This dissertation employs techniques from folkecology to identify factors that have influenced lawmakers in their decision-making about animals. The purpose of this research is to understand the natural world as seen by lawmakers, identify and explain variation between lawmakers and scientists priorities, and, ultimately, consider ways to improve communication of understandings between these two cultures. The study is structured to follow Amadeo Rea's recommendation that scholars "note the etic while searching for the emic" (Rea 1998: xx) It compares priorities and then discusses findings to get at the question of meaning. What do different animals mean to lawmakers? What forces are operating when they make or interpret laws on behalf of animals? The answer "takes us into the realm of mythology," as Rea said it would (Rea 1998: xx), and provides an opportunity to consider the foundations of law and science, and the role of reason, narrative and imagination across the disciplines and across time, as lawmakers - who are keepers and shapers of their cultures -- continuously define and redefine what it means to be human, and what that means for other animals. Findings indicate that conservation efforts need to increase the cultural relevance of the natural world, rather than hope that science alone will change the ethic and priorities of lawmakers.

Bears and wolves are large mammalian predators who fill similar biological niches and have acquired similar cultural significance throughout Western history. Although superficial similarities exist between them in Charles G. D. Roberts's short animal stories, Roberts uses anthropomorphism to differentiate between these two species. This thesis uses a historical-cultural approach to provide the context for determining what was known or believed about these animals during Roberts's life and what contemporaneous theories were likely to have influenced Roberts's writing. The present literary analysis of bears and wolves in Roberts's stories shows that the species are primarily differentiated through the degree of anthropomorphism attributed to their individual members. Roberts anthropomorphizes bears more than his other species, and this contributes to the bears representation of the positive potential of animality. By contrast, Roberts minimizes anthropomorphization of wolves, who represent the negative potential of animality. In Roberts's work, humans who live in the wilderness must become either bear-like or wolf-like. Those who embrace bears positive animal potential are those who belong in the natural world, while those who practice the wolves' negative animal potential are denied a place in the natural order. Humans ultimately prove themselves to be superior animals through their use of technology, but must also demonstrate positive qualities, such as morality, in order to show that they belong in nature. Roberts's binary of animality speaks to a conflict that continues today, between the desire to accept the animality that is part of human nature and simultaneously to deny the baser aspects of that animality.

Bears and wolves are large mammalian predators who fill similar biological niches and have acquired similar cultural significance throughout Western history. Although superficial similarities exist between them in Charles G. D. Roberts's short animal stories, Roberts uses anthropomorphism to differentiate between these two species. This thesis uses a historical-cultural approach to provide the context for determining what was known or believed about these animals during Roberts's life and what contemporaneous theories were likely to have influenced Roberts's writing. The present literary analysis of bears and wolves in Roberts's stories shows that the species are primarily differentiated through the degree of anthropomorphism attributed to their individual members. Roberts anthropomorphizes bears more than his other species, and this contributes to the bears representation of the positive potential of animality. By contrast, Roberts minimizes anthropomorphization of wolves, who represent the negative potential of animality. In Roberts's work, humans who live in the wilderness must become either bear-like or wolf-like. Those who embrace bears positive animal potential are those who belong in the natural world, while those who practice the wolves' negative animal potential are denied a place in the natural order. Humans ultimately prove themselves to be superior animals through their use of technology, but must also demonstrate positive qualities, such as morality, in order to show that they belong in nature. Roberts's binary of animality speaks to a conflict that continues today, between the desire to accept the animality that is part of human nature and simultaneously to deny the baser aspects of that animality.

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