This week's edition of New York magazine has an article entitled "The Rise of Dog Identity Politics," by John Homans, that delves into the peculiarities of the human-canine relationship and the deeper significance of dog owners' tendencies to take anthropomorphism to bizarre extremes. There's some interesting stuff in the piece--for example, according to Homans, the number of strays put down in shelters and pounds has decreased dramatically in recent years, thanks to spaying and neutering efforts and rescue adoptions. He also claims that northeastern urbanites increasingly have had to turn to the deep south as a source of rescue dogs, and that it's increasingly difficult to find shelter dogs who aren't pit bulls. (Btw, that's an observation that I don't agree with at all--there's a shelter a couple of miles away from my house, the Washington Animal Rescue League, that continually has an ample supply of dogs from a range of breeds and mixes.)
One the most intriguing points that Homan raises is the question of whether there's a correlation between Americans' increasing alienation from one another--AKA the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon--and the increasingly intimate relationship that they have with their dogs:
If learned helplessness sounds like an urban condition, it may be because the dog is more and more an urban species. Even in the suburbs, the dog’s unleashed, unfenced, carefree outdoor life is largely at an end. The dogs are in the house, even in the bed. (The doghouse is now mostly for husbands.) There are no rules to this evolving, increasingly intimate arrangement, and it can give rise to a kind of canine identity crisis. Outside of its country context, the dog plays an ever more human role. Which can make things very confusing. “We’ve seen a linear explosion in pet populations in Western countries over the past 40 years,” Serpell tells me, and notes a correlation with the depressing statistics in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. “People are living more isolated lives, are having fewer children, their marriages aren’t lasting. All these things sort of break down a social network and happen to exactly coincide with the growth in pet populations. I think that what’s happening is simply that we’re allowing animals to fill the gap in our lives.”
Read more: The Rise of Dog Identity Politics -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/features/63232/#ixzz0dsNJ1POf
That's a convenient explanation, I suppose. One problem with it, as social historian Katherine Grier details in her excellent 2006 book Pets in America, is that Americans' attitudes toward dogs--in particular, their reliance upon them as intimate companions and view of them as virtual family members--really developed and took hold in the late 1800s and early 1900s, long before the evils of postindustrial alienation. Beyond that, as anyone who's ever taken his or her dog for a walk through Takoma Park on a weekday evening knows, dogs actually give people an opportunity to connect with others. After all, I named this blog "So What Kind of Dog IS that?" because of all the complete strangers who've come up to me and struck up a conversation because they were fascinated by Madge's appearance. Conversely, I've talked to plenty of people that I've met in the park about their dogs. When I encounter another dog owner, we often have an instantaneous connection, because of our shared experiences.
That said, I still encourage you to read the article, and let me know your thoughts about it. As a bonus, it's got some great Richard Avedon-esque portraits of New York dogs, like this one (perhaps one of Madge's distant relatives).
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