The Animal Highlight
Set around specific themes, The Animal Highlight offers glimpses into the wonderful and complex worlds of animals. This is a spinoff of The Animal Turn Podcast, a podcast that unpacks important concepts in animal studies.
The Animal Highlight
S5E1 - Citizen Dogs
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas focuses on the domestic dog and the ways in which they might be thought of as citizens. She thinks about some of dogs' history and discusses the work of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka.
Recorded: 18 September 2023
Featured:
- Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rightsby Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka.
- Biosecurity with Steve Hinchliffe on The Animal Turn.
- Politics with Will Kymlicka on The Animal Turn.
- Cosmopolitanism with Angie Pepper on The Animal Turn.
- Canine Good Citizen with the American Kennel Club.
- The biopolitics of animal being and welfare by Krithika Srinivasan.
- Domesticated Dogs as Citizens by Virginia Thomas.
Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).
Credits:
- Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
- Virginia Thomas, script writer, narrator and co-host
- Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
- Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
- Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects
- Learn more about the team here.
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Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
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The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.
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This is another iRaw podcast. We podcast to make the world a better place for animals.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Welcome back to the Animal Highlight everyone. This is season five, where we're going to talk all about animals and politics. This season has been extracted from season six of the Animal Turn podcast, which was focused on the same theme animals and politics but in this podcast, as you know, we focus explicitly on animals. The co-host for this season is Virginia Thomas, who is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in sociology. She was also a research fellow with the Welcome Trust project, from Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I had a lot of fun working with Virginia on creating this season. It's enticing, it's interesting and if you're interested in learning more or you missed something while listening to the episode, be sure to head over to the Animal Turn website and have a look for it on our blog. To kick us off, virginia starts talking about domesticated dogs and the ways in which they might be thought of as citizens. She thinks about dogs' history and discusses the work of Sue Donaldson and Will Kimlicker. Enjoy, hi, virginia. Welcome to the Animal Highlights. Hi, thanks for having me. It's great to have you and I'm going to have you with me for the next couple of months because you're a new fellow with the Animal Turn. Congratulations. I'm very happy to have you. You're going to be helping us this season focused on animals and politics, with the Animal Highlights, which is very exciting. I love the Animal Highlights, so I'm delighted to have you. Before we dive into the animal highlights, though, maybe you could tell me a little bit about yourself and the kind of work you do.
Virginia Thomas:Yeah, yeah, when I said thank you for having me, I realized that probably wasn't quite the right expression, since I'm here for a few months. Thank you. I work at the University of Exeter in England and I work on environmental sociology or environmental social science, sorry. So I'm really interested in people's relationship with their environment and people's relationship with animals, and particularly wild animals. So at the moment I'm looking at species reintroductions in Britain and how that affects people and how people affect it.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I mean, that's super, super political in and of itself, right? If you're speaking of yeah, again, people get pretty passionate about which species are allowed to run around and which aren't. It's wild boars, right at the moment, where there's a lot of kind of contention.
Virginia Thomas:Yeah, definitely in Britainain, but also across europe. It's there there's such an interesting species, and so I guess their similarity to us is what brings them into conflict with us, like you know the way that the things that other people do that irritate you the most are the things that you do yourself. I think that's how we maybe feel about. Well they're so resourceful and so assertive and just so adept at living in human societies. We find that quite challenging.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. I know like I've just been listening to some of these kinds of what gets labeled invasive species or not, and sometimes you've got what's an indigenous species that just propagates or does really well and people get really. Or is it badgers as well in the UK that you guys have been having a lot of talk about?
Virginia Thomas:Oh well, that's a subject close to my own heart. The interesting thing about badgers in the uk is that they're implicated in the transmission of bovine tuberculosis, which is a big zoonotic disease, and it's a big problem from a one health perspective. But the the jury is still out on whether the kind of things that we're doing to to control badgers are actually helping control bovine tuberculosis or whether there are other things that could be done, so it's really contentious.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I remember speaking to to oh gosh, I was about to say Radcliffe, I was going to say Daniel Radcliffe, but I've never spoken to Daniel. I was like I've never spoken to Daniel Radcliffe. Yeah, Steve Hincheliff, I'm so happy you knew what I was saying. I remember speaking to him about badges and just saying that in some ways, the ways in which folks are hunting them might even be, you know, fueling the spread of bovine tuberculosis because it's not taking into consideration their kind of social worlds and the ways in which they manage their territories. So really fascinating stuff. But we're not going to be speaking about any of those animals in today's Animal Highlight. Right, who are we focusing on today?
