Towards the sociology of pets—Social functions of animals in contemporary societies observed from systems theoretical perspective

Abstract

This paper advocates for introducing sociology of pets as a particular field of research as the response of ever growing social relevance of pets in contemporary societies. Though other theoretical approaches are suitable for tackling these complex issues, the article offers viewpoint from Luhmann's social systems theory. Based on Luhmann's writings on ecological communication, the article departs from the system/environment distinction and conceives pets as being part of a society's environment that attained resonance of a social system. Further, entry of pets into a social system is interpreted through differentiation theorem arguing that pets perform highly relevant social functions for all functional subsystems of a society by contributing to their autopoietic reproduction. This is primarily accomplished through communication about pets, emerging specific semantics, usage of binary codes specific for different subsystems, correspondence to their mediums, programs and functions. The major part of work is presenting relations of pets to 10 functional subsystems of a society, as this delineates scope of empirical phenomena of potential interest for sociology of pets. These processes might be observed at systemic, organizational and interaction levels. Despite possessing multiple merits, also, certain limits of Luhmann's account of pets are unfolded, such as incapability to hear authentic voices of animals, but rather distorted semantic codes emerging from consciousness of human psychic systems, afterwards structurally coupled with communication as a medium of social systems. At this point, social systems theory might be complemented by theory of interspecies communication, as taking into consideration other theoretical approaches anchored at ontologies pertinent to include non‐human agents is invocated. The tentative outcome of this introductory discussion is that apparent process of anthro‐morphosization of animals is taking place while the question of relation between humans–humans in the context of building just societies of the 21st century still remains open.