ attention to harms against nonhuman animals. This challenges the humanocentric history of the social sciences, and the wider dominance of humanocentrism. You have seen how the animal turn acts as a counter-discourse to the dominance of humanocentric social science discourse. As Foucault argued, discourse is never neutral, and that equally applies to this course, which itself contributes to an anti-humanocentric discourse that underpins the animal turn in the social sciences. This cuts to the heart of debates about what, and indeed who, criminology is for. This course is ‘for’ other animals, that is, it highlights how they are routinely victimised by the AIC and thereby asserts that they are legitimate subjects of criminological concern. A key aspect of the work of criminologists is to counter dominant discourses that deny the existence, magnitude or significance of those harms and their victims and survivors.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course DD311 Crime, harm and the state.

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OpenLearn - Why are nonhuman animals victims of harm?
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