Cultural representations of problem animals in national geographic

Abstract

Linda Kalof and Ramona Fruja Amthor, Cultural Representations of Problem Animals in National Geographic The cultural representations of animals and nature are important sources of meaning-making, and nowhere are those representations more pervasive than in National Geographic magazine. We examine the representation of animals as dangerous and threatening, a notion widespread in our risk-focused society. Analysis of a random sample of animal photographs published between 1900 and 2000 documents that animals depicted as problems fall into three categories:1) Animals as dangerous and disruptive to humans and their property (35.6%); 2) Humans as dangerous and disruptive to the natural world (34.9%); 3) Animals as dangerous and disruptive to the natural world (29.6%). We conclude that National Geographic iconography contributes to a discourse of animality as noxious and invasive, a discourse that also includes human animals as harmful to the natural world.