The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does

The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does is the first edited volume to critically engage with Effective Altruism (EA). It brings together writers from diverse activist and scholarly backgrounds to explore a variety of unique grassroots movements and community organizing efforts. By drawing attention to these responses and to particular cases of human and animal harms, this book represents a powerful call to attend to different voices and projects and to elevate activist traditions that EA lacks the resources to assess and threatens to squelch. The contributors reveal the weakness inherent within the ready-made, top-down solutions that EA offers in response to many global problems-and offers in their place substantial descriptions of more meaningful and just social engagement.

Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. Lori Gruen is William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University where she founded and coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Carol J. Adams is a feminist scholar and activist whose work explores the cultural construction of overlapping and interconnected oppressions, as well as the ethics of care.

Foreword: Amia SrinivisanIntroduction: Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori GruenAcknowledgements
1 How Effective Altruism Fails Community-Based Activism Brenda Sanders
2 Effective Altruism's Unsuspecting 21st Century ColonialismSimone De Lima
3 Anti-Blackness and the Effective AltruistChristopher Sebastian
4 Animal Advocacy's Stockholm SyndromeDeCoriolis, Aaron S. Gross, Steve J. Gross, and Joseph Tuminello (Farm Forward)
5 Who Counts? Effective Altruism and the Problem of Numbers in the History of American Wildlife ConservationMichael D. Wise
6 Diversifying Effective Altruism Longshots in Animal Advocacy: An Invitation to Prioritize Black Vegans, Higher Education, and Religious CommunitiesMatthew C. Halteman
7 A Christian Critique of the Effective Altruism Approach to Animal PhilanthropyDavid L. Clough
8 Queer Eye on the EA Guyspattrice jones
9 A Feminist-Ethics-of-Care Critique of Effective AltruismCarol J. Adams
10 The Empty Promises of Cultured MeatElan Abrell
11 How 'Alternative Proteins' Create a Private Solution to a Public ProblemMichele Simon
12 The Power of Love to Transform Animal Lives: The Deception of Animal QuantificationKrista Hiddema
13 Our Partners, The Animals: Reflections from a Farmed Animal SanctuaryKathy Stevens
14 The Wisdom Gained from Animals Who Self-LiberateRachel McCrystal
15 Effective Altruism and the Reified MindJohn Sanbonmatsu
16 Against 'Effective Altruism'Alice Crary
17 The Change We NeedLori Gruen
Coda: Future-oriented Effective Altruism: What's wrong with longtermism?Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen