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Pets General

Dog's Best Friend?

Rethinking Canid-Human Relations

edited by John Sorenson & Atsuko Matsuoka

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2019
Category
General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773559059
    Publish Date
    Nov 2019
    List Price
    $140.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773559066
    Publish Date
    Nov 2019
    List Price
    $40.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780228000495
    Publish Date
    Nov 2019
    List Price
    $34.95

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Description

In almost 40 per cent of households in North America, dogs are kept as companion animals. Dogs may be man's best friends, but what are humans to dogs? If these animals' loyalty and unconditional love have won our hearts, why do we so often view closely related wild canids, such as foxes, wolves, and coyotes, as pests, predatory killers, and demons? Re-examining the complexity and contradictions of human attitudes towards these animals, Dog's Best Friend? looks at how our relationships with canids have shaped and also been transformed by different political and economic contexts. Journeying from ancient Greek and Roman societies to Japan's Edo period to eighteenth-century England, essays explore how dogs are welcomed as family, consumed in Asian food markets, and used in Western laboratories. Contributors provide glimpses of the lives of street dogs and humans in Bali, India, Taiwan, and Turkey and illuminate historical and current interactions in Western societies. The book delves into the fantasies and fears that play out in stereotypes of coyotes and wolves, while also acknowledging that events such as the Wolf Howl in Canada's Algonquin Park indicate the emergence of new popular perspectives on canids. Questioning where canids belong, how they should be treated, and what rights they should have, Dog's Best Friend? reconsiders the concept of justice and whether it can be extended beyond the limit of the human species.

About the authors

John S. Sorenson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brock University. He is the author of Ghosts and Shadows: Construction of Identity and Community in an African Diaspora (University of Toronto Press); Imagining Ethiopia: Struggles for History and Identity in the Horn of Africa (Rutgers); and editor of Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa (Macmillan).

John Sorenson's profile page

Atsuko Matsuoka is Associate Professor of Social Work at York University.

Atsuko Matsuoka's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Dog's Best Friend? is particularly valuable for centering capitalism in our stories of the human-canine bond, offering in-depth analysis of what Haraway called the 'encounter-value' of dogs. Future scholars now have a variety of openings through which to problematize and further scrutinize how the pet industry has supported and constrained various forms of canine interaction and study." H-Environment

activist scholarship, because it seeks trans-species social justice. It explores the metaphorical deployment of dogs as signifiers of human identities and self-definition while simultaneously looking at the lived realities of their historical and contemporary lives. The essays are persuasive and well-written." Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University

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