| ISANA
Dec. 2001 No.25 |
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1- 2 - 3 - 4
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THE AMERICAN ANTI-WHALING POSITION:
WHAT UNDERLIES IT?
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Dai Tanno
Assistant Professor
Aomori Public College |
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It
is well known that the ordinary American public holds a strong anti-whaling
position in spite of their meager knowledge about whaling, and that
the United States is a leading anti-whaling country. Therefore, a
variety of arguments have been put forward, a variety of questions
have been posed and diverse responses have been given on this seemingly
hard-to-understand phenomenon. However, those responses, at best,
were within the range of speculation.
The survey team (led by Toshihide Hamazaki), of which I am a member,
undertook to test those speculative responses and arguments. For this
purpose, we had ordinary Americans participate in the survey as sampling
participants (448 people from 12 universities throughout the United
States) in 1998 and sought their response to our questionnaires. In
what follows I shall report some of the findings obtained from analysis
of their responses.
In the survey, we attempted to analyze responses to the following
three questions.
1. What factors prompt the respondents to take an anti-whaling position?
2. Is the American anti-whaling position a form of "Japan bashing,"
as is often alleged?
3. What would be the reaction of Americans to their anti-whaling position
when an economic interest is involved?
We obtained the following answers to the above questions:
Regarding the first question, the elements cited as motivating the
American anti-whaling sentiment were "a concern to protect the welfare
of animals," "America-centrism regarding the whaling issue," and "the
anthropomorphicizing of whales." As the fourth element, we also assumed
"possible influence by the mass media." On the basis of these assumptions,
we analyzed the data. But an analysis of results showed that there
was little effect from the mass media. Rather it was indicated that
the above three elements constituted the primary motivation. |
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In
other words, with different degrees of influence, opposition to whaling
was related strongly to the degree that one has a strong consciousness
to protect animals, has a nation-centric view on the whaling issue
and tends to anthropomorphize whales.
With respect to the second question, it was extremely difficult to
verify the question whether "the American anti-whaling position is
a form of Japan bashing" because when you ask an American whether
he is opposing whaling to bash Japan, the likely answer is "no." Then
we changed the question to asking to what extent whaling is tolerated
for five peoples now known to be engaged in whaling: Icelanders, Greenlanders,
Norwegians, Inuit's of the United States and the Japanese. The degree
of tolerance obtained was in the order from (1) American Inuit, (2)
Icelanders, (3) Greenlanders, (4) Norwegians and (5) Japanese. This
order was exactly the same both for male and female respondents. It
would be difficult to assert that "anti-whaling is a form of Japan
bashing" only from the fact that the Japanese were placed in the lowest
rank. However, as there is almost no difference among the 448 respondents
for their reason to oppose whaling by those five peoples, the question
remains "why Japanese were put at the bottom of the list."
The third question pertains to whether the "Not-in-My-Backyard" syndrome
is also linked to the American anti-whaling sentiment, as is often
pointed out. "Not-in-My-Backyard" syndrome is a kind of opportunism
such as not caring about damage to the environment (e.g. those by
industrial waste) as long as it happens in other countries, but fiercely
opposing it if it happens in their own country. Of course, we did
not ask such a question directly in the questionnaire. Instead we
asked: "Suppose your friend is affected by the predation of fish by
whales, do you still prefer protecting whales rather than fish?" The
results of the analysis indicated that they would find more difficulties
if their "friend is affected." This seems to suggest that the American
anti-whaling position is a form of opportunism in that whaling has
no economic stake for them. Conversely, it could happen that American
would be less positive in their protection of whales once their economic
interest is involved.
Human beings are prone to fight over rare resources. This cannot be
avoided. But in case a conflict occurs over such resources, it is
greatly to be hoped that the empirical, not speculative, approach
will be taken so as to identify what elements further affect the conflict.
Such an approach, it is believed, could lead to a better solution.
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| Anti-whaling rally taking place at a square near the 53rd IWC meeting site in London |
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