Homo Homini – Canis Est: Human-Canine Relations and Politics of Belonging in a Greek Island
Author: Orit Hirsch-Matsioulas, orithirsch@gmail.com
Department: Sociology and Anthropology
University: Ben-Gurion Uniersity of the Negev, Israel
Supervisor: Prof. Nir Avieli
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: Hebrew
Keywords:
human-animal relations
, globalization
, Europeanization
, Greece
Areas of Research:
Environment and Society
, Local-Global Relations
, Alienation Theory and Research
Abstract
This study examines the encounter between dogs and humans and human interrelations with regard to dogs on the Greek island of Paros. The study is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted on the island in 2010-13 and explores how human-canine relationships take part in constructing the social categories of “belonging to a place”, “foreignness” and “otherness” during the current economic crisis and throughout Greece’s modern history. My main argument is that dogs in Paros are not only symbols with varying meanings used by humans but also living entities that are active in the field, and that the interrelations with them affect social conflicts and cultural change during different periods in Paros.
The field work relied on a variety of methods: in-depth interviews with locals and officials related to the handling of the island’s dogs; analysis of related documents such as bylaws, and online postings; and ethnographic observations of the island’s life. In order to compensate for the lack of empirical studies on human-canine intertwining, I also developed several new techniques: participation in joint human-canine activities, relying on dogs as research assistants, using various senses, emotions and the body to examine intersubjective relations with dogs, interview in the presence of dogs, visual documentation of intimate human-canine moments, documenting humans’ interactions to the presence and actions and dogs, and observing dogs – a practice borrowed from ethology.
The study combines two fields of knowledge, each of which poses a major theoretical dilemma. The first is human-animal relations, which raises the ontological question, what is an animal according to different interpretive frameworks (structuralist and symbolic interpretation, symbolic interaction and actor-network theory), and particularly what is a dog in various cultures. The second theoretical foundation is the sociocultural study of globalization and the tension between the global and local spheres. These two knowledge areas intersect in Paros, making it fertile ground for research. The study demonstrates that Paros is an “animalscape” (e.g. Roberts, 2001), a unique case of “ethnoscape” (Appadurai, 1990) where certain nonhuman animals take part in recreating a place and its sociocultural meaning. Within this renewed creation, the local politics of belonging is shaped by three major themes: home, cultural domestication and ownership, which are expressed in the formation, consolidation and termination of human-canine relations. The study proposes a visual model for understanding the politics of belonging in the form of two concentric circles: the inner circle of human-canine relations in the private sphere, which in turn shapes society and culture in the outer circle.
The findings present various social instances of material, discursive, legal, physical and temporal connections and disconnections between people and dogs that reflect symbolic boundaries between social groups in Paros. The study also demonstrates how social actors and groups conduct power relations out of reliance on relations with dogs – political moves conceptualized as “politi-canis”: actions performed with and on behalf of dogs in order to position oneself in the island’s social network, which produce movement between local belonging, the marginalization of “foreigners” and the exclusion of “others”.
