JAMES M. JASPER and DOROTHY NELKIN.
The animal rights crusade: The growth of a moral protest.
New York: The Free Press, 1992. x, 214 pp. $22.95.

Harold Takooshian
Fordham University

How has the animal rights movement achieved so much so effectively since the l970s? Have activists simply channeled public sentiments that were already there, or have they been swaying public opinion to their cause? Or are activists scoring their victories despite public opinion? Such are the issues discussed in this concise, even-handed, fact-saturated volume. This review summarizes the main points of The animal rights crusade, offers a critique of some of its strengths and limitations, and further examines several issues raised in the volume.

Summary

The aim of the book is to "capture the movement's moral vision and sense of mission, with sensitivity to its concerns but also an awareness of some of its excesses" (book jacket). It is a brave book in its attempt to provide a dispassionate account of what has become (along with abortion) one of the most passionate controversies of our era. The authors are two sociologists currently at New York University, with long and prolific careers writing about the interface of science and social values. Jasper has written widely on nuclearism, technology, and social change, and Nelkin on genetic engineering, biotechnology, AIDS, nuclearism, ecology, and job safety. Regarding animals, apparently their only two prior studies were co-authored presentations at recent sociology meetings (Jasper & Poulsen, 1989; Jasper, Nelkin, & Poulsen, 1990).

Seven of the 12 chapters analyze the nature of the movement. Over the centuries, several social forces (urbanization, industrialization, democratization) have caused a shift in humans' view of animals, from instruments to be used for food, clothing, and farm work to companions to be cherished ­ pets given a name and family status. It has led to what the authors term "sentimental anthropomorphism," people's attribution to animals of human sentiments such as the abilities to feel emotions and communicate, and to form social relationships. Borrowing tactics from other reformist movements, animal advocates have become more effective in several ways ­ protests, litigation, boycotts, lobbying, and public relations. Since the 1970s, philosophers like Peter Singer and Tom Regan have honed a notion of "animal rights," providing an important ideological base that has further accelerated the movement.

The remaining five chapters focus on five specific themes of the crusade: Regarding "animals in the wild," strong protests have been mounted against large-scale seal hunts, dolphin-safe tuna, trapping, and hunting. "From rabbits to petri dishes" describes the dramatic drop in industrial testing of cosmetics, drugs and toiletries since 1980, to the point where the once-routine Draize and LD-50 tests are now viewed by many as obsolete. "Test tubes with legs" documents the dramatic rise in biomedical research after World War II, and the effectiveness of protests challenging this ­ reportedly more easily at some labs (Cornell, Berkeley, Museum of Natural History) than at others (New York University, Stanford). "Animals as commodities" concludes that the crusade has persuasively made moral issues of factory farming, humane slaughter, and fur production (both wild and ranch). Finally, in "Animals on display," earlier protests against pit bull and cock fighting have now expanded to rodeos, circuses, Hollywood films, zoos, and animal shows, with only partial impact.

Jasper and Nelkin present an overview of the evolution of the animal rights movement by dividing the movement into three parts: (1) Since the 1860s, the original SPCA "welfarists" were part of a larger humanitarian tradition of helping others; (2) Since the 1970s, more assertive "pragmatists" like Henry Spira have demanded "animal rights," using stronger methods in order to force negotiation with those who violate these rights; (3) Since the 1980s, "fundamentalists" like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have sought to protect animal rights without "hobnobbing in the halls with our enemy" (p. 154) or compromising. Even in the 1990s, welfarist groups like the HSUS and SPCA remain the largest in both membership and funding. Yet there has been a meteoric rise of the crusader factions, eclipsing the welfarists ­ pragmatists like Spira's Animal Rights International, Joyce Tischler's Animal Legal Defense Fund, Cleveland Amory's Fund for Animals, as well as fundamentalists like PETA, TransSpecies Unlimited, and the Animal Liberation Front. Moreover, the achievements of the crusader groups are telling. For instance PETA grow from its two founders in 1980 to 300,000 in 1990 (p. 31), and between 1980-87 much of the cosmetics industry had come to pledge an end to all animal testing and allocated $5,000,000 for research on alternatives (p. 2). Some of this strength comes from alliance with parallel movements against pollution, racism, sexism, nuclearism, agribusiness, even cholesterol.

