A survey of university students tested whether committing animal abuse during childhood was related to approval of interpersonal violence against children and women in families. Respondents who had abused an animal as children or adolescents were significantly more likely to support corporal punishment, even after controlling for frequency of childhood spanking, race, biblical literalism, and gender. Those who had perpetrated animal abuse were also more likely to approve of a husband slapping his wife. Engaging in childhood violence against less powerful (...) beings— animals—may generalize to the acceptance of violence against less powerful members of families and society—women and children. This paper discusses the implications of this process. (shrink)

The last 20 years have witnessed the dramatic growth of the animal rights movement and a concurrent increase in its social scientific scrutiny. One of the most notable and consistent findings to emerge from this body of research has been the central role of women in the movement. This paper uses General Social Survey data to examine the influence of views of the relationship of humanity to nature on this gender difference. Holding a Romantic view of nature is associated with (...) higher levels of support for extending moral rights to animals and lower levels of support for animal-based testing. A Darwinian view is associated with greater support for testing on animals but is unrelated to views on moral rights for animals. In general, views of nature affect animal rights advocacy to a greater extent among males than females. (shrink)

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

This article serves as a case study of how contemporary residents of the Upper Great Lakes states debate the ethics and meanings of living with wolves. An overview of the challenges facing Minnesota wolf management is provided, and the results of a Q-methodology study are presented. The study revealed three primary factors, or shared belief systems, about wolf management in Minnesota. The idealist perspective tells a redemption story of sin and atonement, the institutional perspective endorses scientific management and rationality and (...) the localist perspective promises justice, respect and acknowledgement for its champions. The factors are interpreted as narratives or latent myths that provide a set of tacit directions to its adherents about understanding the complexities of living among carnivores. The intricacies and unique logic of each of the three factors are discussed, and themes of consensus and disagreement are briefly highlighted. (shrink)

Bears comprise a subculture of gay men who valorize the larger, hirsute body. This research interrogates Bear culture as a gendered strategy for repudiating effeminacy that simultaneously challenges and reproduces norms of hegemonic masculinity. In this research, the author situates his ethnographic study of a major metropolitan Bear community in its social and historical context to illuminate this paradox, with special emphasis on the embodiment of Bear masculinity and its effect on sexual practice. The author concludes that through a process (...) of embodied agency, Bear culture yields a number of sexually innovative practices that disperse pleasure across the body and disrupt genitally centered, phallusandreceptacle interpretations of sex. However, the subversive potential of these practices is significantly undermined by an attendant set of practices that reflect heteronormative and hegemonically masculine interpretations of sex. (shrink)

Liberating Method reflects the conviction that feminist insights can and should contribute to a sounder, more rigorous social science. In this book, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of feminist methodology examines profound questions about traditional and customary practices of social research. Marjorie DeVault argues that established methods too often ignore social oppression as she charts her quest for approaches that will more adequately represent marginalized groups.

Hunting is a complex phenomenon. l examine it from four different perspectives-animal liberation, the land ethic, primitivism, and ecofeminism-and find no moral justification for sport hunting in any of them. At the same time, however, I argue that there are theoretical flaws in each of these approaches. Animal liberationists focus too much on the individual animal and ignore the difference between domestic and wild animals. Leopold’s land ethic fails to come to terms with the self-domestication of humans. I argue that (...) the holism of the land ethic does not in itself justify hunting as a human act of predation appropriate to the demands of wild biotic communities. Primitivists, such as Paul Shepard and Ortega y Gasset, mistakenly argue that hunting is an essential part of human nature and hence part of a healthy return to a natural way of life. Their argument marginalizes women’s relations to nature. Finally, I take seriously the ecofeminist claim that sport hunting is a symptom ofpatriarchy’s fixation on death and violence, although I criticize the more radical claim that women are closer to nature than men. Hunting should be investigated within the broader context of patriarchal social relations between men and women. As an act of violence it constitutes one element of a cultural matrix which is destructive to hoth women and nature. (shrink)

This article documents a moment in history when poor and working-class white boys and men are struggling in their schools, communities, and workplaces against the “Other” as a means of framing identities. Drawing on two independent qualitative studies, the authors investigate distinct locations where poor and working-class boys and men invent, relate to, and distance from marginalized groups in an effort to create self. First the authors look at an ethnography of “the Freeway boys,” a community of urban white working-class (...) high school boys who must deal with the economic ravagement of their neighborhood and their insecure place in a world different than that of their fathers. Next, the authors draw from a large-scale survey of young adults to hear how a combined sample of urban poor and working-class white men narrate identities that are carved explicitly out of territory bordered by white women and African American men. Across sites, the authors theorize how high schools and workplaces both, in part, create white masculinities and interrupt them, at a time when white working-class boys and men feel under siege. (shrink)

An attempt to bring feminist experience and social theory together to produce a systematic view of the state as an agent in sexual politics. The book questions the nature of the state itself, and the ways in which it is constituted by gender relations and shaped by changing sexual politics. Among the topics covered are the nature of citizenship, the structure of patriarchy, sexual violence, welfare institutions, electoral politics and trade unions. The particular policy issues discussed are welfare policies, rape (...) reform law, housing policy and equal employment opportunities. -- Publisher description. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between scientific rationality and emotional value in determining ideas about canine biology in North America. While science has been assumed to be objective, unassailable and devoid of value judgments, esoteric theories concerning wild predators have changed radically over time. Biologists acted as important agents in the campaign to eradicate Canis lupus from the USA during the late 1800s and early 1900s. From the 1920s onwards, scientists promulgated ecological ideas in order to redeem native carnivores. This (...) paper suggests that, in extermination and rehabilitation phases, biologists formed their opinions of resident lupines using scientific dogma and moral precepts. By delineating the process of wolf rehabilitation in the USA, this paper situates science as a shifting body of knowledge, a way of comprehending the environment that cannot be viewed apart from cultural conceptions of biology, ethics and aesthetics. (shrink)