Social Animals: Animal Studies and Sociology

The American Sociological Association recently granted full section status to a new Animals and Society section. Not all sociologists have been overjoyed with this development (Perrow, 2000). This is unfortunate, but expected. As Noske (1991) has noted, “the social sciences tend to present themselves preeminently as the sciences of discontinuity between humans and animals.” Sociologists, therefore, are supposed to study people, not other creatures. Paradoxically, by concentrating exclusively on humans we have neglected an enormous facet of human existence. “By focusing on differences between humans and other animals, sociologists have lost sight of all that we share with them” (Murphy, 1995, p. 692).