Contesting Global Norms: Politics of Identity in Japanese Pro-Whaling Countermobilization

摘要

Cut down the last redwood for chopsticks, harpoon the last blue whale for sushi, and the additional mouths fed will nourish additional human brains, which will soon invent ways to replace blubber with olestra and pine with plastic. On the face of it, international management of whales and whaling should be a straightforward matter. Given the hegemony of science in global environmental governance, the near-universal acceptance of sustainability norms, and the relative "countability" of whales, reaching some stable international agreement would seem feasible. Why then is the world, or rather the global virtual communities of anti- and pro-whalers, engaged in an on-going, prolonged conflict over whales dating back to the 1970s? One important, and amply documented, reason is that anti-whaling campaigners have turned whales into rights-bearing persons, sacred human-like creatures, whose killing is immoral and uncivilized.