Animals, Society and Culture

Animals, Society and Culture Lecture 6: Kinship with animals 2012-13

Statistics • Dogs in UK – 1963 4.4M, 2012 8M – 81.8% increase • In UK 22% of households contain at least one dog, 70M households in Europe include at least one pet animal • 550,000 jobs in Europe generated by pets • Turnover of European pet food industry and related supply and services 24 billion Euros • Annual pet food production 8M tons

Pets as family • ‘Over half of dog owners think of their pets as family members. A report by the American Animal Hospital Association found that 40% of women they surveyed said they got more affection from their dogs than from their husbands or children’. (Herzog, 2010: 8)

Lecture outline • Emergence of modern phenomenon of pet keeping • Moral ambiguity • Power, domination and pets

Modern pet keeping • Pet animals don’t have a function • Kept purely for pleasure • Shift from function to affect • Domesticated animals were kept because they fulfilled useful function, ‘not simply because they were affectionate or ornamental’ (Ritvo, 2008:99) • Dogs in portraits 17th and 18th centuries working dogs

Pets and middle class • In 16th and 17th centuries pets became normal feature of middle-class households • Especially in towns where animals less likely to be functional necessities • People could afford to support ‘creatures lacking any productive value’ (Thomas, 1984: 110)

Pets distinct from other animals • Live indoors • Have names • Not eaten

Obsessive pet keeping • By 1700 had all symptoms of ‘obsessive pet keeping’ • Featured in painted family groups • Aristocracy had favourite horses and dogs painted • Benjamin Marshall, a racehorse painter, said: ‘I discover many a man who will pay me fifty guineas for painting his horse who thinks ten guineas too much to pay for painting his wife.’ (Thomas, 1984: 117)

Substitutes for humans • ‘Pets were company for the lonely, relaxation for the tired, a compensation for the childless. They manifested those virtues which humans so often proved to lack… They were valued because they were either idealised servants who never complained or model children who never grew up. … affection for pets was seldom untinged by a touch of adult superiority and contempt’ (Thomas, 1984:118)

Effect of keeping pets • Changed how people thought about animals • Those who wrote on behalf on animals in 18th century – like Jeremy Bentham – had close relationship with pet animals • Changed sensibilities towards animals and the natural world

Class • Aristocracy had pets before middle classes, only relatively recently has working class had pets • Material circumstances affect pet keeping • Gender also important • Pet keeping linked to domination over and taming of nature

Moral ambiguity • Contradiction • Intelligence, personality and character attributed to one set of animals • Another set of animals bred for food and experimented upon • Modern civilisation rests on this contradiction

Disapproval of pet keeping • Serpell, J (1996) In the company of animals, Cambridge University Press • ‘Pet-keeping….. is a subject encircled by a great deal of prejudice and misunderstanding. The exact nature of these prejudices varies from person to person, but all of them essentially boil down to a vague notion that there is something strange, perverse or wasteful about displaying sentimental affection for animals’ (xiv).

Pigs and pets • Domestic livestock are exploited in the ‘most cost-effective and efficient way’ ‘maximise productivity; minimise costs’. • Never mind that livestock suffer as a result – economically unavoidable because of need to feed mass populations. • ‘There exists in our society an entirely separate category of domestic animals which, for no obvious reason, is exempt from this sort of treatment.’ Pets. • ‘Instead of maximising productivity, mimimising costs, and turning a blind eye to the welfare of the animals involved, we do exactly the opposite. The economic benefits of pet owning are negligible at best. Yet the majority of pet-owners spare no expense to ensure that their animals are as happy, contented and secure as they possibly can be.’ (Serpell, 1996:17)

Contradictory sets of moral values • ‘Instead of questioning the hardline, economic exploitation of animals we have tended, in one way or another, to adopt a disparaging, condescending or trivialising attitude to pets and pet keeping’ (Serpell, 1996:20) • Ambivalence towards pets has long history • Witchcraft trials • Inability to form appropriate relationships with humans

Human or animal? • Rebekah Fox • Liminal position • Human and animal – if human full family members, if animal then disposable

Power, domination and pets • Franklin argues that human-animal relations undergoing transformation • Emergence of post-humanist sensibility • More empathetic attitudes towards animals • Pet keeping increased in response to ontological insecurity • Challenges human-animal boundary

Power and domination • Yi-Fi Tuan (1984) Dominance and affection, Yale University Press • Human-pet relationship characterised by dominance and affection • Pet not only refers to animals but also to domestic servants, children, slaves, women, lower classes – all can be pets

Dominance and affection • ‘Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet’ (2). • ‘Affection mitigates domination, making it softer and more acceptable, but affection itself is possibly only in relationships of inequality’ (5).

Pets • They receive lavish care and attention • Exist for human pleasure and convenience • If become inconvenient they are got rid of • Goldfish (Japan), Dogs (Britain)

Dogs • ‘the dog is the pet par excellence. It exhibits uniquely a set of relationships we wish to explore: dominance and affection, love and abuse, cruelty and kindness. The dog calls forth, on the one hand, the best in a human person is capable of – self-sacrificing devotion to a weaker and dependent being, and, on the other hand, the temptation to exercise power in a wilful and arbitrary, even perverse, manner. Both traits can exist in the same person.’ (102)

Power • Affection is flow of love from the strong to the weak, from the superior to the inferior (162). In a relation of equality there’s a certain distance – the distance of respect. • ‘a relationship of dominance – of superior to inferior – is not in doubt so long as the owners feel free to bend down to pat their dog or cat on the head or run their hand down its coat. These are gestures of affection. They are bestowed by the superior on the inferior and can never be used between equals’ (171).

Animals as family • Research into families • Joking and laughter – ambivalence • Pets as substitutes for people

Yorkie • ‘We’ve had him two years now, he’s been the baby see, because I wasn’t gonna have more children, and I don’t know how he’s gonna react when this baby comes. He was terrible with the budgie. [Interviewer to dog: You are gonna be jealous.] Yeah, because I did baby him quite a bit, but tried not to since I found out I was pregnant, I’ve tried to, not to distance myself but to, just tell him who is boss type of thing, so he started to realise he is a dog not a child. /laughs/ So we’ll see when the baby comes anyway.’

Emotions • Support • Bereavement • Human capacities – agency, ‘minded social actors’, intentional • Conflict and strain

Summary • Mass pet keeping a relatively recent phenomenon – associated with industrialisation, urbanisation, shift from functional relationships with animals to relations of affect • Contradiction between emotional attachments to pets and the way industrial societies treat the vast majority of domesticated animals. Moral ambiguity. Challenges the species barrier. • Relations with pets are characterised by inequality – dominance and affection. They’re incorporated into families, where they’re loved and abused as are humans, especially those who are not in a position of power.

Animals, Society and Culture