Us and Them: Scientists' and Animal Rights Campaigners' Views of the Animal Experimentation Debate

Elizabeth S. Paul


Animal rights campaigners and scientists working with animals completed anonymous questionnaires in which they were asked to report, not only on their own beliefs and ideas about the animal experimentation debate, but also on those they perceived the opposing group to hold. Both groups of participants tended to have a negative and somewhat extreme view of the other. But they did have an accurate grasp of the arguments and defenses commonly offered on both sides of the debate, and showed some agreement concerning the relative capacity of different animals to suffer. Differences appeared in the level of the phylogenetic hierarchy at which participants thought animals might be capable of suffering, and in their decision-making processes regarding the admissibility of animal experiments.

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Animals in Experimental Reports: The Rhetoric of Science

Lynda Birke and Jane Smith


In this paper, we analyze the ways in which the use of animals is described in the "Methods" sections of scientific papers. We focus particularly on aspects of the language of scientific narrative and what it conveys to the reader about the animals. Scientific writing, for example, tends to omit details of how the animals are cared for. Perhaps more importantly, it is constructed in ways that tend to minimize what is happening to the animal; thus, animal death is obscured by euphemisms, omission, or circumlocutions. What is done to animals is, moreover, often subordinate in the text to the details of experimental procedures and apparatus. We consider how such writing supports a particular kind of image of the "animal" in science, and also creates an impression that what happens to animals is somehow devoid of human agency. This impression, we argue, contributes to the way science is perceived by a wider public.

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The Politics of Animal Protection: A Research Agenda

Robert Garner


This article seeks to provide a research agenda for the study of animal protection politics. It looks firstly at the animal protection movement's organization and maintenance in the context of Olson's theory of collective action. While existing research suggests that activists tend to be recruited because of the purposive and expressive benefits they offer rather than the material ones emphasized by Olson, these alternative forms of selective incentives can hinder the achievement of the movement's goals. Secondly, the article outlines alternative models of policy making and shows how they might be operationalized to explain the development of animal welfare policy-making in Britain and the United States. Preliminary observations suggest that Britain's animal welfare record is more substantial because policy communities have been able to manage and limit change through concessions and cooptation. No such mechanism is available in the American political system where the greater openness and fragmentation often results in severe confrontation and ultimately, stalemate.

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Definition and Cultural Representation of the Category Mushi in Japanese Culture

Erick Laurent


In this essay, I attempt to define the 'ethnocategory' mushi (insects, larvae, small animals) in Japanese culture, through a semantic analysis of the Chinese characters bearing the radical "mushi," and fieldwork research in rural Japan. The research offers criteria for an animal's inclusion in the category, reveals the differences in people's perception of mushi according to age and gender, and elicits a structure of the category as a series of concentric circles around a semantic core. The richness and complexity of the findings provide insight into Japanese attitudes towards animals and nature.
 

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