LEARNING TO FEEL The Neglected Socioology of Social Movements - Groves2008

Learning to feel: the neglected
sociology of social movements
Julian McAllister Groves
Abstract
This paper discusses the experience and ideology of emotions among

animal rights activists, and more broadly, the applicability of the soci-
ology of emotions to the field of social movements. I examine the case
of a social movement which relies heavily on empathy in its initial
recruitment, and which has been derisively labeled by outsiders as
'em,otionar. I explain recruitment to animal rights activism by show-
ing how activists develop a 'vocabulary of emotions' to rationalize
their participation to others and themselves, along with managing the
emotional tone of the movement by limiting the kinds of people who
can take part in debates about animal cruelty. The interactive nature
in which emotions develop in social movements is stressed over previ-
ous approaches to emotions in the social movement literature, which
treat emotions as impulsive or irrational.
Sociologists' neglect of the emotional aspects of social

movement recruitment
Sociologists have not entirely ignored emotions in their discus-

sions of why people join social movements but they have failed
to consider the interactive process by which emotions form. One
reason for this may be folk conceptions about the nature of emo-
tions; that they are irrational, impulsive or reflexive. Given these
interpretations, emotions fall largely outside of the realm of soci-
ological analysis.
Contributors to the perspective variously known in the field as
the 'hearts and minds' approach, breakdown theory, or conver-
gence theory claim that people join social movements because
they have a grievance, ie, they are victims of structural strain
© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995. Published by Blackwell Publishers,
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(Smelser, 1963), frustration (Gurr, 1968) or relative deprivation

(Gumey and Tiemey, 1982). These psychological conditions
develop in response to problems in the broader society. While
contributors to this perspective certainly identify emotions, they
assume that they occur prior to joining the movement, rather
than developing during the process of becoming a member.
In an alternative approach, the resource mobilization theorists
claim that people join social movements because they come into
contact with the movement's networks: either pre-established
organizations (Oberschall, 1973; McCarthy and Zald, 1977) or
single activists (Snow et al., 1980). Either way, the emphasis is on
the activists' organizational affiliations or networks, rather than
their feelings about a particular issue. Recent contributors to the
resource mobilization perspective have returned to putting more
emphasis on the individual by arguing that activists join a social
movement after weighing the costs and benefits of participation;
they will take part if they perceive that their contribution will
make a difference or that they will personally benefit (Olson,
1965; Marwell and Ames, 1979; 1980; Oberschall, 1993). Of
course, social movement participants do not make these decisions
in isolation. If a certain number of people - a 'critical mass' -
decides to join, then others will follow suit (Oliver et al, 1985).
While the rational choice theorists do not deny that emotions
can be purposive (Oberschall, 1993), they are silent on how
emotions are generated, and rarely address how participation or
collective goods become defined as a cost or a benefit. They have
also tended to focus on material resources that motivate partici-
pation, rather than ideological or emotional dispositions.
Whereas the relative deprivation theorists only looked at emo-
tions as the impetus to social movement recruitment, the rational
choice and resource mobilization theorists ignore the feelings and
perceptions of people altogether by substituting their definition of
the situation for a calculus - one that the researcher usually
attributes to the actor. As Bilig (1992) puts it, 'rational choice
theories actually tell us a lot about how people act when they
don't think'.
The same cannot be said for some of the most recent
approaches to social movement recruitment. Drawing on Erving
Goffman and the symbolic interactionist perspective, these look
at how social movements draw people in by 'framing', ie, by con-
structing sets of beliefs that encourage potential recruits to act
because these beliefs appeal to them (Snow et al, 1986).
436 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

Learning to feel
Specifically, frames diagnose a problem in need of change and

provide a solution that includes strategies, tactics and targets.
They also construct for their participants reasonable vocabularies
of motives, in other words, 'good reasons', for taking part.
In a recent paper, Robert Benford (1993) emphasizes the inter-
active process of constructing frames. He argues that activists
construct motives for joining a movement when a family mem-
ber, friend or co-worker calls into question an activist's behav-
iour or beliefs, or when the activist questions his own beliefs.
Such frames are not arbitrary. They are 'situated' and may vary
in different historical and social contexts.
A sociology of emotions approach to social movement

recruitment
I argue that the way we feel about an issue, or our emotional

states associated with it, is also a result of an interactive process.
While this has not been explicit in the social movement literature,
the interactive dimensions of emotions have been a central theme
in the recent sociology of emotions literature.
A major premise of this literature is that culture, organizations,
or economic arrangements provide rules which define which feel-
ings are typical for a normal person in a given situation (Briggs,
1970; Levy, 1973; Rosaldo 1980, Hochschild, 1983). It is thus
possible to experience 'emotional deviance'; feelings that are not
appropriate to the situation, reflected in assertions such as, 'you
should feel ashamed of yourself or 'you ought to feel grateful
considering all I've done for you' (Hochschild, 1983). According
to Hochschild, it is possible to overcome emotional deviance by
'deep acting' or emotion work; putting ourselves in a state of
mind where we try to conjure up the emotions that we believe
are appropriate for the situation - as in the case of the airline
stewardess, who pretends that the customer is someone she
knov/s, and that the cabin is her living room, in order to 'put
out' for them (Hochschild, 1983).
A second premise of the new sociology of emotions is that dif-
ferent cultures interpret and label feelings according to their own
cultural categories. They have their own vocabulary of emotions
(Geertz, 1959), in other words, definitions and words for their
feelings. For example, in Yiddish, the language of a highly famil-
iaristic social group, there is social pride in one's family,
© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 437

especially one's children. This is expressed in the word 'nachus'

