1 For the sake of clarity, throughout the book I use the terms âhumanâ and âanimalâ to denote âhuman animalsâ and ânonhuman animals.â A significant shift in the animal rights movement occurred in the mid-1980s, when activists began turning their efforts to farmed animals, or animals used for food. While activists continued to combat all other forms of animal use and abuse, this shift reflected the fact that farmed animals accounted for the vast majority of animals killed for human purposes. Since the 1960s, farmed animal production has greatly increased: milk production has doubled, meat production has tripled, and egg production has quadrupled (Delgado 2003, Pew Commission on Farm Animal Production 2009). By the 1980s, farmed animals comprised fully 99 percent of all animals killed by humans each year; the other 1 percent includes all animals used for fur or leather, in experiments or entertainment, and in hunting or trapping, as well as those raised as companion animals or euthanized in animal shelters (HSUS 2015). Given this information, most animal rights activists are vegan and heavily promote veganism in their work (Herzog 1993, Gaarder 2011). Vegans avoid animal products and by-products in food, clothing, and other products, and avoid using products tested on animals. They also avoid animal entertainment, such as circuses, rodeos, zoos, or aquariums.
With this shift to the second wave of animal rights activism, which focuses on farmed animals and vegan outreach, the animal rights movement in the United States began to flourish, and the movement in France began to weaken. Some might think this divergence would be obvious, because Franceâs rich culinary history would preclude a movement devoted to promoting vegetarianism and veganism. But food is only one part of the picture, and other aspects of Franceâs history show it to be an ideal country for an animal rights movement. In fact, it is surprising that its animal rights movement has stagnated in such a way.
France was an early adopter of animal protection measures, alongside the United States and the United Kingdom. Societies against cruelty to animals emerged in all three countries around the same time in the mid-nineteenth century. France, like the U.S., experienced a resurgence of interest in animal protection in the 1970s, when activists began to fight to protect wildlife from extinction, and companion animals from mistreatment. The actress Brigitte Bardot, one of the nationâs most famous animal activists, founded her own animal protection organization at this time, focusing on companion animals, farmed animals, and wildlife. Now, France is known for its love of animals, and it has the highest rate of pet ownership in the European Union (FEDIAF 2012). The doted-upon dogs of the country can go anywhere and do anything, accompanying their guardians in restaurants and on public transportation, including trains, metros, and even airplanes.
France also has a rich history of political activism, from its Revolution, to its Communes, May 1968, and general strikes. But it is not only political activism that flourishes in France. Other new social movements commonly associated with animal rights have emerged in France in recent years, and they have enjoyed widespread support throughout the country. The environmental movement took off in France in the 1980s and 1990s, especially after Nicolas Hulot hosted an environmental-themed television show from 1987 to 1995 and founded his own environmental organization in 1990. And ever since JosĂ© BovĂ© rammed his tractor into a McDonaldâs in the small town of Millau in 2000, the movement to protect small farmers from losing their livelihoods to globalization and big business has thrived. Added to this is a strong anti-GMO movement, where French opposition to genetically modified foods has steadily risen from 46 percent opposition in 1996 to 65 percent opposition in 1999 (Schurman 2004: 255). The ConfĂ©dĂ©ration Paysanne, a union of small farmers, continues to lead anti-GMO crusades against la malbouffe, or bad food (Heller 2007). It would seem that France is moving away from industrialized agriculture and towards a society that would be more welcoming to animal rights.
The stage is set for a strong animal rights movement in France. They already enjoy the successes of European activists who demanded strong animal protection laws at the European Union level. These laws are even stronger than U.S. animal protection laws. However, despite all of these indicators, the animal rights movement is weak compared to other new social movements in France, and compared to the animal rights movement in the United States. The French government actively opposes these E.U.-wide animal protection laws. They have created laws protecting French patrimoine culturel (âcultural heritageâ), such as bullfighting and forced-feeding foie gras production, from E.U. legislation. The anti-industrial agriculture movement, which would seem to provide an opening for animal issues, actively promotes animal agriculture and opposes animal rights. BovĂ©, a sheep farmer, prefers his produits du terroir (traditional local foods) to tofu, even if the soybeans are not genetically modified. And Hulot, whom one might think would be vegetarian for environmental reasons, continues to eat meat.
