Report or activist project
Symbolic interactionism and talking to animals
Defining and locating symbolic interactionism
Human to human
Micro and Macro Sociological Theory https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ce/62/91/ce6291dfef3b5e50a7548cf6c26d7593.jpg
Video: What is symbolic interactionism?
Summary of symbolic interactionism https://www.sociologyguide.com/symbolic-interactionism/
Symbolic Interactionism for Humans
(1) Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theoretical perspective in sociology that addresses the manner in which individuals create and maintain society through face-to-face, repeated, meaningful interactions.
(2) interaction occurs within a particular social and cultural context in which physical and social objects (persons), as well as situations, must be defined or categorized based on individual meanings;
(3) meanings emerge from interactions with other individuals and with society; and
(4) meanings are continuously created and recreated through interpreting processes during interaction with others (Blumer, 1969).
Symbolic interactionism Michael J Carter and Celene Fuller California State University, Northridge, USA .
https ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-WGyrSRPo
Symbolic interactionism between humans and animals
Video: defining SI for human-animal relations
Point 1 is the main issue for using SI to understand human-animal relations https://www.slideshare.net/badongahillon/interactionist-theory
More traditional approaches to human-animal relationships in ia
Until recently, IA participants needed (because they could only be human):
Consciousness
Intention
Self identity
Ability to plan to affect a response
,participants’ ability to actively negotiate and define interactive situations, developing shared interpretations of values, norms, or sentiments.’
Cerulo, K. (2009). Nonhumans in Social Interaction. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 531-552
Assumed to be only human qualities
Culture
Rationality
Language
The self
Cerlo’s article goes on to discuss other approaches to interaction between humans and animals:
Actor Network Theory
Time Perspective Theory
Theories of Technological Change
Assumed to be animal and human qualities
Definition of ‘sentience’:
a sentient being is able to “evaluate the actions of others in relation to itself and third parties, to remember some of its own actions and their consequences, to assess risks and benefits, to have some feelings, and to have some degree of awareness.”
Assumed to be animal and human qualities Animal consciousness
Animal consciousness: ‘In conclusion, extensive behavioural and cognitive capacities that have until recently been thought to be exclusive to humans and some primates have been identified in non-primate animal species. Among the most elaborate capacities, there is evidence that animals have knowledge of their own state (bodily self). They have the capacity to know and deal with their own knowledge, and also to evaluate the psychological state of their conspecifics, potentially leading to some form of empathy. One important outcome of this work is that the present report may be used for designing future ways of rearing animals’
experience
‘The animal is a person in the sense that:
his or her perspective and feelings are knowable;
interaction is predictable;
and the shared relationship provides an experience of closeness, warmth, and pleasure.
In an important way, the distinction between relationships with humans and with animal-persons is central to the special character of the human–animal bond. Because they are not human relationships, those with companion animals are constant rather than contingent. The animal’s response to his or her companion does not depend on the latter’s appearance, age, economic fortunes, abilities, or the other vagaries that, for good or ill, constrain human-to-human relationships. (2003, p. 418)’.
ANTHROZOÖS VOLUME 25, SUPPLEMENTY EPRINTS Leslie Irvine
Irvine’s goal
‘Alger and Alger have demonstrated animals’ capacity for intersubjectivity, I examine the capacities that animals must have in order to achieve this shared experience.’
From the tutorial reading by Leslie Irvine.
RETHINKING THE SELF
Observations of the interactions between people and animals in the adoption areas revealed three themes:
1 seeking relationships with the animals
2 the concern for animals’ well-being
3 increasing complexity of interaction.
From this week’s tute reading by Leslie Irvine
meaning
In sum, the structure of interaction between people and animals (seeking relationships with animals, demonstrating concern for their well-being, and engaging in increasingly complex interaction) revealed that animals mean something for the experience of selfhood. The question that arises has to do with how they “mean some-thing.” Related to this, how do animals differ from the other “objects” in our environment that contribute to our sense of self?
From the tutorial reading by Leslie Irvine.
The other’s subjective presence
The key, I argue, is the subjective presence of the Other. The interaction must seem to have a source, and we must see the Other as having a mind, beliefs, and de-sires, just as we do. This not only confirms the Other’s sense of self to us; it also con-firms our own. How do we sense an Other’s subjective presence?
From the tutorial reading by Leslie Irvine.
Subjective presence without language
If we can agree that factors beyond spoken language matter for the creation of the self, then animals can participate in the process. In the model of the self that I am using, in order for animals to do so, they must themselves be subjective Others. How can we sense their subjective presence? As with other people, we cannot observe subjectivity directly. We perceive it indirectly, during interaction.
Irvine’s conclusion
‘The point of this article has been to show that there is something to animal selfhood and that this “something” becomes apparent during interaction. Our attributions of animals’ selves are not merely wishful anthropomorphic projection. Because animals have agency and the other dimensions of the core self, they can choose courses of action that do not always coincide with our projections of what they “should” be like. Humans and animals can share meanings and emotions, but that does not imply that they always will share them. Nevertheless, in much of human–animal interaction, the features of agency, coherence, self-history, and affectivity coalesce, with memory helping to integrate them. Together, these give the animal an organizing, subjective perspective, or a core self, and concurrently make core Others available.’
Using concepts to analyse human-animal relations as represented in Youtubes:
Dressage
Teaching a killer whale to talk
Puppy adoption
Three snakes and a man with taped trousers.
human to animal, animal to human interactions