which has a dual meaning: 'my children have done gloriously' and
'I am proud of my children'. No single word exists in the English
language to convey these sentiments (Hochschild 1983: 27).
A third concern in the sociology of emotions is that there is a
'gender division of emotions'. Duncombe and Marsden (1993)
review a number of studies (including their own) in which women
consistently expressed unhappiness with what they perceive as
men's unwillingness or incapacity to 'do' emotional intimacy,
which appears to them necessary to sustain close heterosexual
couple relationships. Of course, the idea of a gender division of
emotion in sociology goes as far back as Talcott Parsons
(Parsons and Bales, 1956). Parsons contrasted the instrumental
role of the male bread-winner in the public sphere of work with
women's expressive responsibility for providing emotional
warmth, stability and tension-free relationships for the whole
family in the private sphere of the home.
The gender division of emotions has also spilled over into the
public sphere. Women, like the airline stewardesses that
Hochschild (1983) studied, are typically in service oriented occu-
pations. These require them to engage in more emotion labour
than men; their employers require them to smile and be nice to
the customer, no matter what.
The recent sociology of emotions has been developed with a
focus on the world of work (see for example Tolich, 1993;
Stenross and Kleinman, 1989; Rafaeli and Sutton, 1989;
Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1988; Hochschild, 1983). In this article
I draw on the ideas developed in some of this literature to illumi-
nate the emotional aspects of becoming and being an animal
rights activist. The animal rights activists that I studied experi-
enced affection and empathy for animals portrayed in animal
rights literature as helpless victims of cruelty. Most of them,
however, were attracted to the movement because of its ability to
legitimate their affection and empathy for animals in a way that
reduced difficult interactions with outsiders who viewed them as
being too emotional and therefore irrational.
Their were two aspects to the activists' moral, or rather, emo-
tional careers. First, as activists became involved in the animal
rights movement, they learned, through uncomfortable experi-
ences with family, friends and co-workers that certain emotions
about animal cruelty were appropriate only in certain situations.
They gave names to different kinds of emotions. This vocabulary
438 © The Editorial BoaM of The Sociological Review 1995

Learning to feel
of emotions provided activists with a sense of what constituted

legitimate feelings toward animal cruelty.
The second aspect of becoming an activist involved learning
how to identify in others the emotional traits appropriate to ani-
mal rights activism, and controlling who could and could not
take part in a debate about animal cruelty. This ensured that
uncomfortable interactions were avoided and that the correct
emotional tone of the movement was maintained. The activists
identified different types of 'Other' and often relied on stereo-
types about men's and women's emotional dispositions to make
such distinctions.
Research site and methods
The data for this study came from interviews and participant
observations with two chapters of a grass-roots, voluntary orga-
nization of animal rights activists in the southern part of the
United States. The organization formed in the early 1980s to
protest the sale of pound animals to biomedical research facili-
ties. Following the agendas of national animal rights organiza-
tions (Jasper and Nelkin, 1992), it soon expanded its concerns to
the plight of animals in laboratories, factory farms, the entertain-
ment industry, hunting and trapping. The group attracted
approximately 1,500 dues-paying members in 11 chapters.
Over a period of four years, between 1988- and 1992, the
activists allowed me to attend their chapters' organization meet-
ings, protests, fund-raising events and other informal gatherings
in order to take fieldnotes. I supplemented these observations by
conducting open-ended, in-depth interviews with 20 animal rights
activists. I met most of these informants while undertaking the
field research.
I studied animal rights activism in a relatively rural state where
hunting and rodeos are fairly common. In the areas where I con-
ducted my research, there is a strong state university system with
several large medical schools and a research park, all of which
undertake biomedical research using animals. The animal rights
activists held their organization meetings in church halls and
recreation centres, while protests took place outside science build-
ings at the universities, or at rodeos, circuses, deer hunting award
ceremonies and shopping malls with fur salons, and occasionally
restaurants that served meat.

Approximately 70 percent of those who attended the monthly

organization meetings were women. Most of the activists were
affluent, well educated, and employed in professional or high-sta-
tus, white-collar jobs. All but four of the 20 animal rights
activists whom I interviewed had full-time jobs. Almost half were
professionals (for example, college professor, attorney, school
teacher) or were undergoing or about to undergo professional
training in graduate school. Most of the others were in high-sta-
tus, white-collar administrative or managerial jobs (for example,
city supervisor, social worker, finance manager) or highly skilled
technical jobs (such as computer programmer, research techni-
cian, technical writer). Only a handful were in lower-status,
white-collar jobs (secretary, receptionist, clerk), unskilled service
jobs or blue-collar work (waitress, house painter). With the
exception of a few Asians, all the activists were white.
Emotional deviance
Not all activists experienced problems sharing their views about

animal protection with friends, relatives and colleagues. A few of
them told me that they had friends who were sympathetic to, if
not members of, animal rights organizations. One of these
activists told me that it was like being in a foreign country when
she was not with animal rights sympathizers, since she was a veg-
etarian, consumed only cruelty-free products and clothes.
Consequently, she chose only sympathetic individuals to be her
friends. Another such activist found jobs at vegetarian restau-
rants and food cooperatives where she could be with others who
were sympathetic to the animal rights movement. These activists,
who restricted their interactions largely to the movement and its
supporters, did not suffer from as many affronts to their animal
rights activism as those who did not.
The majority of activists, however, at least on some occasions,
need to interact with family members, friends and co-workers
who were not sympathetic to the movement. Many also had to
answer questions from strangers and the media at protests and
information tables. It was during these periods, that activists
had to negotiate difficult interactions concerning the animal
rights beliefs. Most of these difficult interactions related to the
emotional qualities associated with being an animal rights
activist.