Even Franceâs culinary prowess, which some might think would cause French chefs to jump at the opportunity to become a leader in vegetarian foods, causes more problems than solutions for vegetarians in France. When renowned chef Alain Passard changed his restaurant lâArpĂšge to feature mainly vegetable dishes, it was met with great resistance despite the fact that it still served meat. It is still extremely difficult to find vegetarian food in France. In typical French brasseries, vegetarian choices are limited to a salad and fries. Finding a strictly vegetarian restaurant is also difficult: There are 2.3 times more vegetarian restaurants and stores per capita in the United States than in France (Happy Cow 2015).
The animal rights movement itself has also lagged behind. It has attracted fewer adherents and constituents than in the U.S., and it has stayed largely at the animal protection phase, rather than moving to emphasize veganism and farmed animal issues as has the U.S. movement. The SociĂ©tĂ© Protectrice des Animaux, the oldest French animal protection organization, founded in 1845, counts 146,000 donors, 21,000 members, 3,000 volunteers, and 600 staff members across the country. The Fondation Brigitte Bardot, the animal protection organization founded in 1986 by the actress, claims 70,000 donors. Thus both members and one-time donors of these largest of the animal protection organizations combined comprise less than 1 percent of the French population. The largest animal rights, welfare, and vegetarian organizations barely touch this, with One Voiceâs 20,000 members, the 11,000 members of Welfarm (formerly Protection Mondiale des Animaux de Ferme), and the 2,600 adherents of the Association VĂ©gĂ©tarienne de France.
In the United States, in contrast, animal protection organizations attract much higher memberships. The ASPCA (American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) claims one million members, and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) counts more than 11 million members and constituents, equaling one out of every 28 people, or 3.6 percent of the entire U.S. population. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the largest animal rights organization in the U.S., also claims to be the largest animal rights organization in the world with more than 3 million members.
Such numeric differences would not matter as much if the French movement led as many successful campaigns as the U.S. movement, but this is not the case. Scholars argue reaching an organizationâs overall goal to be the highest level of success (Gamson 1990, Einwohner 1999), but no one animal rights organization can claim to have achieved that. Instead, they have achieved concessional change, if not desired change (Einwohner 1999), meaning that institutions change their behavior or fully comply with what protesters want. PETA, for example, convinced over 500 companies, including Gillette, Avon, Revlon, and EstĂ©e Lauder, to stop testing their products on animals. HSUS passed a bill in Congress to make dog fighting and cockfighting federal felonies, and banned cockfighting in all 50 states.
Meanwhile, the few French organizations that attempt such legislative or organizational changes see much less success. Their efforts fall at the lower end of the spectrum for success, scarcely achieving what scholars call contact or acknowledgement by their targets (Einwohner 1999). There is little to no direct communication between protesters and their targets, nor do the targets acknowledge protesters as playing a relevant role on the issue. For example, One Voice in France collected 350,000 signatures against testing on dogs and cats, and, according to a One Voice survey, 72 percent of French people oppose testing on dogs and cats. Nonetheless, the Minister of Research dismissed One Voiceâs claims, and France remains the number one European Union country for testing on dogs (One Voice 2014).
Logical, and normally useful, explanations cannot account for why the animal rights movement is weaker in France than in the United States. France is not opposed to new social movements, in principleâFranceâs environmental, antinuclear, and anti-GMO movements are widely popular and easy to join. France does, however, have a lower participation in such movements. Sociologists Evan Schofer and Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas (2001) consider the U.S. a ânation of joinersâ compared to France, since 70 percent of U.S. Americans, in contrast to only 26.5 percent of the French, participate in voluntary associations. This may explain why the animal rights movement is smaller in France as compared to the U.S., but it cannot explain why French participation in animal rights activism lags behind participation in other new social movements or even traditional social movements in France.
The type of activism also cannot explain the differences between the two countries. Both the French and U.S. animal rights activists share similar long-term goals, as well as tactics and strategies to achieve those objectives. Finally, though the French government opposes much animal rights legislation and activism, the situation is not such that it is simply easier to be an activist in the U.S. than in Franceâthe 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act poses a significant challenge to the U.S. movement.
