The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu.

Reviewers identified the contributions from Driessen, Flanders and Boyer as of particular interest, but challenged the inclusion of chapters focused on the environment.

They criticised the book's failure to include contributions from, or sufficiently engage with the work of, the key voices in the politically focused animal ethics literature, such as Robert Garner, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Alasdair Cochrane, Kimberly Smith, or Siobhan O'Sullivan.

[4] The workshop aimed to fill a gap in the political literature on the status of nonhuman animals, something, they claimed, previously considered only at the margins of work otherwise about the environment/resource management, or else by those more primarily interested in moral issues.

[8] According to Siobhan O'Sullivan, the book may have been the first time that political turn in animal ethics—a phrase that had been used at European conferences for a number of years—appeared in print.

Wissenburg and Schlosberg posit that this literature, though at one time only a small part of more morally focused animal ethics, has developed into a separate field of enquiry in its own right.

[10] Recognising the editors' identification of the political turn in animal ethics, Garner, writing with O'Sullivan and Alasdair Cochrane,[note 3] argues that the literature is both made distinct and unified by its focus on justice; contributions to this literature, these authors argue, "imagine how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals.

Smith seeks to show that recognition theories should not be considered "soft" or "naive" as accounts of justice, and instead that they offer an appropriate mode for thinking about ecological and animal injustices.

His mixed account, he claims, provides a form of justice appropriate for thinking about human and nonhuman individuals and collectives in the Anthropocene.

This is particularly noticeable, he argues, when humans are involved in the development of new technologies, analysing the example (following Bruno Latour) of Gaston Lagaffe building a door in dialogue with his boss and the office cat, and of farmers and cows using milking robots.

Though Otjes allows that his study's relevance may seem limited, he concludes that smaller parties can affect government agenda by remaining focused on their own primary concern.

Using the example of polar bear preservation, Boyer illustrates how species advocacy becomes tied up with broader political goals concerning humans and competing visions of the value of animals.

[19] Svärd, taking a more empirical approach than many other contributors,[12][20] explores laws surrounding animal welfare in early 20th-century Sweden.

He conceives of the debates as a political problematisation in which (drawing upon Lacanian psychoanalysis) animal cruelty was blamed on certain "other" groups (such as Jews and Sami).

He concludes that much work on the topic is left to be done, but the key lesson to be learnt is the significance of innovation; environmental politics, he claims, should remain both inventive and optimistic.

[8] He also felt that the book offered little consideration of the details of the work of these leading theorists, identifying the absence of discussion of Cochrane's interest-based rights approach, a superficial consideration of Regan's account of animal rights, an oversimplification of his own position and a lack of context to understand the respective work of Kimberly Smith and O'Sullivan.

For him, the essays of part three—effectively three case studies—illustrated ways that the "actual practice of politics evince psychological and pragmatic concerns that do not fit neatly into normative foundations".

Anthropocentrism, he argued, can be "open to ecological identifications, having humane virtues, and showing responsibility for our behavior", though this is often denied in environmental ethics.

Parts two and three, Bendik-Keymer felt, reveal "the need for a viable politics of animals to be grounded in an adequate experience of community".

Hooley thought it surprising that few authors engaged with the work of Donaldson and Kymlicka, and was critical of Wissenburg's discussion of the pair, which he claimed was "all too brief and ultimately disappointing".

[24] Milburn thought that the opening chapters (and introduction) did well to establish the volume, and was happy with the inclusion of the more empirical contributions, given their potential theoretical significance.

[11][25][26] Another publication identified in these reviews is the open access journal Politics and Animals;[11][25][26] this published its first issue in 2015 with an "editorial collective" consisting of Boyer, Svärd, Katherine Wayne and Guy Scotton.