Virginia Thomas:Yeah, in this Animal Highlight, I want to focus on the domestic dog, and particularly domestic dogs as citizens of human animal societies domestic dogs as citizens of human animal societies Awesome.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Well, I think dogs are always a really stellar example for thinking about with regards to society and politics For many scholars. Many scholars definitely look at dogs as a keystone species when it comes to thinking about other political animals, maybe. Anyway, I'll let you take it away. What have you got for us?
Virginia Thomas:Yeah, they are a really interesting species to think about, partly because they were domesticated around 15,000 years ago and became the first species that we actively included in our emerging societies. And over millennia, dogs and humans have developed incredible and complex relationships. Dogs have been workers, kept as pets and eaten as food, and often these relations involved exploitation. But, following on from what Will Kimlick has been talking about in this episode, what happens if we reconsider dogs in terms of how we include them in society? So in his book, zoopolis, written with Sue Donaldson, will Kimlicker discusses how domestic animals must be seen as full members of a human animal community, with the rights associated with that membership. He writes, and I quote Having brought domesticated animals into our society and deprived them of other possible forms of existence, we have a duty to include them in our social and political arrangements on fair terms. As such, they have rights of membership, rights that go beyond the universal rights of all animals and which are hence relational and differentiated animals, and which are hence relational and differentiated". So, according to Donaldson and Kimlicker, dogs and other domesticated animals are afforded relational rights as members of a multi-species society which extend beyond the universal rights which other non-domesticated animals have. And Donaldson and Kimlicker go on to say that citizenship is the appropriate conceptual framework for thinking about these relational membership rights. They highlight that domestic animals' rights to citizenship were not automatically granted when they joined human society, but are suggesting that they should be now.
Virginia Thomas:And the very definition of domestication is that animals are adapted to and compatible with human society or, more accurately, multi-species societies. So, although we might include them in society on what Donaldson and Kimberley call fair terms, as well as giving them rights, we expect responsibilities from them. And there are schemes in countries like the US, the UK and New Zealand which have what they call canine good citizen schemes which are interesting in that they place stringent responsibilities on dogs but don't afford them the rights of full citizenship that Donaldson and Kimlicker suggest. The responsibilities might be more those of wards than citizens, where good behaviour is expected but the agency of the subject isn't fully recognised. Therefore, the responsibilities demanded of them don't allow them to fulfil their role in society to their full potential.
Virginia Thomas:And while even some animal rights theorists might be reluctant to extend the concept of citizenship to domesticated animals because it requires capacities and capabilities which many animals don't have, in the case of dogs, their intelligence, their adaptability and their social natures and structures make them eminently capable of functioning as full citizens of a human-dog society and of performing their duties as citizens. Donaldson and Kimlicker stressed that we should recognize domestic animals' competency in exerting their agency to cooperate and participate in human-animal communities, and it was this ability which made them capable of domestication in the first place, in some cases even of self-domestication. So let's look at the kind of responsibilities which canine good citizens scheme to demanding of dogs, and I'm going to use the American Kennel Colour canine good citizen test as the example.
Virginia Thomas:The responsibilities expected of dogs are the ability to allow a friendly stranger to approach their human companion dogs are the ability to allow a friendly stranger to approach their human companion, the ability to allow a friendly stranger to approach and pet them, the ability to allow someone to groom them, the ability to walk on a lead in a controlled manner, including in crowds of people, the ability to respond to basic instructions and the ability to deal with common situations such as meeting another dog, distractions or disturbances or being left with a stranger for a short period. And pairing these responsibilities with the kind of responsibilities envisaged in Zoolophilist highlight how far we are from recognising dogs as full citizens of a multi-species society in the way that Donaldson and Kimlick are imagined. The kinds of responsibilities outlined in canine good citizens schemes focus on a dog's conduct rather than enabling or allowing them to contribute to society in a way that fosters their own mental and physical well-being and human respect for them. They're not the kind of roles that Donaldson and Kimlickham might have imagined, but we might think of feats of strength and endurance like that of Togo and Balto, who were lead sled dogs in the race to transport diphtheria antitoxin across Alaska after an outbreak in 1925. Or we might think of the acute senses of detection dogs, whose senses of smell is thought to be 40 times more acute than that of humans and are therefore invaluable in detecting all manner of things, from disease to drugs.
