Critical Pet Studies

Reimagining Relationships and Resistance with Animal Companions
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-981-9217-53-3
Verlag: Springer Verlag, Singapore

Buch, Englisch, 215 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Social Problems

This book defines and argues for a Critical Pet Studies that challenges conventional narratives about human-pet relationships. Bringing together critical theoretical understandings of human-pet relationships and empirical research on them, this book investigates three sites of inquiry: the construction of animals-as-pet-commodities, multispecies cohabitation, and multispecies resistance. This sociological analysis of human-pet entanglements firmly situates them in a broader structural context that enables the categorisation of animals as ‘Pet’.

Drawing on over 60 qualitative interviews with 'owners' and stakeholders involved in housing and supporting pet-owning humans, and species-inclusive observation, the author demonstrates that unequal power relations become evident when nonhuman animals are centred in research that concerns them. Committed to the activist-scholarship agenda, this book offers a fruitful contribution to multispecies scholarship and human animal studies more broadly. It moves beyond previously depoliticised and human-centric explorations of human-pet relations, and challenges the reader to re-imagine companionship with other animals.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sutton, Zoei

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Bioethik, Tierethik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Why is it so hard to think critically about pets?.- Chapter 3: Constructing animals-as-pet-commodities.- Chapter 4: Navigating multispecies lives in anthroparchal spaces.- Chapter 5: Resisting “petness”.- Chapter 6: Reimagining multispecies companionate futures.

Über Autor(innen)

Zoei Sutton is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Flinders University, Australia, who lives, learns and works on unceded Kaurna country (South Australia). She pursues critical, nonhuman animal-centric scholarship, chairs the Australasian Animal Studies Association and co-founded the International Association of Vegan Sociologists as well as The Australian Sociological Association's Sociology & Animals thematic group.