Portrait of animal rights activist

As for the gender, many studies have consistently shown that women were most likely to support animal rights than men are (Kruse, 1999;

Peek, Bell & Dunham, 1996; Eldridge & Gluck, 1996).

As for the political preferences, it has been found that those endowing animals with rights were generally less conservative (Kimball, 1989, quoted in Nibert, 1994), more against violence and more favourable to women’s, gays’ and Afro-Americans’ rights than those not endowing animals with rights (Nibert, 1994).

Animal welfare and rights movement 41 The animal activist was described as sharing an attitude of caring animals, as sensitive toward animal suffering and as skilfully investigating instances of suffering (Shapiro, 1994). At the same time, participants in the animal rights movement had distinctive, well-articulated and sometimes impassionate beliefs about animals. Jasper and Nelkin (1992) depicted three types of participants: 1) the welfarists, who were mainly concerned about the improvement of animals’ well being, 2) the pragmatists, who maintained a moral argument for balancing human and animal interests, and 3) the fundamentalists, who claimed an extreme position which eliminates any hierarchy or distinction between humans and animals.

Moreover, individuals faced major changes in lifestyle when embracing the animal crusade. Activists strove to achieve consistency between their beliefs and their actions and many of them were vegetarian and tried to live a “cruelty-free life” by shopping for consumer products that have not been tested on animals. Those changes in thinking and lifestyle affected interpersonal relationships so that the partner and the friends were often chosen within the movement (Herzog, 1993).

A vegetarian diet could be distinguished in: 1) lacto-ovo vegetarian one, that comprises those eating eggs and diary products but no meat; 2) lacto-vegetarian, those who eat diary products but no eggs or meat; 3) ovo-vegetarian, those who eat eggs but no diary products; 4) vegans, those who do not eat meat, diary products, or eggs; 5) macrobiotic vegetarian, those who consume whole grains, sea and land vegetables, beans and miso; 6) natural hygienist, live on plant foods, combine food in certain ways and believe in periodic fasting; 7) raw foodist, those who eat only uncooked non-meat foods; 8) fruitarian, live on fruits but also nuts, seeds and certain vegetables; 9) semi-vegetarian, those who include small amount of fish or meat in their diet (Amato & Partridge, 1989).

Sutherland and Nash (1994) described these changes in lifestyle and beliefs as a new environmental cosmology, which challenged the Judeo-Christian one and redefined the relationship between humans and animals and may took the form of religious conversion. Animals were placed at the centre of the moral universe and a community of people

Natural and Unnatural 42

looking for redemption through saving animals was created around this belief. The new environmental cosmology provided the believers with frame of references to deal with questions of order and chaos, good and evil and so on.

The construction of reasoning within the animal rights movement was investigated by means of the interactions of pro- and anti- animal rights contributors (Herzog, Dinoff & Page, 1997; Swan & McCarthy, 2003). On one hand, the activists constructed the use of animal as a moral problem and focused on the discussion of philosophical issues, the ethics of particular uses of animals such as meat consumption and animal experimentation and problems of moral consistency. On the other hand, the anti-animal rights side depicted animal use as necessary for human health and pointed to animal rights as incompatible with human well being.

Galvin and Herzog (1998) found that animal rights activists attending a march for the animals had higher level of optimism than comparative groups of college students and that there was a tendency for more optimistic activists to have a more favourable beliefs in the attainment of movement goals in the future. Moreover, Einwohner (2002a) investigated the activists’ sense of accomplishment and found that the activists strove to evaluate their efforts positively, using four fortifying strategies to celebrate their success and to support their motivation toward the cause. Among the four strategies, one could find:

1) seeing the positive, that is despite the fact that the activists evaluated some of their efforts negatively, they were always able to find something positive to point to; 2) thinking cumulative, that is interpreting all outcomes as evidence of progress toward the group’s goals; 3) celebrating victories, that is trying to share the success with each other and 4) claiming credit, that is the activists used strategically their sense of causality claiming that their protest activity contributed somehow to changes individuals’ behaviours or perceptions. In this sense, perceived efficacy was, at the same time, one of the factors that explained participation in collective actions and something that must be maintained for long-term activism.

Animal welfare and rights movement 43 The recruiting strategies in the animal rights movement have been compared with those of the anti-nuclear movement and discussed by Jasper and Poulsen (1995). While anti-nuclear protestors were mainly recruited by means of pre-existing social networks, animal activists reported to be recruited directly by moral shocks in the form of visual and verbal rhetoric.

Moreover, Einwohner (2002b) illustrated how the construction of activists’ identity took into account the opponents’ claims. In other words, the activists made use of their opponents’ description of them when describing themselves, by use of two processes: 1) recasting external claims in a positive light, that is activists were prompted by external claims to appear as reasonable and calm as possible and 2) affirming identity by confronting external claims, that is the activists drew on external claims in reaffirming the sense of who they were.