Why is Japan shamed for whaling more than Norway? International Society and its barbaric others

Abstract

Although Norwegian and Japanese fishermen killed almost identical numbers of whales in the last two decades, they were subject to a largely uneven attention from the international community. While Japan was significantly shamed by all actors, the attention on Norwegian whalers was much smaller. Why is that? The article first conceptualizes the gaps in contemporary shaming literature and shows that whereas lots has been written on why and how states shame, much less has been written about why some actors are shamed more and some less. To remedy that, it then adopts post-structural theoretical position and the methodology of discourse analysis to deconstruct anti-whaling campaigns against Japan and Norway. The analysis shows that whereas Japanese culture was often depicted as cruel and barbarous, and its science as faulty and illegitimate, Norway was largely spared of this discourse. I argue that this difference can be ascribed to differing identities between the Euro-American anti-whaling camp and Japan.