Animal Advocacy and Vivisection: The Long Road to Institutionalization

• In Event: 317 - Section on Animals and Society Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Animals and Society Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Animals and Culture

Abstract

This project examines the institutionalization of movement demands through federal policy reform. I use a theoretically grounded historical narrative of the animal justice movement to explain how the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 and its amendment of 1985 were passed through movement mobilization. I isolate three causal explanations that explain the passage, content, and persistence of the movement: 1) political opportunities, 2) institutional selectivity, and 3) inter-organizational division of labor. I use a combination of primary data and secondary data for this project. The primary data include interviews with twenty-four informants who are professionally involved with animal research, content coding of over 700 New York Times articles from 1900 to 2011, and archival material from Duke University’s History of Medicine Collection. The secondary data are historical accounts of the movement and of the history of science and medicine. I show how the development of federal policy, as a lever for potential social change, is an over time process that may be cumulative and incremental in its effects.

Author

• Erin Evans, University of California-Irvine