Furry Families

Be(a)ware of the dog

Ideology
• Maps of meaning that form the basis of a
political, economic, social or other system.

• An ideology can be thought of as a way of

looking at things, proposed by the dominant
class of a society and adopted by all
members of this society.
Ideology of the family
• The ideology of the family consists of all
those values and norms that instruct us on
how ‘ideal’ family life should be lived.
Origins
• The concept of the family dominant at the
present time arose during the late 18th
century.
• The ideology was devised by and served to
mark the middle class off from the
decadence of the upper class and the
immorality of the working class.
Ideology in action
Ideology in action
The home
• Geographies of the home show that the
house is a complex space that both shapes
and is shaped by the individual inhabitants,
and the society in which they live.
Dog house
Dog house
Humans and other animals
• Within the Judaeo-Christian philosophical
tradition the earth and all within it was
created to serve man.

• Human / animal divide – with humans

believed to be superior to animals.

• Aristotle saw reason as separating humans

from other animals.
Humans and other animals
• Aquinas asserted that the souls of animals
did not survive their death, unlike those of
humans.

• Descartes argued that animals were no more

than machines having no mind and being
unable to feel pain.
• This binary divide between animals and
humans was not universal.

• Some enlightenment thinkers, including

some within the major western religions, like
Francis of Assisi, valued nature and
kindness towards others.
God and his dog
Humanist views
• It is thought that humanist views on other
animals arose with the shift from hunter-
gatherer societies to agrarian societies.
• The species barrier has a functional effect,
legitimating the exploitation of animals.
• Humanist ideology also had implications for
our understanding of the world – including
science.
Dog evolution
• An early theory on the domestication of dogs
explained that hunters of about 12,000 years
ago brought home wolf pups which they
tamed.
• Recent research suggests that dogs
domesticated themselves, in that wolves
hanging around human camps developed
behaviours that were rewarded. This
happened around 130,000 years ago.
• The domestication of creatures that were
once wild was seen as evidence of human
domination over the animals.

• However, recent evidence suggests that

wolves influenced the evolution of humans
just as much as humans influenced the
development of dogs from wolves.
Species barrier
Close relationships between humans
and animals has been seen as
‘unnatural’ .
Species barrier
The narratives of
reversion to
humanity from a beast
or a frog reinforces
the species barrier.
Post-human world
• Some theorists argue that we live in a post-
human world, in which the absolute
boundaries between humans and non-
humans, wildness and civilization, nature
and society have been broken down and all
beings are connected in a series of
overlapping ‘webs’ of activity.
• Donna Haraway
Companion Species Manifesto

Exposes the permeability of the species

barrier which has been defended by science
and religion and supported by legal systems
and economic regimes.
Kinship diagrams
Statistics
• 88% of pet owners in Australia see their pet
as part of the family (49% in the USA)
Ambivalence
• Currently the majority of pet owners see their
pets as ‘like us’.

• 1950s popular dog names:

– Rover, Spot, Lassie, Buddy, Daisy

• 2008s popular dog names:

– Max, Jake, Lucy and Molly
Ambivalence
• Dominant ideology sees them as ‘other’
– Laws excluding them from family spaces
– Laws treating them as ‘property’
– Economic exclusion (no puppy bonus).
– Education is optional
– Animal cruelty treated separately
Pack animals
• This ambivalence is reflected in the
widespread practice of producing the multi-
species family using a pack model, with a
human dominated hierarchy .
• Leadership is coded through spatial
dynamics and the ordering of social activity,
based in a belief that dogs are sensitive to
the symbolic meanings of these things to
humans.
Power relations
Pack leadership’ as a model for human-
dog interaction.
The pack model bridges
the divide between
‘outsider’ and ‘family’.
Dog needs and preferences
Dogs do have agency in contemporary
families.
Pack relations are understood as an interaction
between humans and dogs-as-species.
Dog owners report developing
relationships with particular
individual dogs.
Pets occupy a liminal position
• Pets exist on the boundaries between
‘human’ and ‘animal’

• Pets are seen by their human companions

as both ‘human’ and ‘animal’.
Bad dog!
Dogs that deviated from the perceived
norms were likely to have their family
membership questioned.
Inter-relationships.
• Dogs are shaped to fit within the
expectations of appropriate family and home
behaviour.

• The concept of family is broadened by

peoples’ efforts to include dogs-as-dogs, and
by the agency of individual dogs which
shapes the way that ‘family’ is experienced.
The family as institution
• The family, constituted as two parents and
two or more children, is often viewed as an
institution that is naturally given, and thus is
automatically viewed as socially and morally
desirable.
Family ideology
• Family ideology has been a vital means of
holding together and legitimating the existing
social, economic, political and gender
systems.
• Challenging the ideology thus means
challenging the whole social system.