Learning to feel
The most frequent accusation that activists experienced con-

cerned their overt empathy for animals, particularly household
pets. This lead to assertions that the activists were misanthropists,
that they were sensationalist (for example, that they would cry if
they saw a cat stuck in a tree), that they distorted the truth about
the extent of animal cruelty, or that they were dangerous, and
even terrorists. Activists read about these accusations in the local
newspapers. One woman, who headed a campaign against a bio-
medical researcher, recalled an editorial in her local newspaper, in
which she was accused of threatening the researcher's life:
The press. They love controversy. Obviously they think we're

terrorists by the way they write in the paper. They wrote an
editorial in November saying that Dr. Jones had had to endure
attacks on his lab and threats to his life. Well I wrote them a
letter and said that it was false. And they didn't print my
letter.
Others told me how outsiders to the movement feared that

their emotionalism would spill over into happy or harmonious
situations and tarnish them with sadness or arguments. One set-
ting in which this occurred was at the work place. An activist,
who designed computer systems for a local hospital, told me that
he didn't want to talk about animal rights issues at work because
he believed there should be 'a friendly jovial atmosphere' and
that animal rights issues created arguments, since people became
defensive about eating meat or about the importance of using
animals in biomedical research. A primary school teacher feared
that her students might have nightmares if she told them about
animal cruelty, and then she would receive complaints from their
parents.
Activists were frequently accused of spoiling happy celebra-
tions. The coordinator of a protest against a rodeo described
how the press portrayed animal rights activists as unpatriotic
because they did not support the rodeo:
It was one of the worst media coverages that we ever had.

They [the media] made us look like a bunch of communists.
Outside we had twenty animal rights activists, and there we
were, all with signs and whatever. They showed me talking,
and then they cut and edit, and they'd go in. And did they
show any of the animals falling or bucking or being torn? No,

they showed them all loving the rodeo, trotting around on

horses, holding American flags. I mean what does that tell
you? Here's Mom's apple pie and here are all these people,
who have nothing better to do than sit here with these signs.
Family meal-times (at which activists revealed their vegetarian

diets) provided further opportunities for uncomfortable encoun-
ters. For instance, when trying to explain their reasons for being
vegetarian, activists told family members about the plight of ani-
mals slaughtered for food. One woman recalled a Thanksgiving
celebration in which her mother became angry because she was
displaying inappropriate emotions for the happy occasion:
Last Thanksgiving, I started to talk about the plight of

turkeys. My mother actually got up and got really mad at me.
My aunt was there. My mother said, 'This is supposed to be a
happy occasion. It's Thanksgiving. You're supposed to be
thankful'. I said 'I am thankful. I'm thankful I'm not a
turkey!'
Another activist described situations in which he and his wife,

Carol, were requested by their friends not to talk about the
plight of farm animals at the meal table, for fear it would dis-
couraged their children from eating their food.
When it comes to food there's very few people that Carol and
I can sit down with and get into it because that entails us
going through how they chain pigs and so forth their entire
lives in dark stalls and now they're trying to breed pigs with
no arms and no limbs . . . They don't want to hear any of that
because it means they're going to have to think about it. So
what they'll do with food is always say, 'We're not going to
say anything about food in front of our kids'. If the kids
comes up and says anything about meat, they'll all look at us
like 'don't start him thinking!'
Male activists in particular were believed to experience ridicule

for their feelings about animals. One woman told me how her
husband 'takes a lot of kidding' from his friends at work and the
golf club. His colleagues, for example, found a photograph of
him at a protest in the local newspapers. They pinned it up on a
wall for everyone to see 'as a joke'. Another man described how

Learning to feel
hunters called him an 'animal rights queer' during a protest

against hunting. One woman told me that her husband was
embarrassed to ask for vegetarian food at a restaurant that had
no vegetarian option on the menu because 'he's more concerned
[than me] with what other people think, like at work in particu-
lar, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself.
Emotion rules as strategies for dealing with emotional

deviance
Activists adopted a number of strategies for dealing with awk-

ward interactions. On the one hand, activists learned to manage
their own emotional responses to animal cruelty, and find emo-
tional dispositions that appeared more legitimate ('Control of
self). On the other hand, they learned how to identify in others
the emotional traits appropriate to animal rights activism, and
avoided interactions with those who did not conform to the cor-
rect emotional disposition ('Control of other').
Control of self
Activists learned early in their careers in the movement through
the kinds of experiences described above, that they must adopt
feelings about animal cruelty that are appropriate to the situa-
tion. These feelings ranged from fully empathizing with animals,
even crying at acts of cruelty, to moderated or 'learned' emo-
tional responses, to adopting 'rational' arguments and disposi-
tions that involved no empathy at all. Activists described moving
in an overall progression over time from being emotional to
being rational. However, the career was not strictly unilineal,
since different situations called for different types of emotional
disposition.
Being emotional
While many activists claimed that they had always loved animals
and had grown up around pets, they did not automatically feel
empathy for farm animals or for animals used in product testing
and biomedical research. Many were meat-eaters and wore animal
skins prior to joining the movement. A few had even hunted
birds, foxes and deer before becoming animal rights activists. One

activist had been an animal research technician. Activists had to

learn that their lifestyles involved cruelty. They developed empa-
thy for animals with the help of graphic literature produced by
various local and national animal rights organizations, that por-
trayed helpless animals as the victims of acts of previously
unimaginable cruelty.
Activists always began their descriptions of becoming involved
in the animal rights movement with recollections of viewing such
materials. One informant explained how, while reading a book
about animal research during a long stay in a monastery, he con-
jured up empathy for the laboratory animals that he was reading
about. He tried to imagine what it was like to be in the animals'
position:
A: There's an experiment that they have done and still do, I

think, where there's indentations all through a steel drum -
about six inches where the steel protrudes inside the drum.
And what they want to do is find out about ulcers - of all
things. What they do is they take a cat and put it in this steel
drum with all these protrusions, and they spin it for like half
an hour until the cat is a mess and they repeatedly do it, and
then the cat gets stressed, and they see if they can produce an
ulcer. Well anyhow, these were real powerful images that
would come to mind reading this description.
Q: Powerful images of what?
A: Of the actual experiment itself, and the really sort of
opening myself up to what it must be like to have that done
to myself. And then I figured, well a cat's not you, but I've
had animals all my life and I know that they have pain
receptors. If I go like this to me [he hits himself with his fist]
and I go like this to my cat, my cat responds the same way. It
jumps.
This man, who organized a demonstration against biomedical

research at a local university, encouraged the students to engage
in similar emotion work. He advised them to 'sit down, read a
book, get yourself mad. We have plenty of films to help you.'
As the above exchange illustrates, activists also used animal
rights literature to continuously remind themselves of animal cru-
elty. It was not just to entice newcomers. Activists described the
feelings conjured up from reading the literature as 'the fuel' to,
the 'passion behind' or the 'boost' to activism.

