Dog Politics - (Inscriptions) by Mariam Motamedi Fraser (Hardcover)

About the Book

Dog politics is a critique of dogs' 'species story, ' a scientific story which insists that dogs belong 'naturally' with humans. It asks what evidence exists to support this story, what practical consequences, for dogs, follow from it, and how it is woven into broader scientific shifts in understandings of species, animals, and animal behaviours

Book Synopsis

Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story, ' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to dogs' evolutionary becoming, suggest that they do. Dog politics dissects this story.

This book offers a rich empirical analysis and critique of the development and consolidation of dogs' species story in science, asking what evidence exists to support it, and what practical consequences, for dogs, follow from it. It explores how this story is woven into broader scientific shifts in understandings of species, animals, and animal behaviours, and how such shifts were informed by and informed transformative political events, including slavery and colonialism, the Second World War and its aftermath, and the emergence of anti-racist movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book pays particular attention to how species-thinking bears on 'race, ' racism, and individuals.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

From the Back Cover

'In this brilliant and detailed text, Mariam Motamedi Fraser offers an overdue and unflinching intervention into the study of "species" as a political category, its implicit anthropocentricism, and attendant material and epistemic violence. Importantly, Dog politics points readers towards a fundamental and critical question for animal studies and posthumanism: "What does it mean to actually work towards freedom for the animals we are entangled with?"'

Dinesh Wadiwel, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

Everywhere dogs are found, they are stitched into human hearts. But are humans stitched into theirs? Countless celebrations of 'the dog-human bond' suggest that they are. Yet 'the bond' does not always come easily to dogs. Dog politics seeks to denaturalise, in different ways, dogs' 'species story, ' the scientific story that claims that being with humans somehow constitutes dogs' evolutionary destiny. This book asks what evidence exists for this story, what choices dogs have but to go along with it, and what expectations, demands and burdens it places on dogs, on a daily basis. In doing so, it offers an unfamiliar and discomforting account of the lives of domesticated dogs today.

As well as offering a rich empirical analysis of conceptions of dogs in science, Dog politics uses dogs' species story as the prism through which to refract a number of topics of contemporary significance. These include: how the relations between animal behaviours and species identities are established in theory and in practice; how the histories of concepts of 'race' and of species overlap and differ over time, with enduring implications today; and how the reification and exploitation of dogs' perceived relationality with humans can potentially transform an ethics of engagement into a hostile politics. Above all, Dog politics shows how species stories erase the singular animal as a figure of theoretical, methodological, ethical and political value.

Review Quotes

'In this brilliant and detailed text, Mariam Motamedi Fraser systematically challenges the apparent common sense of "species stories" which presume a naturalised relationality and entanglement between humans and dogs. Dog politics understands these stories of relationality - found in everyday culture, scientific studies and in much recent posthumanist theorisation - as political in nature, making note of their persistence, their extent and their power. Motamedi Fraser reminds readers that stories around species inform regimes of domination and violence: relevant to the lives of dogs, these discourses have material effects for political relations between bodies, whether this is in the family home, as part of training regimes, at the puppy farm or in the animal shelter. Dog politics thus offers an overdue and unflinching intervention into the study of 'species' as a political category, its implicit anthropocentricism, and attendant material and epistemic violence. Importantly, Dog politics points readers towards a fundamental and critical question for animal studies and posthumanism: "What does it mean to actually work towards freedom for the animals we are entangled with?"'

Dinesh Wadiwel, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

About the Author

Mariam Motamedi Fraser is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London