Virginia Thomas:And in a multi-species society, there might be more scope for dogs to perform such roles, allowing them to flourish and to contribute to society and enhancing human respect for them. And Donaldson and Kimlicker argue that dogs display an excellent capacity for negotiating the social rules of human dog society, and one of the most striking differences between dogs and wild canids is that dogs are highly attuned to humans and look to them for social clues and guidance. Tamed wolves and coyotes don't do this. In other words, dogs' repertoire of skills for social cooperation has evolved in a dog-human community. Dogs are remarkably adept at reading human behavior and negotiating terms of cooperation. If we allow dogs more agency in our shared society, we might be better able to recognize them as full citizens and enable them to contribute in a way that avoids exploitation and encourages mutual flourishing awesome, thank you.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:So you so much. I think that's really. That's quite beautiful. I was thinking, when you were talking about the good canine citizen project, yeah, that those did sound a lot like kind of polite expectations more than responsibilities. Right, like, for me, a responsibility is something that entails you. You know, like I do think guardianship or protecting your person is probably a bigger responsibility than being polite to a stranger or having to deal with a stranger petting you. But it's interesting because that, to me, is part of politeness, not responsibility. Do you know what I mean? Like you've got a lot of assholes in society, human assholes who have a responsibility to pay their taxes, but they don't have to be nice to me. Do you know what I mean?
Virginia Thomas:I mean it's almost more like a cycling proficiency test or a driving test. It's proving that you can, or demonstrating that you can function in society but not necessarily participate perhaps.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Exactly, and I think those types of markers are really, you know, important and good that dogs are, and I think you know it's interesting that these types of tests don't exist for cats, for example, but that you've got these kinds of markers for how to move through society and that you will abide by kind of social norms, right. But I hear what you're saying, that there is perhaps scope to giving dogs more responsibility. But what's always tricky is kind of what that line between responsibility and exploitation is. So I think it's phenomenal that dogs can do this type of work and labor law is fascinating. But at what point does expecting dogs to work become exploitative, right?
Virginia Thomas:Yeah, exploitative, right, yeah, and that's why you know, even those examples I gave of sled dogs and detection dogs, even though you know they're, they're really allowing dogs to use, use their abilities that we don't have there. Is that that danger, that slippery slope that donaldson and kimmerer could talk about? Is that, you, the line between, yeah, between allowing participation and slipping into exploitation is very thin.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Yeah, for sure, and I think there's. You know, with dog sleds, there's been a lot of kind of exposés happening, I think, in the past year about how devastating some of these dog sled operations currently can be for the animals in ways that just don't take into account their needs or their wants or their desires at all. But I hear what you're saying, though. There's something to be said for appreciating dogs and the things they like to do, like sniffing and smelling, and that there are unique and interesting ways in which they can participate in society. For me, a thing I've always thought about and I think it comes up in the next episode where I speak to Angie Pepper in the upcoming episode about this idea of dogs being able to have some freedom of mobility what if dogs could choose when to leave our homes and come back and they weren't confined to staying with the same person for their whole lives? Like what would that look like or mean? Right?
Virginia Thomas:Yeah, completely different and just going back one step, I think your example of sniffing and smelling is a really good example, because that is something that dogs do like to do and and do do even without human intervention. But the, the sled dogs is perhaps a more problematic example because, even though you know, these dogs do now have what we might colloquially call an instinct to pull. You know, you hear these anecdotal stories of dogs being injured or being retired but not being able to give up the harness, still wanting to pull. But that's more because we've bred those traits into them rather than because it's something inherent about them, so that even if an individual dog might enjoy that, it's still inherently exploitative because we've bred that into them. Whereas the detection dogs, it's a little bit different, because we're just using something that they already do and wouldn't otherwise.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And I think what makes this. You know. To put a twist on this, maybe many people listening are imagining you know pet dogs in their homes, but when you consider that 75% of domesticated dogs are not actually in people's homes and are not pets they're domesticated animals but they're feral. What's the word that Krithika Srinivasan uses? I wanted to say streetwalkers, but that's not the right word. They're street dogs and they're free roaming dogs and I think it would be really interesting to actually do a study where you watch those dogs and you think about the ways in which they are already citizens. I think there's a lot of research that shows that these types of dogs are often more socially adept. They're less reactive than dogs that are kept as pets and on leashes, and I wonder how differently we would create those kinds of good canine citizen rules if we were looking at free-roaming dogs. I think it would be really fascinating to actually observe those dogs and think through how they are part of a society and they are navigating traffic and moving through cities and people in fascinating ways.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Anyway, virginia, thank you so much for an awesome start to our animal highlights for the season. I look forward to hearing from you more next time. Great Talk to you soon. I look forward to hearing from you more next time. Great Talk to you soon. Thank you so much to Virginia Thomas for being an incredible co-host and to Rebecca Shen for her work on the logo and all the artwork done with the animal highlight. The show was edited and produced by myself. This is the Animal Highlight with me, claudia Hüttenfelder.
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