Animal Rights Without Borders: Lyn White and Transnational Investigative Campaigning

Abstract

Since its emergence in the mid-1970s, the Australian animal movement has sought to contest the politics and culture of animal use and exploitation, such as the rearing of animals in factory farms or the export of animals to overseas markets. In the history of this movement, Lyn White has been considered one of the most effective activists. A former South Australian police officer for twenty years, in 2003 she began working with the group Animals Australia. Since then, she has conducted 11 investigations in the Middle East, Turkey, and Indonesia, documenting the mistreatment of Australian animals exported for slaughter. The evidence that she gathered resulted in notable achievements: a leading export company was prosecuted for animal cruelty; trade to Egypt and Indonesia was suspended; the sheep trade to Egypt was banned; and there were significant government and industry reforms. White developed into a quintessential transnational activist. This chapter offers a unique account of transnational activism as it was practiced by White. What made White different from her local counterparts was her ability to shift her activism from the domestic to the international sphere, and vice versa. She was able to take advantage of ‘the expanded nodes of opportunity of a complex international society.’ She operated in foreign cultures and in potentially risky environments, networked with people and groups, and campaigned on local and international issues, both overseas and in Australia. In the course of her activism she developed a repertoire that this chapter terms ‘transnational investigative campaigning,’ which was characterised in three ways: international sites of contention; transnational activist networks; and old and new media campaigning. By exploring these features, this chapter demonstrates the transformative power of this technique and its implications on both domestic and global politics. Ultimately, transnational investigative campaigning was the Australian animal movement’s example par excellence of transnational activism.