Learning to feel
That's one thing that helps me get a boost is knowing that if I

sit down and relax, which I do a lot, or I do something I want
to do, there are animals suffering . . . They don't get to walk
away. And it gives you a jolt to sort of get back in there and
try to do something - whether it means writing one letter, or it
means participating in a mall table for one or two hours,
which is nothing.
Another activist explained to me how she frequently watched

animal rights videos not just to learn about animal cruelty but to
pay respect to the animals. Although she found the videos dis-
turbing, she believed that watching the tapes was a way of pay-
ing emotional dues (Hochschild, 1983) to the animals. That is,
she believed that she owed them her empathy because they had
suffered at the hands of humans:
I think most people just kind of put up that wall and don't let
themselves look at it very hard. Because a lot of it is very hard
to look at; pictures and TV shows and movies and things.
They say, 'I can't watch that'. I mean it makes me cry and it's
not that I'm a sadist or a masochist or whatever . . . but I
really believe it's true that if the animals endure these things at
our hands, then the least we can do is watch . . . it's real
painful at times. But that's how you learn.
As well as the literature, there were also rituals (often appro-
priating religious symbols) in which activists attempted to engen-
der empathy for animals among themselves and outsiders during
protests. I observed a 'funeral' at which animal rights activists
placed a wreath on a small coffin that they laid outside the psy-
chology department of a local university 'in memory' of the cats
who had died in the department's biomedical research. The
woman who laid the wreath returned to the speaker's podium
visibly crying and announced, 'I realize that this is a sad
moment'.
Learned emotion
Activists worried that if emotional responses occurred on their
own, other people would fail to understand why the activists felt
the way they did or would simply dismiss them as being 'too
emotional' - synonymous with being irrational in their minds.
One activist, for example, described an occasion on which she

was interviewed by a local television crew. Aware that those who

opposed animal rights activists often criticized the movement for
being overly emotional, she believed that it was necessary to 'add
the component of justification' for not using animals in biomed-
ical research by looking for better ways to conduct the research,
as opposed to feeling empathy for the animals.
I was uncomfortable because I'd never done it before - having

the camera in front of me. My concern is that too many
people say for example. 'I'm in the movement because I love
animals' and I think there's more to it. I guess my concern is
the kind of image I want projected. For me, I think the image
needs to be people who are educated and aware, and it's not
just an emotional basis in terms of the media. Because I think
people who are opposed are very quick to jump on that. My
sense is that it's not emotions that change opinions. It's being
able to lay down a very logical argument for why you believe
such a thing . . . . What I'm saying is that it's really important
for those who are going to talk about it to do their best in a
logical understandable way . . . Taking it from the point of
view that there's alternatives, there are other ways to do
animal research so we don't have to inflict pain on the ani-
mals.
I think you have to have the emotion. But in addition you can
say, 'I care but let's also think in terms of scientifically, what
would be a more sound type of study?' So it's sort of adding
the component of what would be justification of changing - in
addition to 'aren't those cute cuddly creates that belong out in
the woods'. But I think you need both, I guess.
Activists explained how their emotions of empathy had to be

transmuted to anger and action by knowing the root causes of
animal cruelty in order to be convincing to others and themselves
about the correctness of their views. They believed that they had
to know the reasons behind animal cruelty and the numbers of
animals used in the exploiting industries. They had to know, for
example, that: animals do not die accidentally in road accidents
but also that humans kill them by building roads and over-popu-
lating; or that pets do not get lost, rather, suppliers steal them
for animal research; or that laboratory animals are not necessary
for learning about disease, rather, antiquated scientists refuse to

Learning to feel
find alternative research techniques; or that stray animals do not

naturally over-populate, humans are irresponsible in failing to
spay or neuter their pets and in abandoning unwanted pets.
Activists used the term 'learned emotion' or 'education' to
describe the 'rational emotions' that emanated from knowing
such things:
A: The longer you stay in it [the animal rights movement], the

more educated you become. The less emotional you become
and the more attuned and educated you become. The emotion
is still there. I don't think it subsides but I think it's more
learned emotion.
Q: What do you mean by learned emotion?
A: Understanding what's involved in, say, the suffering. You
know what's involved in starvation. You know what the
animal's doing out on the road that you see that's very thin.
You know he's starving. You know those feelings and you
know what's involved and you also know that it can be
prevented through spaying and neutering, those sorts of things.
And it makes you angry to know that somebody has aban-
doned that dog or that dog was brought into the world
because a dog wasn't spayed or neutered. That's learned. The
emotion is when you see the dog just wandering and you feel
sorry because it's lost.
Being rational
The third category of emotional response involved declaring no
empathy for animals at all, and turning animal protection into a
purely intellectual issue - a response that activists labeled as
'rational'. This process was facilitated by reading some of the
philosophical treatises about animal rights activism, such as Tom
Regan's book. The Case for Animal Rights. One activist told me:
I use Regan's work mainly to investigate the nuts and bolts of

the animal rights position as an intellectual, ethical, philosophi-
cal position. Because my feeling from the beginning, and my
feeling still is, that it's not simply good enough to have a sort
of inchoate sentimental feeling of goodwill toward animals - I
mean I think that's great. But that in itself doesn't justify or
legitimize it on intellectual terms - the animal rights position.
So, what I did with his work, was I got The Case For Animal

