Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
their lives. Third, we explore their values towards nature in general and animals in
particular, through questions about how animals should/should not be treated by
people. Fourth, we examine the justifications given for attitudes expressed, and their
connections to particular socio-cultural contextual variables. On the basis of these
findings, we suggest a cultural model of attitude formation that includes the role of
racialisation in shaping attitudes towards animals.
The focus group analysis
Most studies of attitudes towards animals have utilised standard survey techniques
to determine basic attitudinal dimensions, and to collect information on respondent
characteristics, such as gender or income, that past research suggests may be
systematically related to attitudes. While informative, such surveys tend to
oversimplify attitudes and fail to capture the complex and often contradictory ideas
and feelings that people have about animals. Moreover, for respondents whose own
thinking on this topic is relatively unexplored, initial responses often reflect
stereotypes or the most current news story, and thus can be misleading. Because of
these shortcomings of standard survey techniques, and because our goal was to learn
more about the ideas of groups seldom if ever studied in the attitudes towards
animal literature, we selected focus group methods as an alternative. Focus groups
provide an effective means of eliciting fine-grained expressions of attitudes towards
animals, and allowing the focus group's inter-group dynamics to help distil
participants' positions, stimulate recollections and crystallise alternative perspectives
within the group. Moreover, this sort of research approach reveals how participants
negotiate, both discursively and in concrete everyday ways, their inter-subjective
understandings of animals as friends or food.
All focus group participants were residents in the same affordable housing
project,
3
whose manager assisted in our volunteer recruitment efforts.
4
The African-
Ainerican women who ultimately volunteered spanned a broad age range (from 22
to 75 years old, with a majority in their twenties) (see
Appendix A
). They also varied
widely with respect to educational attainment (three had not completed high
school, four were high school graduates and four had either completed some college
or had a college degree). Most had lived in Los Angeles for quite some time, with
the oldest resident having lived there for thirty of her 75 years. About half had been
born either in Los Angeles or another part of California, with the remainder being
from other states. One participant, however, had been born in Belize; despite the
fact that we had restricted our recruitment to native-born African-Americans, this
respondent had a barely detectable accent and we were not aware of her heritage
until some time into the focus group. But, although her presence constituted a
methodological mistake, she played a very useful role in stimulating discussions
about animal rights and environmentalism, topics about which she had forthright
views.
Participants were asked a range of questions about their general environmental
beliefs, traditional forms of human—animal interaction, attitudes towards animals,
