Cat Culture: The Social World Of A Cat Shelter

8. Animals in the Future of Sociology

8 Animals in the Future of Sociology WE LOCATE our ethnographic study of the Whiskers Cat Shelter in the rapidly growing subfield of sociology , society and animals. Sociologists in this subfield recognize the many roles that animals play in all societies-as companions, sources of food and clothing, subjects of medical and behavioral research, participants in sports, entertainers , and wildlife. Animals influence virtually every aspect of our lives, which is reflected in the growing body of research in this area. We found a broad range of topics and approaches in the journal, Society and Animals, over the past several years. Researchers in several studies looked at factors that shape our social constructions of animals and how these constructions can affect our treatment of, and our relationship to, these animals . Scarce,1for example, examined how economic considerations and public policy shape scientists' constructions of salmon as more than just an element ofnature. Wolch, Gullo, and Lassiter2 analyzed the print media to document changing conceptions of cougars over time in California and how this Copyrighted Material 199 200 Chapter Eight has affected their legal status (i.e., whether they can be hunted). And Quinn3 looked at the way in which paintings and drawings ofidealized animals shape standards for particular breeds of domestic cattle. Researchers have also applied the perspective of social constructionism to studies of social problems relating to animals. Mauro,4 for example, studied the efforts of an animal rights group in Australia to redefine duck shooting as animal cruelty and, therefore, as a social problem to be addressed. Likewise, Carbone5 examined the history of the debate over whether the employment of rodent guillotines to decapitate research mice is sufficiently painful to define this practice as a social problem in need of remedy. Researchers who study social movements have found campaigns on behalf of animal rights to be a fruitful area in which to apply and expand their theories and perspectives. Galvin and Herzog,6 for example, surveyed participants in the 1996 March for the Animals in Washington, DC, to ascertain their views on various aspects of the struggle for animal rights. Taking a different approach, Munro7 focused on the animal rights movement to illustrate the importance of studying countermovements or movements that defended such targets of animal activists as factory farming, vivisection , and recreational hunting. Other researchers represented in this journal explored the links between animal abuse and domestic violence. Ascione, Weber, and Wood8 looked for this link in their survey of shelters for battered women, and Raupp, Barlow, and Oliver9 looked for the link in the childhood recollections of the college students they surveyed. Taking a somewhat broader approach, NibertlO surveyed adults in Ohio and found that support for animal rights was linked to support for several human rights issues. In other words, animal people were people people too. Copyrighted Material Animals in the Future of Sociology 201 Finally, researchers in two studiesll addressed the issue of species boundaries. They looked at the phenomenon oftransplanting human genes into animal bodies and animal organs into human bodies, and suggest that these medical procedures have a variety of social, cultural, and psychological ramifications. They erode the traditional boundaries between humans and animals and challenge our definitions ofhuman and animal. Based on this brief sampling of articles from Society and Animals, then, we can see that human-animal relationships offer a wide range ofopportunities to apply and refine sociological theories and perspectives. The Shelter Study's Contribution to the Study of Human-Animal Relations Although our study has theoretical links to other work on human-animal interaction, we make a different contribution than most of the studies done to date. For one, we study human-animal interaction in which the animals are not subjects but partners in the interaction. That is, at Whiskers, the cats help to create the structures and culture ofthe shelter . Although they are our subjects, along with the humans, we try to understand and present their perspective on their relationships with people. In this sense, our study is linked to the other work in this field because this aspect of it is squarely in the social constructionist framework. The human volunteers and the resident cats at Whiskers construct their world through an interaction process. What is new is taking the animal's perspective into account. Asecond focus that is unique is our attempt to show that, just as in the case ofhumans, the self in animals...