Part of the reason these explanations cannot account for the variable successes of animal rights in France and the United States is that, as sociologists Douglas McAdam (1994) and Mary Bernstein (2003) note, most studies of movement success discuss political outcomes, and not cultural ones. This problem is compounded by the traditional view of culture as opposed to social and political structures, and as conflated with agency (Archer 1988). As culture, structure, and agency are intertwined, so are culture, strategies, and outcomes. Thus, to understand why the U.S. movement is stronger than the French movement, we must understand the myriad cultural structures in each country as well as their effects on activism and the public reception of activistsâ claims.
Understanding Social Movement Success
Why has the U.S. movement encountered more success than the French movement? Or more broadly, why do movements with similar goals, tactics, and challenges encounter varying degrees of success? I seek to examine these questions by investigating the relationship between culture, tactics, and strategic decision-making in each country. I investigate how culture affects the tactics available to the movements, as well as how activists choose among those tactics. In doing so, I aim to show which tactics are more or less successful, and under which circumstances different resources are more or less effective.
First, I break down the specific similarities and differences between the French and U.S. movements, with a view towards understanding how culture influences not just political but also cultural opportunities and constraints. Just as culture orients individual people, as sociologist Wendy Griswold (1983) argues, culture shapes the actions of groupsâin this case, groups of activists. But how does this occur? My main research question in this section asks how the different contexts in which activists worked affected their options for activism. I seek to explain how the dominant culture in each country shaped the movementsâ strategic and tactical repertoires. I also examine which cultural opportunities and constraints French and U.S. activists share, and which ones differ. By analyzing a number of cultural resources, I show which arguments resonate in which country, and why. This will show how cultural resources available at the macro level help or hinder the movement in each country.
Then, I examine the strategic and tactical choices of the French and U.S. movements. Having shown which paths may be more or less fruitful for activists to take, I seek to understand how activists actually decide the paths they take. Why do activists make the strategic and tactical choices they do? To answer this question, I take a meso-level approach to understand how social movement organizations make such choices within their social movement field.
These questions have not been adequately addressed not because they are uninteresting to scholars and activistsâindeed, activists have been some of the few people to address these issues (Lakey 1992, Stallwood 2002), and sociologists have called for more studies in the area of culture, strategies, and outcomes for decades now (McAdam 1994, Giugni 1998). In addition to the need for more empirical research in this area, this work will also address key theoretical issues in the sociology of culture and social movements.
Culture, Structure, and Agency
I address my research questions by taking a theoretical approach to the relationship between structure and agency informed by practice theory. I follow Pierre Bourdieu (1977) and Anthony Giddens (1984) in recognizing the duality of structure and the agency of individuals and groups in challenging structures, but I favor more contemporary theorists such as Sharon Hays, who critiques the dichotomy of culture and structure, and who argues that culture itself is structured:
Culture is a social, durable, layered pattern of cognitive and normative systems that are at once material and ideal, objective and subjective, embodied in artifacts and embedded in behavior, passed about in interaction, internalized in personalities, and externalized in institutions. Culture is both the product of human interaction and the producer of certain forms of human interaction. Culture is both constraining and enabling. Culture is a social structure with an underlying logic of its own. (Hays 1994: 65)
Dominant culture typically provides challenges to activists as they work towards their long-term goals. Culture can constrain actors by âblocking out certain possibilities for actionâ or by âpreventing certain arguments from being articulated in public discourse or, once articulated, from being favorably interpreted by others or even understoodâ (Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994: 1440). But culture can also enable actors âby ordering their understandings of the social world and of themselves, by constructing their identities, goals, and aspirations, and by rendering certain issues significant or salient and others notâ (Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994: 1441). Thus at the same time that dominant culture provides roadblocks to activistsâ work, it also provides building blocks for their arguments (Sewell 1992, Williams 2002, Polletta 2004).
Structures are systems of power, meaning, and norms that are sustained and altered by human agency (Bourdieu 1977, Giddens 1984, Emirbayer and Mische 1998). While structures affect human action, I do not wish to solely place causality on social structures, as cautioned against by Emirbayer (1997). Thus in this book I focus on multiple levels of structureârather than only looking to external social or cultural structures, I also demonstrate how the culture of a social movement may also act as a structure, and how activistsâ and groupsâ actions recreate or challenge these structures.
Not all social movement scholars are moving in this direction when studying culture and social movements. James Jasper (2006a) in particular has critiqued taking such a structural approach. To Jasper, structure misleadingly implies fixed entities. Formulating opportunities as structures makes them seem relatively permanent, r...
