: Antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists have the tools but lack the strategies for responding to issues of social and environmental justice cross-culturally, particularly in matters as complex as the Makah whale hunt. Distinguishing between ethical contexts and contents, I draw on feminist critiques of cultural essentialism, ecofeminist critiques of hunting and food consumption, and socialist feminist analyses of colonialism to develop antiracist feminist and ecofeminist strategies for cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural feminist ethics.

Antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists have the tools but lack the strategies for responding to issues of social and environmental justice cross-culturally, particularly in matters as complex as the Makah whale hunt. Distinguishing between ethical contexts and contents, I draw on feminist critiques of cultural essentialism, ecofeminist critiques of hunting and food consumption, and socialist feminist analyses of colonialism to develop antiracist feminist and ecofeminist strategies for cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural feminist ethics.

This article explores the relationship between identity, emotion, and feminist collective action. Based on interview research, the analysis confirms the central importance of anger in collective action and its particular significance for feminist identity and activism. As an emotion thought deviant for women, the anger inherent in feminist collective action frames created problems for participants in terms of relationships with partners, friends, and work colleagues. Participants performed emotion work to deal with negative responses to their feminist identity, but this depleted (...) emotional energy and created stress. Participation in movement events provided much-needed emotional support and an outlet for deviant emotions. (shrink)

Animal rights organizations in the United States are predominantly female and middle class. What are the implications of the composition of these groups for animal rights activists' abilities to achieve their goals? In this article, the author examines the role of class and gender in the outcomes of an anti-hunting campaign and an anti-circus campaign waged by one animal rights organization in the Seattle area. The article shows that hunters make classed and gendered attributions about the activists, whereas circus patrons (...) do not view activists in terms of these statuses and end up taking their demands more seriously. It is suggested that an “identity interaction” between the activists' class and gender identity and that of their targets helps to explain these different reactions. The analysis also highlights the role of emotion in social movements, especially the ways in which targets perceive and react to activists' emotional displays. (shrink)

In two studies, we used the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) to investigate the relationship between individual differences in moral philosophy, involvement in the animal rights movement, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals. In the first, 600 animal rights activists attending a national demonstration and 266 nonactivist college students were given the EPQ. Analysis of the returns from 157 activists and 198 students indicated that the activists were more likely than the students to hold an "absolutist" moral orientation (high idealism, (...) low relativism). In the second study, 169 students were given the EPQ with a scale designed to measure attitudes toward the treatment of animals. Multiple regression showed that gender and the EPQ dimension of idealism were related to attitudes toward animal use. (shrink)

The present study of the psychology of animal rights activists utilizes a qualitative analytic method based on two forms of data: a set of questionnaire protocols completed by grassroots activists and of autobiographical accounts by movement leaders. The resultant account keys on the following descriptives: an attitude of caring, suffering as an habitual object of perception, and the aggressive and skillful uncovering and investigation of instances of suffering. In a final section, the investigator discusses tensions and conflicts arising from these (...) three themes and various ways of attempting to resolve them. (shrink)