Rights, which is a long, technically philosophical book, and

started reading through that, and discovered, not really to my
surprise, that his arguments for the status of animals as being
worthy of moral and ethical treatment were persuasive.
Regan's work impressed several other activists because it was

'dispassionate', 'scholarly', talked about rights more than ani-
mals. Most of all, it linked the animal rights movement to other
movements that the activists had been involved in and that they
considered less emotional and therefore more respectable, such as
the civil rights movement and the women's movement:
The Case for Animal Rights is a very very scholarly, dispassion-

ate, philosophical work. In some 480 pages he goes through the
arguments of the ethics that deal with some of the rights philoso-
phy. I think in the first 100 pages he doesn't even mention the
word animal. He simply analyzes what previous philosophers
have said about rights. The whole idea of rights is fascinating to
me. Human rights have always been so. Before I came to the
animals, I've been concerned, if not active, in other areas of
what you might call liberal causes: the civil rights movement, I
was absolutely absorbed by t h a t . . . the rights of Third World
countries, the question of to what extent does America have the
right to step on other countries around the world.
The rational response to animal cruelty was often reinforced

by declaring no particular affection toward animals. Borrowing
language from the civil rights movement, for example, one man
declared to a group of about 70 animal rights activists at a rally
outside a research laboratory:
I'm not an animal lover. Some animals I like, others I don't

like. To say I am an animal lover is the same as saying I'm a
nigger lover.'
This approach to animal cruelty appeared reasonable to the

activists because they believed that if outsiders viewed the animal
rights movement as consisting of animal lovers, then that would
detract from the framing of animal rights as a social justice
movement:
I think if people see animal rights activists as being merely
animal lovers, then that demeans the philosophical stance of

Learning to feel
animal rights, which is the same as any social justice move-

ment: the reaction of a weak body being oppressed by a
stronger body. I mean, I certainly don't love lobsters, for
example. Yet I don't think that they should be stuck in
supermarket crates and starved to death and boiled alive. And
yet do I love lobsters? No!
Such activists replaced advocating empathy and affection for

particular animals with a more 'objective' stance toward them.
For example, when asked to summarize the animal rights posi-
tion for the listeners on a local radio talk show, the coordinator
of one of the chapters emphasized that the animal rights move-
ment was concerned not so much with being compassionate
about cruelty to particular animals as with 'respect' and 'justice'
for the billions of animals killed every day in farms and research
laboratories:
Perhaps the best way to explain what the central idea of

animal rights is maybe to say what it is not. For example,
many people get terribly upset, emotionally wrought up, if they
see, let us say, the [image of a] heart-wrenching calf as it has
been torn from its mother immediately after birth and shoved
into one of those regulation- size crates where it spends its
entire life chained by the neck, and it can never move and
never chew. People get very emotional, some people cry when
they see these acts of cruelty . . . These are strong emotions
. . . and these are certainly not emotions that anyone of us
need to be ashamed of. On the contrary, I think these are
emotions that we ought to nurture in ourselves.
But the animal rights view says let us push these emotions
out of the way for one moment and be very cool and rational
about it. And if we do, we will then discover that what is
wrong here is not necessarily this particular act or degree of
cruelty. But what is wrong here is something much larger.
What is wrong is the entire system - a system that . . . exploits
and kills vast numbers of animals, literally billions of animals
in this country alone. The animal rights philosophers have
undertaken a very thorough inquiry into the ethical founda-
tions that are involved here and have come to the conclusion
that this situation and attitude is not justifiable in moral terms.
And the bottom line then is that what we owe the animals is
not kindness and compassion, but respect and justice.

Control of other
Activists realized that managing their own emotional dispositions
was pointless unless they could get cooperation from outsiders to
support their new emotional identity. Not all outsiders were pre-
pared to accept the activists' definition of themselves as rational.
Some continued to dismiss them as emotional. Others believed
that overt empathy with animals was an appropriate response to
animal cruelty. Therefore, activists had to adopt strategies to
control the extent to which others could take part in a debate
over animal cruelty in order to maintain the appropriate emo-
tional tone of the movement.
As part of these strategies, activists identified several different
types of 'Other'; namely, the 'antagonistic other', the 'interested
other' and the 'emotional other'. For each type, they adopted an
appropriate distance, which ranged from complete withdrawal
from debate, to moderate inclusion, to sustained engagement.
Such strategies allowed the activists to keep interactions at a level
that was controlled and rational, and thus preclude the accusa-
tions, described earlier, of being overly emotional.
The antagonistic other

Activists made a policy of not talking about animal rights
activism in settings in which people were likely to become scared,
defensive, argumentative or abusive. The primary school teacher
that I described earlier, for fear of upsetting her students with
gruesome pictures, explained, 'I leave my animal rights activism
at the door when I go into the classroom'. Another occasion in
which activists withheld information was when opponents
appeared dangerous or abusive. Activists feared for their safety
at protests against hunters, who shouted insults at them, pos-
sessed guns, and were believed to be trigger-happy. On one such
occasion, a coordinator believed that a 'silent protest' was the
appropriate measure - to diffuse not only the hunters' anger, but
also the activists' own frustrations with them:
If somebody came up to you and asked you something and it

was obvious that they wanted information and were not trying
to initiate an argument or whatever, you could respond. Other
than that, no matter what they said, you did not respond
because it could be very dangerous. It doesn't get anywhere
except to get your blood pressure up. You know if somebody

