Clinton R. Sanders

Understanding dogs : living and working with canine companions

Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Relationship between People and Pets 2. The Everyday Dog Owner: Knowing and Living with Dogs 3. The Guide-Dog Owner: Dependence and Love 4. The Veterinarian: Caring for Canine Patients 5. The Guide-Dog Trainer: Understanding and Teaching Dogs 6. Animal Abilities and Human-Animal Interaction Notes References Index

Marks of Mischief Becoming and Being Tattooed

Following a general discussion of body alteration practices and a presentation of the history of tattooing in Western culture, this article focuses on the process a person goes through in deciding to be tattooed and the effect of this decision on the tattooees self-definition and social experience. The data are drawn from six years of participant observation in a variety of tattoo settings, 163 structured questionnaires, and 16 lengthy, semistructured interviews with tattooed people. The importance of the tattoo as both a “mark of disaffiliation” from conventional society and a symbolic affirmation of personal identity and association is emphasized.

Killing with kindness: Veterinary euthanasia and the social construction of personhood

Euthanizing companion animals is a common feature of veterinary practice. Based on data collected during participant observation in a large general veterinary clinic in the Northeast, this discussion focuses on how veterinarians evaluate euthanasia cases, orchestrate euthanasia encounters, and experience the occupational activity of routinely dispensing death. The description of the ambivalence that surrounds euthanasia in veterinary practice is used to ground a general analysis of “personhood” as a constructed social designation and the conflicts focused around the implemented deaths of those beings defined as existing in the contested realm between person/subject and nonperson/object.

Excusing Tactics: Social Responses to the Public Misbehavior of Companion Animals

AbstractUsing qualitative data generated through participant observation and auto-ethnographic techniques, this paper focuses on situations in which companion dogs violate the expectations of public propriety. Seven excusing tactics used by those accompanying such dogs to restore the disrupted interactional flow and repair their damaged social identities are presented. This animal-human interaction is compared to similar social maneuvers used by adults to account for and ease the consequences of the public misbehavior of children, as described in existing sociological discussions.

“The Dog You Deserve”: Ambivalence in the K-9 Officer/Patrol Dog Relationship

Primarily based on ethnographic fieldwork in a police K-9 training program, this article first presents the optimal attributes of patrol dogs and their handlers. It then moves to a discussion of the training process and emphasizes the apparent disjunction between defining the dog as a law enforcement tool, on one hand, and a unique and sentient individual, on the other. Following a description of key elements of the day-to-day work of the K-9 unit, the article discusses the uneasiness that handlers (and police administrators) feel due to the potential conflict between treating the patrol dog as an effective weapon/deterrent and treating it as a reliable companion/partner and docile family member. The article concludes with a brief examination of ambivalence as a general feature of social life and a unique characteristic of the occupation life of the K-9 police officer.

Working Out Back: The Veterinary Technician and Dirty Work

Based on three years of ethnographic research in a large, mixed-practice veterinary hospital and semistructured interviews with twenty-two veterinary technicians, this discussion focuses on the work of veterinary technicians, which is, as described by Everett Hughes (1984, 343), “physically disgusting,” “a symbol of degradation,” and “wound(ing to) one’s dignity.” The article briefly describes the vet tech’s career and work activities. The discussion then focuses on how technicians regard and deal with the least appealing of their physical and emotional tasks. Here I emphasize the compensatory role played by the relationships and encounters with nonhuman animals that are central to their work life. The article concludes with an examination of the concept of dirty work and the relationship between dirty work and identity.

Annoying owners: Routine interactions with problematic clients in a general veterinary practice

Based on a year of fieldwork in a large, mixed-practice veterinary clinic in New England, this discussion focuses on the criteria veterinarians use to evaluate and define certain clients as problematic. Doctors and clinical staff define most negatively those clients who are especially ignorant concerning basic features of being an owner, are argumentative or demanding, display concern for fees over the welfare of their animals, are apparently negligent of or abusive toward their pets, or are problematically over-involved with their animal companions. Comparisons are drawn between the typologizing activities of veterinarians and those of physicians and other service workers.

Purposes, patterns, and protection in a campus drug using community.

This article reports a study of a campus drug using community, and is based upon interviews with 38 student users of one or more recreational drugs. The investigation focuses on (1) general patterns of drug use among respondents, (2) the extent to which students were concerned with societal sanctions against drug use, (3) how students differentiated among drugs and justified their use, (4) drug user attitudes toward certain aspects of conventional society, and (5) the process of initiation into drug use. The findings are compared with more recent data from the same community.

Psyching Out the Crowd Folk Performers and Their Audiences

INTERACTION BETWEEN THE PERFORMING artist and the performance audience has received little systematic attention within the sociology of art.’ 1 The activity of an individual attempting to entertain or artistically touch a relatively loosely-knit group of people is, moreover, of considerable analytic interest because of its parallels to everyday social encounters. Such similarities have been emphasized by proponents of the &dquo;dramaturgical model&dquo; of social interaction which stresses the importance of group membership in the determination of individual behavior and the collusion of the group in the structuring of a &dquo;presented reality&dquo; (Goffman, 1959; Messenger et al., 1962; Kuhn, 1964: 73). The relationship between the performing artist and the audience is constrained by loose consensual rules (conventions) which have arisen out of the experience of participation in the performance situation. As Becker observes:

A methodology for monitoring adolescent drug abuse trends.

This study uses current and retrospective survey data to describe il- licit drug use trends in a sizable adolescent population. The data were gathered in December 1970 from 13,603 students, 85% of those enrolled in a suburban Chicago high school district. The survey generated detailed information concerning six different epidemiologic parameters of drug use : incidence, prevalence, remission, exposure to drugs, frequency of use, and variety of drugs used. Respon- dents were asked to systematically chart their use of illicit drugs over the previous five years. The use of multiple epidemiologic parameters permit- ted us to trace the spread of drug use and the development of a sizable population of active drug users during the five-year period. While the findings regarding specific drug use trends in this population are primarily of interest to the communities which were studied, the ways in which various parameters can be used to identify and describe these trends may be of more general interest. This paper presents few findings concerning the relationships of these parameters to one another or to other