Critique

Several strengths of this volume are clear. First, its reportorial style is crisp and rich in detail ­ replete with events, dates, names and numbers in its profiles of specific people and organizations. The authors often take the reader behind the scenes through interviews of key participants in the fray. Another strength is its impressive diversity of sources. Its 26 pages of footnotes include periodicals, books, industrial reports, the popular press and television, scientific journals, interviews, and reconcile pamphlets. They show the authors' attention to detail, desire to be thorough, and their knowledge of their subject right up to late 1990.

The book's smooth combination of details and lucid sociological analysis makes for thought-provoking reading, including their novel historical analysis and three-groups typology. The tone is analytic without being judgmental, felling crusaders and counter-crusaders of all snipe speak in their own words. Occasionally the authors candidly if gently express their own preferences, describing pragmatists as effective while the fundamentalists often "manipulate" and "bully" (p. 175). Still, they recognize it is the symbiosis here that works, that the pragmatists are able to negotiate because their "adversaries" know that the fundamentalists do not.

There are also clear limitations of the book, in both format and content. The footnotes are hard lo use: They are numbered by chapter rather than consecutively across chapters; they mix commentary with citations; and they are omitted from the volume's index, making all this rich scholarship less accessible. The chapters themselves read like thematic essays, without linear or chronological progression, and sometimes repeat material already discussed elsewhere. In the appendices, it would have been useful to see tables clarifying the chronology of the movement and its dramatis personae. Though the book mentions counter-crusading by the American Medical Association (pp. 113, 132), toiletries association (p. 113), and Foundation for Biomedical Research (p. 133), it does not document these important efforts

.

Psychologists and other social scientists may be disappointed by the presentation of insights without empirical support. with one notable exception ([heir own survey of protesters at two pro-animal demonstrations for World Laboratory Animal Day in 1988 _at New York University and al Berkeley, pp. 38, 67), the authors do not review nor even mention the score of attitude studies conducted in the past 40 years, documenting public opinion about animal welfare (Takooshian, 1988). As a result, their inferences about public opinion are unsupported. Indeed, social scientists might well view the numerous assertions contained in the book as hypotheses awaiting test. For example: Are the dwindling 3% of Americans working in U.S. agriculture indeed more "instrumental" in their attitudes toward animals than the general public (p. 17)? Are urbanites more pro-animal than ruralites (p. 18)? Are the 60% of U.S. homes with a pet more sympathetic to animals than the 40% with none (p. 17)? Do the personified animals in cartoons (Bugs, Daffy, Mickey) have any impact on children's cognition and adults' identification with other species (p. 20)? Are "New Age" activists in contemporaneous liberal causes ­ ecology, civil rights, feminism, anti-nuclear, peace ­ more likely sympathetic to a concept of animal rights (p. 21)? In their temperament, are crusaders higher in authoritarian rigidity because they act morally righteous or lower because of their tolerant acceptance of all species (p. 41)? Is increased pet ownership an indicator of a move toward more tight-knit family life (p. 60), or is it a symptom of urban anomie, the breakdown of the family (p. 19). Do rodeo fans tend to view "animal rights" as un-American or even un-Godly (p. 159)? Do animal rights crusaders lean towards misanthropy or philanthropy? While we all hear of Hitler's love of dogs and of the reclusive widow who leaves her fortune to her 50 cats, we also know that the first protectors of abused children in the 1800s were SPCA animal welfarists.

Issues

The book makes a cogent case that the animal rights crusade accurately reflects a growing world-wide sympathy of people for animals, a sympathy which resulted from certain inexorable sociological trends ­ urbanization, the decline in agriculture, increase in pets, etc. Despite their valuable sociological insights into this changing Zeitgeist, the issue of human identification with animals seems as much a problem for the field of cognitive psychology as it is for macrosociology. For instance, the demographic fact of increasing pet ownership may indeed increase cross-species identification, but are pet owners more sympathetic to animal rights? How are vivisectionists who do pain research on dogs able to dissociate their work from their beloved pet dog at home? This intrapsychic level is relatively untouched in the book, but poses its own questions. Why is it some individuals within the same family identify so intensely with animals, and others not at all? How is it "[a] peasant becomes fond of his pig, and is glad to salt its pork away" (p. 12)? And why do individuals "discriminate," identifying with one dog but not another, just as the same wartime Nazi guards who showed compassion to people at home were so heinously callous with people "on the job." Surely animal rights issues need to be understood at this micro as well as the macro level.

