Animal Entanglements - (Radical Cultural Studies) by Erika Cudworth (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book provides sociological insight into the everyday experiences of people who live with dogs as companions, as well as the experiences of the dogs in those homes. The book explores the power relations, privileged needs and desires, and interplay of domination and affecti...

Book Synopsis

This book provides sociological insight into the everyday experiences of people who live with dogs as companions, as well as the experiences of the dogs in those homes. The book explores the power relations, privileged needs and desires, and interplay of domination and affection, and balance of agency shared by humans and their companion animals.

Review Quotes

Animal Entanglements adds to and complements two earlier booksby Cudworth: Developing Ecofeminist Theory (2005) and Social Lives with Other Animals (2011). In the volume under reviewCudworth addresses how nonhuman animals, particularly dogs, raise interesting questions about what it means to be human and what the boundaries are of their and our entangled social worlds. Her starting point is the concept of anthroparchy, namely, the dominant social organization that privileges the human and subordinates the nonhuman living world. Cudworth's sociological method is ethnographic. In vivid and messy detail she describes the negotiated complexities of human-canine encounters in the parks and streets of the River Lee (or Lea) and the Walthamstow and Leyton marsh areas of East London and elsewhere, and in multispecies home spaces such as bedrooms and kitchens. There is insight aplenty in this book on how humans should interact justly and responsibly with their animal companions, including the absolute necessity of dog walking and the need for care with what humans should and should not feed "our" dogs. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Animal Entanglements nicely shows how difficult it can be for dogs to adapt to, and have high quality lives in, a human-dominated world. Erika Cudworth makes the clear case that dogs are not our best friends, nor are they unconditional lovers--two highly overused and misleading characterizations that often appear in academic and popular media. This well-written and most important book deserves a global audience because when we value the lives of every single individual dog, we also are helping ourselves come to the realization that it is a panoply of shared emotions that function as social glue that draws them to us and us to them.

Animal Entanglements takes us into the messy relationalities between humans and their companion dogs and the everyday constitution of more-than-human life. From a situated embodied perspective and based on multispecies research methods, Cudworth closely follows the practices of multispecies families in the domestic and public space, exploring the ambiguities of their intimacy, and the porous boundaries between power and care of the human-dog bonds.

Animal Entanglements will be a valuable asset for researchers exploring human-canine connections and will bring joy to anyone with a fondness for dogs. Its valuable insights hold potential for making the world a better place for dogs and the people dedicated to their well-being.

What is it like to live with a dog? How muddied are you, your house, and your physical and emotional boundaries going to get? How will your food choices, your personal relationships, your work life, be challenged? Who is it that cares for whom? In this warm-hearted and generous book, Erika Cudworth uses multispecies ethnography to explore in detail how the lives of co-habiting dogs and humans are shaped by the environments in which they walk, the spaces in which they live, and the carnism of the pet food industry. It also, critically, asks what kinds of relations dogs and humans can forge together, and what kin and care really mean in practice. Muddied living, Animal Entanglements illustrates, is a complex and ambiguous space that embodies both tension and possibility. This is an important and compelling book that addresses previously unresearched areas of the lives of dogs and the people who live with dogs. In the process, it offers an insightful account of contemporary social life, and an adroit engagement with the theories we use to explain it.

With innovative research methods and an infectious sociological imagination, Erika Cudworth elegantly analyses humans' multifaceted and muddied relationships with dogs by connecting everyday experiences to fundamental problems in social theory--the relationships between actor and structure, social reproduction and resistance, and nature and culture.

About the Author

Erika Cudworth is senior lecturer in the School of Applied Social Sciences at De Montfort University. Her interdisciplinary research interests coalesce around complexity and posthumanist approaches, intersectionality and asking feminist questions of our relations with nonhuman animals and the earth. Her previous books include Developing Ecofeminist Theory and Social Lives with Other Animals, and, with Steve Hobden, Posthuman International Relations and The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism. She has edited many collections, most recently, with Ruth McKie and Di Turgoose, Feminist Animal Studies.