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anthropocentric
model that emphasised utilitarianism ('humans must use animals to
survive'), which has been revealed in many attitudinal studies. This model was
linked not only to individual and household survival by certain of our participants,
but also to the cultural survival of African-Americans as an historically oppressed
minority. Other anthropocentric views also emerged, in particular negativism
('some animals are pests'), the spiritual value of animals to humans ('animals have
supernatural powers to help or harm people'), and animal welfare, recognising the
contribution of animals to human emotional well-being ('animal companions make
people happy'). The second model was a
biocentric
one that had several variations.
These variants included naturalistic perspectives that stressed animals as part of nature
('animals should not be harmed for their natural behaviour'), and also one
suggesting an animal rights standpoint ('animals have a right to existence'). A fourth
and related biocentric view was that people should coexist with animals ('the world
is big enough for everybody to share').
Because attitudes towards animals have frequently been found to vary sharply by
gender, we asked focus group participants to ponder the issue of whether men and
women had different attitudes towards animals. Responses fell back upon
essentialised cultural models of gender differences ('women are more compassionate
than men'), but exceptions revealed the porosity of such distinctions.
An thropocentrism trism
The small number of prior studies of attitudes towards animals among African-
Americans, and research on African-American attitudes towards the environment
more generally, suggest that their views are slightly more anthropocentric and
especially utilitarian than those of whites (Kellert and Berry 1980). However, there
is substantial evidence that these attitudes reflect socio-economic and cultural
factors (Caron-Sheppard 1995; Dolin 1988; Kellert 1984), or even the bias of
survey questions (Dolin 1988), rather than a lack of concern for nature or animals
(Caron 1989). Moreover, there is also evidence of change over time (Caron-
Sheppard 1995:25).
Perhaps the strongest advocate of an anthropocentric, utilitarian perspective was
Alice, who justified her attitudes in part on the need to use animals in the
competitive struggle for survival. Recalling the deaths of her two childhood dogs,
Benjamin and Bob, at the hands of, respectively, her father and her neighbour's father,
Alice offered a complex glimpse of her beliefs on both the inferiority of animals and
their expendability during times of need:
When we were living in [a rural town] my father found this beautiful black
and white dog, Benjamin. And we had chickens, and a chicken coop, a
chicken house, and Benjamin would suck eggs. And about the fourth or fifth
time daddy caught him sucking eggs, daddy took a two-by-four and hit, hit
the little dog with it…. And the second dog we had, Bob, was a big German
Shepherd; had been a police dog…. One day, the neighbours were playing
