Rhoda Wilkie

Multispecies Scholarship and Encounters : Changing Assumptions at the Human-Animal Nexus

Changing attitudes towards animals in modern industrialised societies has triggered new lines of scholarly enquiry. The emergence of Human-Animal Studies (HAS) is part of the turn towards animals within the social sciences. Although sociology is a relative newcomer to multispecies scholarship, more than three decades ago a sociologist anticipated that the discipline might benefit from attending to the ‘zoological connection’ (Bryant, 1979). Bringing to the fore what usually remains in the shadowy background, i.e. our symbolic and material relations with nonhuman animals, has started to unearth underexplored areas of social life. This is a noteworthy retrieval, because it reminds us of the multifaceted and entangled nature of interspecies interfaces, networks and encounters. This article suggests that seeing life through a multispecies lens not only allows scholars in cognate and non-cognate disciplines an opportunity to engage in innovative scholarship, it also lays the groundwork to animalise the sociological imagination and sociologise HAS.

Academic "Dirty Work" : Mapping Scholarly Labor in a Tainted Mixed-Species Field

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Andrew McKinnon, Steve Bruce, and the reviewers of Society & Animals for their helpful comments.

George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies

The turn towards nonhuman animals within sociology has shed a critical light on George Herbert Mead, his apparent prioritisation of language and the anthropocentric focus of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). Although Herbert Blumer canonised Mead as the founder of this perspective he also played a key role in excising the evolutionary and ‘more-than-human’ components in Meads work. This intervention not only misrepresented Meads intellectual project, it also made symbols the predominant concern in Blumers version of SI. Since groundbreaking animal sociologists in America framed much of their thinking in opposition to SIs emphasis on language, because it excluded alingual animal others from sociological consideration, Meads Mind, Self, and Society has largely functioned as a negative classic within this sub-field. Although some scholars recognise there is more in Meads work that is potentially applicable to this interspecies area the attempt to recover what might be helpful has yet to begin (e.g. Alger & Alger 1997). This paper suggests that if the ambiguities and contradictions that exist alongside Meads oft-quoted anthropocentrisms are also attended to this may open up a more positive reading and use of Meads work for animal sociology.