The animal challenge to sociology

Abstract

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.ukThe animal challenge to sociology 1 The animal challenge to sociologySociology has been slow to take up the animal challenge despite there having been calls for decades that sociologists attend to the 'zoological connection' (Wilkie, 2015b;Peggs, 2013). It has been pointed out that 'there is virtually no area of social life that is untouched by animals' (Bryant, 1979: 403) and that, 'By focussing on differences between humans and other animals, sociologists have lost sight of all that we share with them' (Murphy, 1995: 692). And, while Beck's claim that society can no longer be understood as 'outside nature' suggests the need for a reconceptualisation of society (Beck, 1992: 80), it does not address the invisibility of other animals (Tovey, 2003). Some have attempted to address this invisibility, arguing that the entanglement of human and other animals in mutually constitutive social relations needs to be recognised by sociology in a way that is non-reductionist (see for eg. Benton, 1991Benton, , 1993. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the founding thinkers of the discipline would be a good place to start (Tovey, 2003). In this paper, we take up this challenge, arguing for a reconceptualisation of society that recognises that animals are constitutive of it rather than part of a 'nature' with which sociologists are unconcerned (Tovey, 2003). One of our key claims is that animals are agents entangled in relations with humans and that these relations are frequently ones of domination and exploitation. Our concern therefore is not so much with redefining what a sociological conception of nature might be, but with how a sociological conception of society could encompass human-animal relations.In this context it is helpful to bear in mind the process outlined by feminist scholars for the relationship between feminism and the social sciences. They identified four phases: the first was the pre-feminist era i when women were not usually the focus of research unless 'the family' was being studied; the second was a critique of this neglect; the third was a growth in the number of studies of women in order to 'add them in' to existing studies; and the fourth consisted of 'the full theoretical integration of gender into the discipline' (Charles, 1993;Walby, 1988; Oakley, 1989). In relation to animals we suggest that we are experiencing the second and third stages with a critique of sociology's lack of attention to non-human animals, on the one hand, and a burgeoning interest in human-animal relations and the growth of the interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies, on the other. We have not yet reached the fourth stage a...

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