Learning to feel
comes up to you and says 'why don't you go home and be

with your husband and family?' what are you going to say to
this person? Obviously he's going to make you angry, so you
just ignore them and they go away.
Others described abortive conversations about animal rights

issues when confronted by people who became argumentative in
defending their meat-eating habits or animal research:
There's the time when you sit at a literature table at a mall,

and you would like someone to take this piece of literature and
read it and see if they agree with it. And they'll stand there
and tell you that they eat meat or they believe in research or
they're always going to believe in research and there's nothing
you can do to convince them otherwise. And they argue with
you about it, and they get mad and defensive . . . When they
get mad I say 'well thank you for looking at the literature', or
'if you don't think you need it, that's fine, but I appreciate you
talking with me today . . . thanks for stopping by'.
Such people were believed to be inappropriate candidates for

debates about animal cruelty because they did not appear to be
willing to change their views. This was frequently believed to be
the case with university administrators and researchers, who con-
tinued to defend animal research, in spite of accusations of cru-
elty against their research agenda:
We've seen him [the researcher] on TV before and he gets very

defensive. I don't think that he's the type of person that I can
sit down with and have a rational conversation with. Especially
not now, after all that's happened. Maybe in the beginning we
could have sat down and tried to talk this out rationally. But
now he's gotten so defensive and once again, he's just been
taught for so long that it was right, that it's alright to kill for
whatever purpose. I don't think that anything I could say
would sway him anymore than anything that he could say
would sway me to change my position. So I've never thought it
necessary to meet him face-to-face.
Because of the existence of the Antagonistic Other, activists

had to be cautious in talking about animal rights activism to
O The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 451

outsiders at all times. Most adopted a policy of never 'preaching';

meaning that they would only answer questions about animal
rights activism if asked. One woman told me that she sent her
friends animal rights literature in the mail anonymously, for fear
that if she gave it them directly, antagonistic responses might
result:
I don't want to put them in a position where if they totally

disagree with me later, and if we came into contact with each
other, they would feel uncomfortable.
The interested other

While the antagonistic other was an unsuitable candidate for ani-
mal rights conversations, other outsiders to the movement
appeared to the activists to have some qualities that made them
acceptable for sustained interactions, if not membership in the
movement. Again, activists described a process of waiting to be
asked. They then embarked on a strategy of 'feeling out' the
other person - seeing if the other party was willing to sit down
and listen, and then to ask certain questions that indicated an
interest in some of the philosophical questions behind animal
rights activism or demonstrated familiarity with animal rights
books. The young activist, who was accused of scaring his
friends' children at the dinner table, described his strategy for
cultivating such relationships while staffing information tables in
the local shopping malls.
A: I usually assume that the person is coming up to the table

for some reason. They're antagonistic or they're mildly inter-
ested or they're very interested. And the best way to do it is to
let them do more talking and to find out where they are.
Q: What do you do?
A: You ask. You say have you read this? Do you know the
National Association of Biomedical Research? You find out
how much they're involved. Like a woman called me from
Washington who's someone for the Governor's Board. It's a
journal, and I wanted to find out what she knew . . . So you
end up sort of feeling out to what extent they're involved and
once you know and get a sense of where they are, then you
can make decisions on what you're going to present. If they
seem to be sort of sophisticated, then you can talk about it . . .

Learning to feel
you start saying: 'well what is the difference between a person

and a dog?' and 'What makes it ok to blow torch a
Chimpanzee and not a baby'. And then you can go through,
and there's certain steps that I've already outlined in my mind
that I can take people through and there's always like a
decision tree where they get to, and they go off here, and they
go off there. And it's very logical: if P then Q kind of oriented.
And so I can watch people go down and usually, at the key
points, there are ways to move the argument around.
This man explained how he made decisions to share his knowl-

edge about animal rights activism with some family members, but
not with others. Some would taunt him with pieces of meat or
make a joke about eating vegetarian food, but would refuse to
listen to his stories about cruelty to animals on farms. While
these interactions were abortive, interactions with the more inter-
ested types would be sustained:
I don't do anything unless they're willing to talk. If you start

talking and all they want to do is say 'I'm right, you're wrong'
I don't do anything. Unless they're willing to sit down. And
what's interesting is a lot of my in-laws, Carol's parents,
Carol's sisters, her siblings and their spouses are extremely
educated and really bright Harvard law graduates, and one's a
Rhodes Scholar. So what's nice about it is they'll say you're
crazy but then they will sit down and talk. And what's interest-
ing is that it's nice a lot of the arguments just speak for
themselves. And if you present them, you can see how they gel
and you come back two months later and they ask about this
and they're ready to read that.
The emotional other

There was a third category of 'other' that activists had to deal
with when deciding who to interact with: the 'emotional other'.
These people were sometimes called 'animal lovers' or 'cat-and-
dog people'. The activists used these terms to describe animal pro-
tectionists who were just concerned about the plight of pets,
rather than rights and justice for animals in general. Unlike the
activists, they sometimes ate meat, were heavily involved with the
humane society animal shelters, and were not believed to be
familiar with the animal rights literature and philosophical works.

Most activists were prepared to tolerate the 'emotional other'

in the organization, believing that they might one day broaden
their horizons to include issues other than household pets.
Besides, in a relatively small, voluntary organization, any help at
all was better than none. Some activists, however, also feared
that the 'emotional other' lowered the 'rational' tone of the
movement and would not move beyond emotional responses.
Thus they only moderately included the emotional types of the
organization. I observed this with respect to a woman called
Jodie. Unlike the other activists, Jodie did not appear to be
aware of learned emotion or the rational approach to animal cru-
elty. Most of the events that she organized concerned pets: dog
washes (to raise money for the group); animal festivals ('fun
things for people of all ages . . . you'll be able to bring your
pets'); and Christmas parades ('to liaison with the [humane soci-
ety] shelter and animal control . . . to get smiles on people's faces
when they see our little dogs'). The other activists in Jodie's
chapter referred to these events as 'light animal rights events',
'social events', or 'low-key events' and they received less enthusi-
asm than protests against biomedical research or fur. Despite
this, they thanked her profusely for her efforts, not wanting to
thwart her enthusiasm for the animal rights movement.
As in other areas of social life, a gender division of emotion
existed among the animal rights activists. Activists widely
believed women, particularly housewives, to be more emotional
than men and professionals. Given their concern not to be con-
strued as overly emotional, a few activists recalled being disap-
pointed at finding that the members in their local animal rights
chapter were mostly women. One woman worried that she would
not have an opportunity to learn the rational arguments:
One thing that bothered me was that attendance was practi-

