Default header image

Human Animal Playful Interactions (HAPI) Film Screening and Presentation by Dr. Erika Cudworth

Recording of Dr. Erika Cudworth: Animal Entanglements: Muddied Living in Dog-Human Worlds

Date: Saturday, September 21st, 2024


Prior to the screening, Dr. Erika Cudworth will be presenting on her research and her new book, “Animal Entanglements: Muddied Living in Dog-Human Worlds.”

Abstract

In this talk I will draw on aspects of my work in animal sociology which theoretically frame human relations with non-human animals in terms of a social system of domination – anthroparchy. Anthroparchy describes a system of social relations of human domination in which the non-human living world of beings and things are subordinated in complex relations of humancentrism, privilege and power. I understand this system of human domination to be intersected – to exist in co-constitution with other systems of relations of privilege, power and Othering cohering around gender, heteronormativism, race and colonialism, and capitalism. In this talk I trace my ideas on anthroparchy and a feminist approach through my work in order to understand our relationships with animals, in particular those kept in the home as ‘pets’ or companions.

I have been undertaking a long-term ethnographic study of people’s relationships with dog companions living in their homes in the UK, and the whole study is published in my recent book, Animal Entanglements: Muddied Living in Dog-Human Worlds. The research deployed ethnographic observation and (mainly) mobile interviewing undertaken of and with, people and their dogs – while out walking or at home.

The book considers the ways boundaries between humans and other animals are reproduced, contested and reshaped in the muddied inter-species spaces of everyday living. It also raises questions for our humancentric and human dominant understandings of the world and for how scholarship approaches the study of everyday life in the spaces of communities, families or (as I prefer) kin and homes, and in the practices of eating, loving, working and caring. The dog-human relationship is complex and ambiguous and living together can be significantly challenging for people and more significantly and worryingly, for dogs. While human domination is the framing context within which people and dogs live together, there are glimpses of what else might be involved in aspects of shared lives – heterotopic moments where human power is tested, dog agency can be enabled and more positive relations can be seen.

Bio

Erika Cudworth works in the School of Applied Social Sciences at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Relationships between humans and non-human animals has been her preoccupation across her academic career. She is delighted that this is a far less lonely road to travel than it was when she first set out. Erika’s research interests include complexity theory, gender and theoretical and political challenges to exclusive humanism and her empirical research has looked at farmed animals and companion animals.  Her books include Environment and Society (2003), Developing Ecofeminist Theory (2005), Social Lives with Other Animals (2011), and the co-authored Posthuman International Relations (2011) and The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism (2018). She has co-edited various collections, most recently Feminist Animal Studies (2023). Her latest book, Animal Entanglements: Muddied Living in Dog-Human Worlds, was published in 2024.