This new book critically examines the
socialization of the human domination of other animals, with a focus on the
socialization sites of the family, mass media, formal education system and
digital media. While the book focuses on the contemporary UK, it also attends
to the historical formation of children’s relations with other animals in
Britain, and to the inflection of UK popular culture by global giants in the
construction of animal iconography, such as Disney and Nintendo.
A central argument of the book is that
children’s ethical capacities are systematically distorted by the capitalist
imperative to commodify nonhuman animals (as food, experimental tools, objects
of entertainment and so on) and that an elective affinity therefore exists
between the practices of commodification and the cultural products that
distract children’s attention from those practices, at the same time as subtly legitimating
them. The instrumentalizing imperative penetrates every aspect of the
socialization process, disguised by the ‘cute’ anthropomorphic iconography of
children’s culture, which can be found in food packaging, clothing, movies,
magazines, teaching materials and online games that feature nonhumans as ‘pets’
or ‘farmed’ animals. This iconography paints a veneer of affectivity over
human-nonhuman animal relations that allow the socialization of domination to
proceed smoothly, focusing children’s affective concern for animals on
fictional characters or relatively protected nonhumans, such as animal
companions or members of iconic free-living species. Children’s unwitting
complicity with the exploitation and violence that characterizes human uses of
other animals is thereby facilitated.
The book also considers how these kinds of
anthroparchal inter-species relations intersect with intra-human inequalities,
especially of gender and age: ethical concern for other animals is initially
encouraged in the socialization process, but is thereafter associated both with
human infancy itself as an immature stage of human relationships with other
animals, but also with femininity through the construction of a ‘fluffy nexus
of sentimentality’ that articulates affective relations with ‘cute’ animals
with girlhood. In this linking of infancy, femininity and affectivity for other
animals, we argue that the seeds are sown of an anthroparchal, patriarchal and
ageist adult culture’s disparagement of the animal rights and vegan movement as
infantile, irrational and trivial. The book ends with a consideration of how
the vegan movement is responding to the challenge of anthroparchal socialization,
through the analysis of the emerging genre of vegan children’s literature. This
new cultural development offers some hope that the socialization of the
normality of domination can be challenged and that children’s capacities to
forge ethical relations with nonhuman animals can flourish in a
post-anthroparchal environment.
We hope that the book will interest
critical animal studies and human-animal studies scholars across a range of
disciplines, but especially within sociology. We are active members of the BSA
(British Sociological Association) Animal/Human Studies Group (AHSG), regularly
presenting our work at the BSA annual conference. We are pleased to report that
attendance at ASHG panels and ad hoc sessions about animals are becoming better
attended year on year, and we look forward to building on that momentum in
2015, when we’ll once again be panellists at the BSA conference, discussing
some of the ideas from the book. One of our ambitions for the book is that it
will foster connections with sociologists working in different areas of the
discipline, especially childhood studies, the sociology of the family,
education, popular culture as well as social theorists.
ASA members who are interested in the book
can download the introduction chapter from the publisher’s website, free of
charge. A podcast of us discussing the book, with fellow sociologist Dr Roger Yates, is
available by clicking here. A review by Corey Wrenn is available by clicking here.
We would be delighted to hear from any ASA
members who are interested in our work and we can be contacted at:
Dr Matthew Cole, The Open University, UK: m.d.d.c.cole@open.ac.uk
Dr Kate Stewart, University of Nottingham,
UK: kate.stewart@nottingham.ac.uk