cally all female, and some of the discussions [at the meetings]
were real kind of emotional responses. Instead, I wanted to
learn about different responses you could use - different
arguments and how you respond to that. And sometimes at the
meetings, they digress into these things where [they say], 'Isn't
that awful, isn't this horrible'. And they say, 'I can't believe
that! How could they do something like that?'
A common belief among such activists was that men were

more rational than women, and that incorporating men could be

Learning to feel
a strategic device to bring credibility to the animal rights move-

ment because they were considered less emotional.
I recognize that women still don't have equal status that a man
has and I guess, in a way, I want to take advantage of the fact
that that's the way society sees it. And in order for our group
to gain the credibility it needs, that is one thing we could put
forward . . . that these issues are important to men.
As a consequence, male activists were often chosen for

spokesperson and leadership positions. Conversely, women
tended to be overlooked for leadership positions. Carol com-
plained that she was the victim of male chauvinism. She recalled
an incident in which the coordinator of her chapter asked her
husband, David, rather than her, to help a new member and talk
to the public while staffing an information table at the local
shopping mall:
When I was running a table with David and another man who
was new, Douglas [the chapter leader] looked over to David
and said, 'Now did you help him [the new man]?' and, 'Were
you around when people came up to the table?' And David
said, 'Yeah, Carol was there', and I sensed this discomfort
from Douglas, you know, as if he was saying, 'Are you sure
she can handle it?' but not to my face.
Men were a source of status, even when they appeared to me

to be emotional about animal cruelty. In fact, a few women
admired the males in the movement because they were sensitive,
caring and compassionate, despite the overwhelming belief that
men were less emotional than women. When I raised this appar-
ent contradiction with the women, they told me that they
admired men who expressed their feelings, because it was rare for
them to do so. For this reason, men's willingness to express their
feelings was considered a sign of masculinity and fearlessness.
However, women's willingness to express their emotions was a
sign of femininity and low status because it was expected of
them:
A: I can't think of any men in the movement that I don't like.

They are overwhelmingly compassionate and they're feminist-
oriented. It's very easy to talk to them. It's like talking to gay

guys! [she laughs] That's why women like having gay friends
. . . the qualities that have led them into the movement is the
reason I like them.
Q: But don't the same qualities lead women into the move-
ment?
A: Yeah. But you don't find them as often in men. I mean, I
would much rather spend time with a guy, whether it's in the
animal rights movement or a working relationship or in a
personal relationship or whatever, with a person who agrees
with my philosophy, who is willing to talk about emotions, or
make himself vulnerable by being in a protest movement. To
me, that's a sign of masculinity, a lack of fear to put himself
out there for abuse. I think it's more admirable than Joe Blow
who's out there getting drunk.
Being emotional thus became legitimate when men did it, and
women could point to men's participation in the movement to
justify the legitimacy of their own feelings about animal cruelty.
On occasion, animal rights activists also excluded biomedical
researchers from debates about animal cruelty for being too emo-
tional. At a counter protest, in which animal researchers met ani-
mal rights activists with posters of children who had benefited
from biomedical research, a speaker from the animal rights
movement proclaimed:
It always amazes me that our opponents accuse us of being

overly sentimental, of being misinformed . . . Yet the three
pictures that they are always working with, and that you see
here today are, in my humble opinion, classic examples of
mushy sentimentality and distorted propaganda!
The 'emotional other was a particularly salient category for the

animal rights activists because it served to highlight the bound-
aries between being acceptably concerned about animals and
being overly emotional about them. Activists often spoke of
themselves as being cat-and-dog people before being acquainted
with the animal rights movement in order to emphasize the way
in which they had 'progressed' in their emotional careers to hav-
ing more sophisticated responses toward animal cruelty.

Learning to feel
Conclusions
This study offers an approach to social movements that utilizes

the new sociology of emotions literature in explaining the attrac-
tiveness of the animal rights movement to its followers. The
movement provides activists with a vocabulary of emotions; cate-
gories and names for emotional states: 'being emotional', 'learned
emotion' and 'being rational'. Being emotional meant empathiz-
ing with animals portrayed by animal rights literature as victims
of cruelty. Learned emotion involved knowing the causes of ani-
mal cruelty to justify anger. 'Being rational' involved declaring
rights and justice for animals, not sympathy.
Activists also controlled the emotional content of the contro-
versy by influencing who could and could not have a voice in the
debate over animal cruelty. They did this by recognizing several
types of Other. Some were too defensive or emotional and could
not be fully included in the movement, while others appeared
willing to read literature and ask appropriate questions. They
were thus encouraged to participate. At times, activists relied on
the gender division of emotions to make these distinctions,
assuming men to be more rational and therefore more important
to the movement than women.
Distinguishing between different emotions and types of people
emerged as strategies to cope with awkward interactions with
friends, family, co-workers and strangers, in which activists were
accused of having inappropriate emotions about animals. The
new vocabulary of emotions and social types provided activists
with what they considered to be legitimate feelings toward ani-
mals. They helped the activists draw boundaries between accept-
able and unacceptable emotional behaviour, and gave them a
sense of career; of progression from being someone who was too
emotional about animals, to someone who could be detached,
rational and objective.
This study challenges the view, implicit in the hearts and minds
approach to social movements, that emotions are purely the
impetus for social movement participation or the immediate
response to large-scale societal tensions. Rather, they emerge and
develop during the process of becoming an activist, when chal-
lenged by outsiders or the activists themselves.
This study also shows how participants' emotional disposi-
tions, along with their ideology and resources can be mobilized