The term "fundamentalist" is a misleading one in at least two ways. First, it connotes a "going back" to some original source which, in the case of animal rights, did not exist. Second, the term's denotation of religiosity hardly pertains to animal rights activists. The authors' own survey found that the crusade is "appealing especially to those who reject organized religion as a source of moral tenets" (p. 175), and that crusaders are "strikingly nonreligious" (p. 38). Better terms would be "absolutist" or "abolitionist." In fact, "abolitionist" has historical accuracy, since there was some connection in the 1800s between efforts to abolish slavery and to protect nonhuman animals (p. 58).

A third key issue is the peculiar use of the term "sentimental anthropomorphism." The authors posit this term as the fountainhead of the animal rights movement, the growing tendency of some people to personify animals (pp. 11, 25, 94-96). They feel humanity's agricultural past, which gave humans a tendency lo use animals, now is shifting to a relationship of companionship. According to the authors, crusaders use such personification as a public relations tactic: "Easily personified, veal calves are a favorite target of activists. Babies with large eyes, they are separated from their mothers ... confined in stalls ... Even lobsters are anthropomorphized: They have a long childhood and an awkward adolescence ... They flirt. Their pregnancies last nine months..." (p. 142).

More careful usage of the term anthropomorphism and some explanation of its origins would be helpful. Anthropologists often regard anthropomorphism as an element in primitive human societies. Millennia before Aesop's fables and the religion of ancient Greece with its pantheon of human-like gods, the tendency towards animism and anthropomorphism (the personification of all natural forces) among primitive people was worldwide ­ recorded in ancient Egypt, Mexico, China. "[For t]he ancients, like modem savages, Natural phenomena were regularly conceived in terms of human experiences" (Frankfort et al., 1966, p. 12). Winds were angry or gentle, floods and other events were living beings with their own names and personalities, and animals were seen as an incarnation of human spirits, or the spirits of one's own ancestors. "Of course it is true that any agricultural people has a feeling for the force that works in nature, and comes to personalize each separate force... [T]he human came to address the extra-human in terms of human intercourse" (Frankfort et al., 1966, p. 49). In fact, Egyptian hieroglyphics actually depict apes and ostriches with limbs outstretched in worshipful poses toward the all-powerful morning sun god Ré, showing their belief that animals shared man's religious nature, that "Such observed phenomena were visible proofs of the communion of men, beasts, and the gods" (Frankfort et al., 1966, p. 53).

As evidence of sentimental anthropomorphism, the authors quote anthropologist Jane Goodall's return to "Gombe ­ back home. Many old chimp friends were there ... Melissa and her 7-year-old daughter, Gremlin, were enjoying their last meal of the day ... Nearby sat my old friend Fifi. I had known her as an infant: Now she was mother of two" (p. 199). It is clearly anthropomorphic to personify sphinxes and clouds, but why is it so to describe chimps as friends or daughters? Despite psychologist Wilhelm Wundt's early warnings in 1884 about the dangers of "anthropomorphism" in animal psychology (King & Viney, 1992), cognitive scientists today recognize that human beings have no monopoly on emotions and abilities shared with species. While the authors are critical and condescending towards animal rights activists and their alleged sentimental anthropomorphism, post-Singer (perhaps post-Darwin!) scientists have found that similarity in cognition and physiology between humans and other species demonstrates the accuracy of Goodall's use of the term "friends".

References

Frankfort, H., Frankfort, H. A., Wilson, J. A., & Jacobsen, T. (1966).

Before philosophy. Baltimore: Penguin.

Jasper, J. M., Nelkin, D., & Poulsen, J. (1990).

When do social movements win? Three campaigns against animal experiments. Presentation to the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC.

Jasper, J. M., & Poulsen, J. (1989).

Animal rights and antinuclear protest: Condensing symbols and the critique of instrumental reason. Presentation to the American Sociological Association, San Francisco.

King, D. B., & Viney, W. (1992).

Modern history of sentimental attitudes toward animals and the selling of comparative psychology. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 106, 190-195.

Takooshian, H. (1988, Spring).

Opinions on animal research: Scientists versus the public? PsyETA Bulletin, 7, 5, 8-9.

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