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The Animal Rights Crusade. The Growth of a Moral Protest. JAMES M. JASPER and DOROTHY NELKIN. Free Press (Macmillan), New York, 1991. x, 214 pp. $22.95.
The animal rights movement has been one of the most visible and vocal of recent social movements. The radical nature of certain goals associated with the movement also marks it as especially far-reaching in its potential effects. But for all its visibility and potential significance, little in the way of dispassionate scholarship has been produced on the movement. Instead, most of what we know about the movement has come from the news media, which, predictably, have been drawn to its more sensational aspects. So splashy coverage of raids on animal research laboratories or angry confrontations between animal rights activists--"terrorists" in many stories--and fur store owners has substituted for a sober account of the emergence, development, and current status of the movement. However, those interested in the latter can now take heart. Two sociologists, James Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin, have written just such a book.
The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest is an eminently readable, rich descriptive history of the movement. There is much to admire in the book. For starters, Jasper and Nelkin eschew the media's preoccupation with the radical wing of the movement--"fundamentalists"--and instead grant equal time to the more moderate ("pragmatists") and conservative ("welfarists") branches of the movement. For someone who has heretofore viewed the movement through the distorting lens of the news media, the effect is a little like finally glimpsing the huge mass of the iceberg that normally lies submerged beneath the ocean's surface. One can't help being impressed by the sheer size and ideological diversity of the movement as sketched by the authors.
To capture this ideological diversity Jasper and Nelkin devote a chapter to each of five substantive issues addressed by the movement. These are the treatment of animals in the wild; animal testing by the cosmetics industry; scientific research on animals; animals as commodities; and the...