by social movements. Indeed the value of non-emotional or 'sci-

entific' responses that call for rights and justice, rather than com-
passion and care, are evident in other social movements in the
late twentieth century, including the civil rights movement, the
women's movement and the pro-life movement. As with the ani-
mal rights movement, proponents of environmentalism - many of
whom appear initially to be protesting the negative externalities
of science and technology - use scientific arguments to further
their cause.
At least in the animal rights movement, the emotional rubric
of justice and rights for animals represents a break from its nine-
teenth century counterpart - the humane tradition, which several
scholars associate with heightened compassion, women and the
private spheres of social life (French, 1975; Turner, 1980;
Thomas, 1983; Elston, 1987; Jasper and Nelkin, 1992). Turner,
for example, describes the early anti-vivisection movement as a
call for compassion, and a critique of 'scientific rationalism':
'[The] severity of [scientific] rationalism' threatened to dry up

ordinary human emotions. The man of science needed some
countervailing infiuence 'to soften down the hard lines of
science engraved on his heart as well as his brain, to balance
reason with sentiment'. The promotion of love for animals,
sympathy with all God's creatures, of compassion for pain
wherever found was calculated to meet this need.
I suggest that the new appeal to 'rationality', rights and justice

in the animal rights movement is a timely occurrence, and that it
is embedded in how professional men and women in modern life
deal with social issues that have traditional associations with
femininity, and the private spheres of life, such as animals and
children. Women in particular have to make a concerted effort to
legitimize themselves with intellectual or scientific arguments,
adopt a more 'objective' view toward the victim, and promote
males, because women are expected to be overly emotional
(Kleinman, 1984; Belenky et ai, 1986).
Men are still widely considered to be the source of status, and
what they do brings status to it. Thus when a man is emotional,
he is often praised but not so for a woman. For example, the
implicit message in much of the new men's studies literature is
that males need to be more expressive as a means to sincerity.
This view has found its way into popular culture, such as posters

Learning to feel
that depict half-naked, muscular men (rather than women) hold-

ing babies, or a recent advertisement for Philips shavers, which
urges men to 'shave with care', and proclaims that 'showing your
feelings is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength'. In the
same way, emotions in the animal rights movement took on a
different meaning when men, as opposed to women, adopted
them; sympathy and caring for defenseless victims became objec-
tive, rational and legitimate. Men's participation was thus a use-
ful resource for overcoming the emotional deviance that most
activists experienced.
This study has explored how a social movement manufactured
emotions, used them to rationalize participation, win broader
support, and countered affronts from powerful challengers. I
speculate that the seriousness with which the legal and medical
establishment have taken the recent animal rights movement in
the United States is, in part, a testimony to how successful the
animal rights activists have been in reconstructing their emotional
identity.
Hong Kong University of Received 29 January 1993
Science and Technology Finally accepted 22 February 1994
Acknowledgements
Part of the research for this article was supported by a grant from the National
Scienci; Foundation (DIR-9121305). I am grateful to the animal rights activists
who candidly shared their experiences with me, to Ophinny Lee and Annie Wu
for helping me process the interview data, and to Martha Dahlen for her com-
ments on earlier drafts.
Notes
Opponents to the civil rights movement in the United States used this term to
deride white supporters, whom they accused of favoritism toward blacks (pejora-
tively called 'niggers'.) Critics discredit other social movement sympathizers using
similar rhetorical devices which play on stereotypes about the activists' emotional
dispositions or attachments eg, feminists as 'lesbians' and 'bra-burners', or ecolo-
gists as 'tree-lovers'.
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Learning to feel: the neglected

sociology of social movements

Julian McAllister Groves

This paper discusses the experience and ideology of emotions among

Sociologists' neglect of the emotional aspects of social

Sociologists have not entirely ignored emotions in their discus-

(Smelser, 1963), frustration (Gurr, 1968) or relative deprivation

436 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

Specifically, frames diagnose a problem in need of change and

A sociology of emotions approach to social movement

I argue that the way we feel about an issue, or our emotional

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 437

especially one's children. This is expressed in the word 'nachus'

438 © The Editorial BoaM of The Sociological Review 1995

of emotions provided activists with a sense of what constituted

Research site and methods

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 439

Approximately 70 percent of those who attended the monthly

Not all activists experienced problems sharing their views about

440 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

The most frequent accusation that activists experienced con-

The press. They love controversy. Obviously they think we're

Others told me how outsiders to the movement feared that

It was one of the worst media coverages that we ever had.

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 441

they showed them all loving the rodeo, trotting around on

Family meal-times (at which activists revealed their vegetarian

Last Thanksgiving, I started to talk about the plight of

Another activist described situations in which he and his wife,

Male activists in particular were believed to experience ridicule

442 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

hunters called him an 'animal rights queer' during a protest

Emotion rules as strategies for dealing with emotional

Activists adopted a number of strategies for dealing with awk-

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 443

activist had been an animal research technician. Activists had to

A: There's an experiment that they have done and still do, I

This man, who organized a demonstration against biomedical

444 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

That's one thing that helps me get a boost is knowing that if I

Another activist explained to me how she frequently watched

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 445

was interviewed by a local television crew. Aware that those who

I was uncomfortable because I'd never done it before - having

Activists explained how their emotions of empathy had to be

446 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

find alternative research techniques; or that stray animals do not

A: The longer you stay in it [the animal rights movement], the

I use Regan's work mainly to investigate the nuts and bolts of

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 447

Rights, which is a long, technically philosophical book, and

Regan's work impressed several other activists because it was

The Case for Animal Rights is a very very scholarly, dispassion-

The rational response to animal cruelty was often reinforced

I'm not an animal lover. Some animals I like, others I don't

This approach to animal cruelty appeared reasonable to the

448 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995

animal rights, which is the same as any social justice move-

Such activists replaced advocating empathy and affection for

Perhaps the best way to explain what the central idea of

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1995 449

The antagonistic other

If somebody came up to you and asked you something and it